Justice: Care For Creation

Our Pledge

We were invited by Pope Francis to join with myriad institutions and individuals of the Church to journey toward integral Ecology. We undertake with courage, conviction, and compassion the responsibility to Care for Earth, our Common Home, and to stand with people who have been impacted by climate change, poverty, violence, and exploitation. We desire to understand the interconnections of all creation and to undertake a conversion journey. We, who live in our evolving universe, engage as Co-creators with God to promote justice, to advocate with the powerless and oppressed, and to sustain practices which provide opportunity for all humanity to live fully human lives.

We pledge to join with others to integrate the seven goals of the Laudato Si Action Platform into our lived reality as Dominican Sisters of Grand Rapids.

Affirmed at Dominican Sisters ~ Grand Rapids General Assembly on August 6, 2021

In 2023, we initiated a project to plant 100 trees on the Marywood Campus grounds to expand the tree canopy in our City and neighborhood by 2027. This re-foresting project is part of our Laudato Si Action Plan. The Response to the Cry of the Earth is a call to protect our common home for the wellbeing of all, as we equitably address the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and ecological sustainability.

Care of Earth is just one example of how collaboration is essential to transforming the way we relate with the Earth and her resources. Locally, Dominican Sisters~Grand Rapids join other Michigan Catholic Sisters in support of water protection funding.

Water is a precious gift from God to all of creation and, as Pope Francis has written, “a basic and universal human right, since it is essential to human survival and, as such, is a condition for the exercise of other human rights” (Laudato Si’, 30). We urge our elected leaders in Lansing to do all they can to safeguard and protect our state’s cherished waterways and drinking water.

As people of faith, we believe that the possession, development and threat to use nuclear weapons is immoral. There are no safe hands for these weapons. The accidental or deliberate detonation of a nuclear weapon would cause severe, long-lasting and far-reaching harm on all aspects of our lives and our environment throughout the world. Further, these technologies are part of structures and systems that bring about great suffering and destruction.

As a Congregation we have taken public positions against nuclear weapons and several of our Sisters have undertaken profound public witness against these violent and inhumane weapons. Their use causes the annihilation of humanity and Earth; the vast resources wasted on their production steals from people who are poor.

“The Dominican Sisters ~ Grand Rapids, in 2007, passed a Corporate Stance for the abolition of nuclear weapons. At the time when the United Nations was considering the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, letters were sent to Ambassador Haley, President Trump, and Representative Rand Paul urging them to endorse the treaty. On July 24, 2020, we signed on to a letter sponsored by Setsuko Thurlow, a hibakusha (a survivor) from Hiroshima, sent to the leaders of 197 countries asking them to ratify and promote the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Today, we endorse the following statement. Our ministry of peace continues.” ~ Promoter of Justice Sr. Brigid Clingman.

Joint Interfaith Statement on the Entry into Force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons | 22 January 2021