RAOEN Coordinator Pedro Walpole SJ spoke on the second day of the 2024 Season of Creation Convocation held by Caritas Australia’s Catholic Earthcare program from 12 to 14 September 2024, on weaving strategic ways forward and making a difference, as over 145 participants were encouraged to “wonder,” “weave,” and “heal” in caring more greatly for creation.
Father Walpole shared that there is a great need to tap hope in facing uncertainty and going further into the social accompaniment of those who are made greatly vulnerable in this ecological crisis. He asked: “What have we learned about welcome, courage, and discernment for action? What can be woven as a multilateral approach in society for a genuine inclusive conversion?”
There is a reminder for us that on Earth, our mother is groaning as if experiencing childbirth. It is a metaphor that helps us to remember the pain that Earth is experiencing at this time as a result of climate change, but also that as we work through this pain as a global society, something new can be created, something better. This metaphor gives us a biblical image of hope, an active hope. We don’t stand still waiting for something new to happen, but rather, we partner with creation itself to help it heal.
In his presentation, Father Walpole spoke about the church’s efforts in synodality and what these can engender. The present biome-based dialogue needs greater inclusion in the synodal approach as it resonates with the process, and is practical, caring, and inclusive, while deeply spiritual. And while the climate and socio-ecological crisis is focused on the technocratic paradigm, there is also an emphasis on the multilateralism that needs to be developed.
At the UN climate summits (or COPs), tools are tested to engage this technocratic paradigm. All the hermeneutical understanding, transdisciplinary research, multilateral collaboration, political ecology, faith expressions, spiritual impulses, and the voice of democracy are severely tested and are slowly gaining ground.
Weaving in today’s world is something of a multilateral connectivity that is greatly needed. This includes connecting with people who have different objectives or resources or roles that keep relationships alive in places seeking growth in many ways. Success is found is not in accomplishing the objectives but in being together and in experiencing healing. This is what needs to be done lifelong.
Corporate participation in dialogue with civil society is still far, yet who can take the lead and how? Can the possibility of hope get any closer? These are some of the strands of the socio-ecological fabric we are challenged to focus upon, as the global focuses over the next two years on COP31.
And as presented in Laudate Deum 24 on re-thinking the use of power and that “(n)ot every increase in power represents progress for humanity,” we have to ask ourselves how to seek to build a multilateralism that will help us gain greater self-restraint.