James Pochury
As the world turns its eyes toward Belém in November 2025, it is worth recalling a quieter hilltop moment in June 2025 in Shillong, Meghalaya, India when the Workshop on COP30 and the Way Forward for the Church in India and Asia gathered 45 pastoral and ecological practitioners to ask what the Church’s witness at COP30 might mean if rooted in the lives of the poor and the wisdom of Indigenous Peoples.
Organized by the Office of Human Development of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) at the Siloam Retreat Centre, the gathering traced the Church’s responses to the call for integral ecology. Participants sought a theology that breathes through soil and story and there were discussions on the FABC Pastoral Letter to the Local Churches in Asia on the Care of Creation and reflections on Laudato Si’ and Laudate Deum.
The workshop sessions proposed clear shifts: that dioceses issue pastoral letters on climate justice in local languages; that seminaries and schools nurture eco-spiritual formation; and that the Church’s engagement at COP30 be measured by its ability to bring indigenous custodians and vulnerable women to the decision-making table.
For RAOEN, these insights land with urgency as the Church’s ecological mission must flow across the Pacific biome that involves Oceania, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. The clouds that rise from the Pacific shape Asia’s monsoons – an image of how closely our regions are joined. RAOEN’s mission affirms that every ecological change begins in relationship with the land, with one another, and with God.
In Shillong, participants listened across cultures and biomes, recognizing that care for creation is first the care of connection. The Shillong workshop is a reminder that the Church needs to listen deeply to its rivers, forests, and indigenous hearts.
The photo of living root bridges is from the World Bank story on Restoring the Environment and Helping Communities in Meghalaya that features these unique Jingkieng Jri (Living Root Bridges) that can be 4.5 to 40 meters long and take up to 40 years to be fully formed. The Khasi and Jaintia tribes weave the roots of their indigenous Ficus elastica trees to create bridges over rivers. These bridges are wonderful and renowned examples of the region’s natural infrastructure that uses nature-based solutions to address local needs.
James Pochury is the RAOEN Regional Coordinator for South Asia.