VATICAN CITY — Speaking the day before the official release his encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si (The Care for Our Common Home), Pope Francis asked people to have an “open heart” when they read it.
“Our ‘home’ is being ruined, and this hurts everyone, especially the poorest among us,” the Holy Father said at the conclusion of his weekly general audience on Wednesday.
The Pope’s second encyclical was released Thursday. It deals with creation and human ecology, examining man's responsibility in caring for the Earth.
The document’s title is taken from St. Francis of Assisi’s medieval Italian prayer “Canticle of the Creatures,” which praises God through elements of creation like Brother Sun, Sister Moon and “our sister Mother Earth.”
“My appeal, therefore, is for responsibility,” he said, which is “based on the task which God gave to man in creation: 'to till and protect' the 'garden' in which he has been placed.”
“I invite everyone to receive this new document with an open heart, which places itself along the lines of the Church's social doctrine.”