Category Archives: Care for Creation

Brazil, Care for Creation, Care for the Poor

Brazilian Campesino Leader Killed in the State of Pará

telSURetv
Published 9 July 2017

https://videosenglish.telesurtv.net/player/610027/brazilian-police-storm-mst-school/?aspectratio=auto

Almeida helped to reorganize an encampment on the Santa Lucia farm only days after the May 24 massacre of 10 campesinos.

Alemeida - Para
Líder Rosenildo Pereira de Almeida assassinado no Pará. (novonoticias.com) Felipe Pontes/Agencia Brasil Photo

Just over a month after the massacre of 10 campesinos in Pau D’arco in the Brazilian state of Para, yet another rural worker has been killed in the same region.

On Friday, 44-year-old Rosenildo Pereira de Almeida was shot and killed as he left a church in Rio Maria which is located 43 miles away from the Santa Lucia farm. According to police investigations, two masked suspects on a motorcycle fired four shots at Almeida at around 10 p.m.

Almeida was a member of the League of Poor Campesinos, according to Diario Online. He helped to reorganize an encampment on the Santa Lucia farm only days after the May 24 massacre of the campesinos.

Jose Vargas Junior, lawyer for the 10 Santa Lucia victims, stressed that Almeida was a leader of the families who returned to set up another encampment. Their aim was to force the government to include the property as part of its agrarian reform program.

Justice Global reported that Almeida, along with three other leaders of the new encampment, were marked for death.

Ten campesinos — nine men and one woman — were killed by Brazil’s military and civilian police as part of an eviction order led by state forces.

dot
Sister Dorothy Stang, SNDdeN

Pará is the same state where Dorothy Stang, a U.S. born, Brazilian-naturalized nun was murdered in 2005 by armed gunmen who were contracted by ranchers. For decades, Stang worked alongside and as an advocate for campesino farmers.

In April, 10 more campesinos, including elders and young people, were murdered in an encampment situated in Colniza in the state of Mato Grosso. According to Mato Grosso’s Department of Public Safety, the massacre was committed by “hooded” gunmen.

Action, Care for Creation, Care for the Poor

Don’t mine sacred Native American land in Arizona.

Credo Action

dont-mine-sacred-land-180In what many believe is a first in U.S. history, Congress has decided to give away a sacred Native American site to a massive foreign mining company. (1) We’re joining a last ditch effort to save this land before copper mining begins and this land is irreversibly destroyed.

Republicans in Arizona have been attempting for years to trade away the beautiful national forest lands at Oak Flat in Arizona, which are considered holy by the Apache tribe. And until recently, they’ve failed for lack of support. But last December, in a deeply cynical and undemocratic move, Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake snuck last minute language into a must-pass defense bill transferring the land directly to the Rio Tinto mining company. (2)

Apache tribal leaders are planning a caravan to Washington, D.C. this month to protest this outrageous land giveaway. We’re joining thousands of activists to help amplify their message and pressure Congress to stop the Apache land grab.

Sign the petition: Stop the Apache land grab and protect Native American holy land from copper mining.

Continue reading Don’t mine sacred Native American land in Arizona. →

Care for Creation, Climate Change, Environment

Invited by Vatican, Naomi Klein Makes Moral Case for World Beyond Fossil Fuels

Common Dreams

Activist and author praises ‘courageous’ invitation by Pope in face of fossil fuel industry’s power

Nadia Prupis

Author and activist Naomi Klein spoke at the Vatican on Wednesday, calling climate change a "moral crisis" that should unite all people. (Photo: Adolfo Lujan/flickr/cc)
Author and activist Naomi Klein spoke at the Vatican on Wednesday, calling climate change a “moral crisis” that should unite all people. (Photo: Adolfo Lujan/flickr/cc)

Naomi Klein—activist, author, and self-described “secular Jewish feminist”—spoke at the Vatican on Wednesday where she championed the Pope’s message for global action on climate change and made the case for “the beautiful world” beyond fossil fuel addiction.

