PCUSA Bishop-President: Pope links Christ’s incarnation with care for creation

by Christina Gray
Catholic San Francisco

Pope Francis’ post-synodal apostolic letter on the Amazon region links care for creation with Christ’s incarnation, Lexington, Kentucky, Bishop John Stowe said in a Lenten presentation at St. Rita Parish in Fairfax.

“The Lord, who is the first to care for us, teaches us to care for our brothers and sisters and the environment which he daily gives us. This is the first ecology that we need,” Bishop Stowe said in his prepared talk, quoting the pope’s “Querida Amazonia” (Beloved Amazon).

The document was released Feb. 12 and followed the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon region held last October in Rome.

Bishop Stowe also cited the papal ecological encyclical “Laudato Si’” in his talk, titled “We Are All in This Together: Interconnectiveness in All Creation.”

Marking the five-year anniversary of the encyclical, the focus of this year’s St. Rita series is “Laudato Si’” and World Peace.”

Some people think of the word cosmic as “new age,” said Bishop Stowe, but Pope Francis calls it an “authentic spirituality.”

“Cosmic ecology recognizes our home is in God,” said Bishop Stowe, who is a Franciscan priest and president of Pax Christi-USA. “God the creator joins creation in the incarnation through his son Jesus. So God becomes part of our home. Jesus bridges the two homes, between this world and the eternal world in which God lives.”…

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