In May 2020, Pope Francis proclaimed a Year dedicated to the publication of the Encyclical Laudato Si’. At the end of that Year, the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development (DPIHD) launched the Laudato Si’ Action Platform (LSAP), a digital space where communities and institutions can register, draw up their own integral ecology plan and keep track of the actions they carry out. The project, inspired by the Encyclical, involves families, parishes, schools, congregations, dioceses and other institutions.
Today, this initiative turns five. Five years of projects, actions, stories, and questions from communities around the world. The Platform has already welcomed 13,000 participants, including 6,200 institutions. These testimonies are gathered in the five-year report, presented by the Platform at the Holy See Press Office on Wednesday, 4 November.
Sr. Alessandra Smerilli also took part in the event, explaining how LSAP has made the Church’s commitment to promoting integral ecology more visible. Looking to the future, the Prefect of DPIHD added: “The promise of the Platform is that every community becomes a source of knowledge and practical help for others.”
The challenge for the next five years is to become even more a space for encountering and sharing among the different realities of the Church that wish to respond to ecological crises with concrete action.
To meet this need, a Digital Atlas has been launched on this Anniversary, allowing users to explore a map of the many communities of the Laudato Si’ Action Platform from around the world:
“Through the Atlas, we are bringing together three kinds of information in a single LSAP tool: where participating Catholic institutions are present, what their communities are doing, and what environmental data tells us about the places they inhabit,” explained Alonso de Llanes, Director of LSAP, at the conference.
The Atlas is available in eleven languages. Click here to access the Atlas.
The LSAP’s future priorities include offline access to the Platform’s main resources for communities with limited internet access, a Learning Hub for sharing practical experiences, an assessment of the responsible use of artificial intelligence for data collection, and an expanded network of digital missionaries. Together, these initiatives aim to make the Platform more useful and accessible to the communities where it operates:
“The real promise of this Platform is not that every community can turn to us for answers. It is that every community can become a source of knowledge and practical help for another,” concluded de Llanes.
Dr. Lorna Gold, Executive Director of the Laudato Si’ Movement, welcomed the progress achieved through LSAP and highlighted the fruitful collaboration between the Movement, LSAP and DPIHD, which has demonstrated the Church’s capacity to respond to the climate crisis.
Nevertheless, Gold stated, the climate crisis is intensifying and we must keep pace: “We want to help people make changes in their own lives and in their communities, while also helping their voices reach the places where the most important decisions are made.”
Below is the full video of the press conference.