Klein, who was invited to speak by the Vatican, gave her speech ahead of a two-day conference to discuss the Pope’s recent encyclical, Laudato Si’, on the environment and the threat of the global economic system—subjects that the author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate knows well.

The encyclical has garnered praise from environmental campaigners like Greenpeace International’s Kumi Naidoo, who called it a “clarion call for bold, urgent action.”

“Pope Francis writes early on that Laudato Si’ is not only a teaching for the Catholic world but for ‘every person living on this planet.’ And I can say that as a secular Jewish feminist who was rather surprised to be invited to the Vatican, it certainly spoke to me,” Klein told reporters ahead of the conference, which is called People and Planet First: the Imperative to Change Course.

She praised what she described as “the core message of interconnection at the heart of the encyclical.”

Klein also expanded on what may appear to be an unlikely alliance with the leader of the Catholic Church. Continue reading Invited by Vatican, Naomi Klein Makes Moral Case for World Beyond Fossil Fuels →

Care for Creation, Children, Environment

The Kids Are Alright As Washington Judge Delivers Youth Climate Win

Common Dreams
by Deirdre Fulton, staff writer

“‘We may have won a battle, but we’re still fighting a bigger war,’ says 14-year-old petitioner.”

Citing what she called the “historical lack of political will to respond adequately to the urgent and dire acceleration of global warming,” a judge in Washington state handed a group of eight young petitioners a landmark win this week, ordering the Department of Ecology (ECY) to consider statewide reductions in carbon dioxide emissions based on best available science.

The youngest of the climate petitioners, some of whom are pictured here with attorney Andrea Rodgers, is nine years old. (Photo: Our Children's Trust/Facebook)
The youngest of the climate petitioners, some of whom are pictured here with attorney Andrea Rodgers, is nine years old. (Photo: Our Children’s Trust/Facebook)

“The effect of this decision is that for the first time in the United States, a court of law has ordered a state agency to consider the most current and best available climate science when deciding to regulate carbon dioxide emissions,” said Andrea Rodgers of the Western Environmental Law Center, attorney for the youth petitioners, who are in elementary, middle, and high school.

“I’m not going to sit by and watch my government do nothing. We don’t have time to waste. I’m pushing my government to take real action on climate, and I won’t stop until change is made.”
—Zoe Foster, 13

The kids acted with the help of a NASA climate scientist as well as Our Children’s Trust, an Oregon-based nonprofit orchestrating a global, youth-driven legal campaign to establish the right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate.

“This is a decision of immense national significance,” said Julia Olson, executive director of Our Children’s Trust, which has similar cases going around the country. “Judge Hill acknowledges the urgent and dire acceleration of global warming, refuses to accept any more bureaucratic delay, and mandates that the State consider and act in just two weeks time on the youth’s scientific evidence that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide must be reduced to 350 [parts per million].”

Continue reading The Kids Are Alright As Washington Judge Delivers Youth Climate Win →

Care for Creation, Care for the Poor

A list of quotations from the encyclical arranged by subject

Catholic Climate Covenant
Care for Creation: Care for the Poor

CatholicClimateCovenant.org • (202) 756-5545 • 415 Michigan Avenue NE, Suite 260 • Washington, DC 20017

This document highlights elements of Laudato Si’, or Praised Be, Pope Francis’ encyclical letter on ecology. Following are excerpts from the encyclical, arranged by topic. Citations are included for your reference.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Dying World

The Problem
Policy and Political Leadership
Reality of the Problem and Necessity to Act
Your Action Matters
Climate Change
Acting More Sustainably
The Faith Perspective
Ecology and Social Justice
Consumerism
Sustainable Business
Future Generations

The Problem
The earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor. (2)

The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. (21)

Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years. (53)

Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain. We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation and filth. The pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has so stretched the planet’s capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes, such as those which even now periodically occur in different areas of the world. (161) Continue reading A list of quotations from the encyclical arranged by subject →