FrankTalk: Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace Commit to Laudato Si’

Sisters Maureen Boggins, Liz Dodd, and Margaret Byrne in their garden at Carlton House, Nottingham.

By Frank McCann, Congregation Peace through Justice Facilitator

Through the Laudato Si’ Action Platform, Pope Francis is challenging the Church to come together to recognize the ecological crisis that we are in and to put creation in its integral place in our lives of faith. The actions that are so destructive to Earth come from misguided beliefs that create suffering for low income and marginalized people around the globe. Francis sees the Church as an instrument of the Divine that can unite and be a source of healing and reconciliation. He has said, “From the hands of God we have received a garden. We cannot leave a desert to our children.”

The Laudato Si’ Action Platform is living hope. In recognizing the sacredness of Earth, the Church hopes to reverse the exploitation of it and unite people in new ways of caring for our planet and each other to spare us from a grim future. This requires commitment and freedom from self-centeredness and isolation.

For our Congregation, and most other women religious congregations, the call to organize around Laudato Si’ is a way to focus our varied ecological and human service efforts and set smart, accountable goals. It is also an invitation to collaborate on work that one congregation could not do effectively alone.

Mother Clare (Margaret Anna Cusack), the founder of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, wrote extensively about the injustice she encountered in 19th century Ireland as greedy absentee landlords exploited both the land and the Irish tenant farmers, leaving them worse off year after year. These landlords and many of the leaders of society and of the Church did little to relieve the suffering caused by famine. Mother Clare addressed the immediate needs and the underlying systemic problems. She used the earnings from the many books she wrote to feed local people and sought solutions to the famine by looking for new species of potatoes that could grow better in the Irish soil.

Ecological Economics

Following in our founder’s footsteps, the CSJP community has been challenged to use our resources for the good of the planet and one another. One example is impact investing in groups starting up or seeking seed money to grow their infrastructure.

Typically, the loan amount is repaid with an additional return. Today we are being challenged to take more risk, including lending to worthwhile groups when repayment may not yield a return. In one case, we decided to write off an investment allowing the organization to clear the loan from its books and enabling them to provide more affordable housing. We continue our charitable giving as a congregation in a very focused way, sometimes complementing the work that impact investing enables.

The Congregation has completed divestment from all fossil fuels, a decision made years ago, and completed in the United Kingdom in 2019, and in the United States this year. Changing the way we manage resources is critical to the vision of Pope Francis for a more sustainable future.

Adoption of Sustainable Lifestyles

A simple living group was organized for our Laudato Si’ response and challenged our Congregation to practice meatless Mondays and Fridays as a way of reducing meat consumption and moving ourselves to a more sustainable plant-based diet. The challenge is a twice weekly reminder of our commitment.

Solar panels will soon be installed in some buildings in our eastern regional center, and plans are in process to install them in all three regions. There is a proposal to allow more native grasses on Congregation properties to foster natural biodiversity and reduce the gas needed to mow lawns. All three regions have planted gardens in several locations. And the sisters have long had a standard of purchasing vehicles with high gas mileage and now hybrids and electric cars. The regional center in the East has an electric charging station.

The Congregation’s sponsored ministries, under the umbrella of Peace Ministries, collaborate on efforts and have developed their own sustainability efforts enacted by administrators and staff.

Response to the Cry of the Poor

From the beginning, the Congregation has been involved in ministries of social service, education and healthcare focused on serving the poor and marginalized, especially women and children. The Congregation continues a long history of serving immigrants and has recently opened houses of hospitality in the U.S. and U.K. for women seeking asylum.

We cannot live the gospel of peace today without responding to the cries of Earth and the poor. To be who we say we are demands that we do so.

This article appeared in the Summer 2022 issue of Living Peace.