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Loyola's Commitment to the Vatican's Seven-Year Journey to Integral Ecology

Dear Loyolans,

The call to address climate change and sustainability is a moral imperative in the face of the environmental catastrophe that impacts everyone and disproportionately affects the poorest inhabitants of the world. This imperative drives Loyola University Chicago’s strategic direction. Work has intensified in recent years in the era of Laudato Si’, the 2015 encyclical letter from Pope Francis on the care of the earth, our common home.

I am pleased to report that, on behalf of Loyola University Chicago, I have signed a commitment to the Vatican’s Seven-Year Journey to Integral Ecology. The Journey is an exciting global collaboration that puts the principles of Laudato Si’ into action and calls us to answer the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth with bold, coordinated, and measurable action. 

The Journey brings together leaders from the public, private, and faith sectors in a spirit of solidarity to advance and accelerate new, specific, measurable, and time-bound commitments. The Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development officially enrolled our University in the Journey as of yesterday, Sunday, November 14.

This is more than a symbolic pledge. Our involvement comes about as the result of the work and expertise of many colleagues and partners, and our University is helping to lead the Journey. We are deeply grateful for the dedicated leadership of Nancy Tuchman, founding dean of the School of Environmental Sustainability (SES), who, with colleagues from across the University and community, has positioned Loyola as a national center for approaches to integral sustainability. Michael Schuck, professor in the department of theology and SES and co-director of the International Jesuit Ecology Project, was invited by the Vatican to lead the Universities Working Group for the Laudato Si’ Action Platform. He has worked with hundreds of universities throughout the world to help them structure academic and community approaches to sustainability.

In committing to the Journey, Loyola embarks on a seven-year collaboration with the following intentions:

  1. Enrich and invigorate its existing environmental programs and activities with inspiration from the seven Laudato Si’ goals.
  2. Develop new, creative, and transformative nonviolent actions that advance one or more of the seven Laudato Si’ goals.
  3. Ensure campus opportunities for a faith-engaged participation in environmental programs and activities.
  4. Share its Journey experiences with universities in its commitment cohort.
  5. Provide the Vatican Dicastery with an institutional environmental assessment within the first year.
  6. Annually report its Journey experience to the Vatican Dicastery.

The fact that this global initiative is coordinated through the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development bespeaks the all-encompassing nature of the Journey—and of this opportunity to answer it. I encourage the Loyola community to learn more about the Seven-Year Journey to Integral Ecology. There are two places to start. One is the Vatican Dicastery's Laudato Sí' Action Platform website. Another is the guidebook website University Pathways. In its global scale and grass-roots inclusiveness, the Journey mobilizes a significant constituency of expertise, advocacy, and change implementation against an urgent timeline.  

Our discernment and action steps connect with the larger action of mitigating climate crisis. Loyola Chicago’s leadership in local and global sustainability, our representation at the COP 26 international climate conference, Loyola’s land stewardship acknowledgment, the sustainable investment policy approved by the Board of Trustees, the significant commitment in our new Strategic Plan to leadership in a broad range of sustainable initiatives, and now signing on to the Seven-Year Journey Toward Integral Ecology, are each important steps in building momentum towards a unified, collaborative, integrated, forward action.

With a foundation of faith, inquiry, and action, Loyola’s mission is grounded in respect for all of God’s creation and a core Jesuit ethos of service to all. In this spirit, we embrace this opportunity to advance Pope Francis' powerful Laudato Si' message as part of our mission to forge bold paths toward greater understanding, equitable societies, and a more sustainable world.

Sincerely,

Jo Ann Rooney, JD, LLM, EdD

President