Leaders of Irish churches and aid agencies and an expert on climate change have expressed support for a Climate Change Day of Prayer on 4th October in the run up to the next UN climate summit due to take place in Copenhagen in December.
Christians of all denominations will pray for a successful outcome to the critical COP 15 talks and will reflect on the beauty of the world as well as considering what practical steps they can take to prevent further climate chaos. Some will pray in their own churches, while others will attend ecumenical services, which will see Catholics and Protestants joining together in prayer.
The Day of Prayer is an initiative of the Environmental Issues Network of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, an ecumenical body that brings together environmental representatives from all of Ireland and Britain’s mainstream churches. Also involved are Christian development and environmental organisations, including Eco Congregation Ireland, CAFOD, Christian Aid and Tearfund.
The aim is to raise awareness of the seriousness and urgency of the global situation and to bring together Christians in a powerful and visible show of concern and unity. The date 4th October was chosen because it is St Francis’ Day and the final day of the five-week Time for Creation when churches have been considering the theme Creation in Crisis – A Time for Prayer and Action.
The Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland, the Most Rev Alan Harper, says that the climate change we are now encountering is unprecedented and that humanity is to blame. “We have it in our power to destroy the life chances of millions on our planet by the unrestrained emission of greenhouse gases and other agents and we have the power to change our habits so that the earth and its peoples and its biodiversity are delivered from the unbridled greed and arrogance of mankind,” he says. “Let us resolve to change and let us seek from God the moral courage to make our resolutions into lived reality. Let us re-commit to being responsible stewards of the earth God gave us to care for.”
The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cashel and Emly, the Most Rev Dermot Clifford, last year asked a class of second level pupils who was the patron saint of ecology: “A hand shot up. A little girl in first year said, ‘Saint Al Gore’! An inconvenient truth indeed,” he says. “Obviously, we have not told our children enough about St Francis and the example of his love of nature. We ought to teach them his beautiful prayer The Canticle of the Sun.
“Children could bring their parents to ecological conversion. The children of today are the ones whose health and welfare will be most affected by the failure of this generation to tackle climate change. What better time than his feast day to enlist the three generations to pray to St. Francis of Assisi, Patron of Ecology, for a successful outcome to the upcoming conference in Copenhagen. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.”
Prof John Sweeney of NUI Maynooth, president of An Taisce and a member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, also supports the Climate Change Day of Prayer. “What is clear today is that the future of our global home is threatened by our own actions and selfishness,” he says. “Already the poorer members of our global community are suffering severely from climate change not of their making. We have only a few years before dangerous limits may be breached from which recovery may be almost impossible. At this time Christians should pray that our leaders rise to the challenge facing them in Copenhagen and help fashion a world in which those who come after us will have options which our short-sighted decisions might otherwise deny them.”
Catherine Brennan SSL, chairperson of Eco Congregation Ireland, which has been instrumental in organising the Day of Prayer, says, “Our abundant and beautiful planet, God’s creation, is in peril today from human-induced climate change. Our scarred planet, the poor of the developing world and future generations are most at risk. The Day of Prayer is an opportunity for us to ask for forgiveness, to reflect on the need to live in more sustainable ways and for a renewed theology of creation. We pray too for wisdom, courage and compassion for our world leaders as they prepare to meet for the crucial summit in Copenhagen.”
Rev Donald Ker, President of the Methodist Church in Ireland, urges people to join him on October 4th in praying about the issues that result from climate change. “In part our prayers will be prayers of confession, for we have not always been responsible stewards of the earth, which God has entrusted to us,” he says. “Our prayers will also focus on the needs of others, particularly those in our world who are, through poverty, most vulnerable to the detrimental effects of changing weather patterns. Our prayers will be prayers which seek God’s help to raise our voices and change our lifestyle so that God’s ways of justice, which include climate justice, may be known.”
Alan Pim, clerk of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Ireland, says, “Our home is the home of all nature’s animals and plants and, without the benefit of many other living things, we humans shall not be able to survive. Plants depend on animals and animals depend on plants for sustaining life, as we know it. Mother earth is ours to preserve for those coming after us, not to destroy.”
Justin Kilcullen, director of Trocaire, says that for the first time in human history one generation is handing on to another a world which is in a more vulnerable and damaged state than which it was inherited. He says, “The children of the next generation will turn to us and ask, ‘Did you not know what you were doing? Did you not stop to think?’ The Climate Change Day of Prayer will allow us to do just that – to stop and think, to reflect, to ask forgiveness, to resolve to reform our ways and to give witness to the wider community that radical change is needed if we are to avert disaster.”
Reuben Coulter, chief executive of Tearfund Ireland, says that the natural environment is one of the greatest gifts that we have been entrusted with by God. “We are refreshed by its beauty and energised by its bounty,” he says. “Let us unite in the creative power of prayer to mobilise our leaders, to unleash innovative solutions and to bring healing to a scarred world.”
Gerry O’Hanlon SJ, acting director of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice, says that the Day of Prayer “focuses our attention on one of the key issues of social justice in today’s world, and the urgency of action to change the attitudes and behaviour, especially of those of us in the developed world, which are resulting in the continued growth of carbon emissions. We need, in words from the recent 35th General Congregation of the Jesuits, to develop ‘a passion for environmental justice’, through which we meet ‘the Spirit of God seeking to liberate a suffering creation, which demands of us space to live and breathe’.”