The Season of Creation begins tomorrow with the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation.
Sr Paoula Mourad, missioned in Ireland and serving as Justice Coordinator for the Irish District, has recently returned from Cotonou, Benin, where she joined OLA Justice Coordinators from across the congregation for international formation in Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation.
Much of the work was around integral ecology, climate change and Laudato Si’, but it also included conflict management and peacebuilding. Pope Leo’s message for tomorrow begins with Isaiah’s image of swords beaten into ploughshares: metal made for war turned towards the work of the soil.
From there, the Holy Father turns to what war does to the land itself. The fighting may stop, but contaminated soil and water, damaged ecosystems and lost harvests remain. People may return home to find that the land that once fed them, or the water they depended on, no longer does.
Looking beneath the battlefield he names “the loss of a sense of limits, the desire for domination, the pursuit of immediate profit” among the causes of both conflict and the exploitation of creation, asking that we imagine the energy now invested in war turned towards human development, overcoming poverty, protecting dignity and reconciling divided peoples.
The image of the ploughshare now represents money, labour, knowledge and human effort redirected away from destruction. Leo’s “tools” for peace are truth, dialogue, patience, justice, mercy, understanding, care and love. He names three ecosystems needing protection: creation, human relationships and the human heart.
Once a field is damaged or a water source poisoned, the consequences are immediate: whether food can be grown, whether children can drink safely, whether a family can remain where it is, and whether there is anything left to return to after displacement. Laudato Si’ speaks directly to this, particularly in its treatment of water, poverty and the unequal burden of environmental damage.
Pope Francis called access to safe drinking water “a basic and universal human right”, and wrote specifically about water poverty in Africa, where drought and unsafe water affect health, agriculture and food. The further water is removed from daily security, the further its absence reaches into everything else.
The wider Season of Creation takes Living Water as its 2026 theme, drawing on Ezekiel’s vision of water flowing through barren land until trees grow again along its banks. The river changes what the land can sustain; where the water reaches, life returns.
For OLA, the Season of Creation sits within the same JPIC commitment that includes peace, migration, trafficking and the rights of women and girls. Across the congregation, questions of water, food, land and displacement are already part of the realities Sisters encounter in the places where they live and work.
During September, our reflections will return to water, biodiversity, climate change and Laudato Si’, with attention to the people living closest to the consequences of environmental damage and to the decisions, often made far from them, that affect the land and water on which they depend.