May 1, 2025 // Diocese

‘Everything Is Interconnected’: Notre Dame Panel Discusses 10 Years of Laudato Si’

Ken Hallenius

“The decisions that humans make are a bigger challenge than the science itself,” Jennifer Tank, the director of the Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiative, said during a panel discussion entitled “Ten Years of Laudato Si’: Operationalizing Integral Ecology,” which was hosted at the University of Notre Dame on Tuesday, April 15.

The panel was held on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis’ groundbreaking 2015 encyclical on the environment, and it was hosted by the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, the Catholic Peacebuilding Network, and the Environmental Change Initiative.

This is the cover of the English edition of Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment, “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home.” “When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality the worth of a poor person, a human embryo, a person with disabilities — to offer just a few examples — it becomes difficult to hear the cry of nature itself,” the pope writes in the encyclical. (OSV News photo/courtesy U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops)

Caesar A. Montevecchio of the Catholic Peacebuilding Network introduced the event by explaining: “The question we wanted to ask today is, after 10 years, how are we doing? If we go by Laudate Deum, the 2023 follow-up to Laudato Si’ that Pope Francis wrote, the answer is, not well. Environmental problems remain stubbornly persistent, if not worse. Integral human development remains elusive in much of the world, and violent conflict, often spurred by consequences of climate change, continues at an alarming pace. However, we hope that today’s panel offers at least a small dose of optimism.”

Drew Marcantonio, assistant professor of environment, peace, and global affairs at the Kroc Institute, moderated the panel, which featured scholars representing civil and environmental engineering, biological sciences, and theology. Each speaker shared examples of how Pope Francis’ encyclical has informed their own work, and how they have employed principles found in Laudato Si’ to create meaningful and integral change both in the classroom and in the field, in places such as the Amazon River basin and eastern Africa.

Diogo Bolster, chair of the department of civil and environmental engineering at Notre Dame, explained that he has seen a shift in how engineering has been taught throughout the past 25 years, moving toward an emphasis on sustainability that embraces the concept of integral ecology. He professed to find hope in his students’ consideration of the fact that “these are our homes, but they’re also the ecosystem in which we’re going to live.”

“I’m trying to advocate for a kind of engineering that’s a listening kind of engineering,” explained Sister Damien Marie Savino, a Franciscan Sister of the Eucharist and a visiting professor of civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences at Notre Dame. Sister Damien Marie said the following are vital to care for our common home: “Learning, listening, being attentive to the language and the laws that are written in the created world, and not imposing or dominating on them but designing according to them.” She continued: “Pope Francis says that the external deserts in the world are growing because the internal deserts are so vast, so why are the problems getting worse when we’ve had technology for over several hundred years now and we’re still not fixing it?”

Father Emmanuel Katongole, professor of theology and peace studies at Notre Dame and the director of the Bethany Land Institute in Uganda, reflected that Pope St. Paul VI promoted the concept of integral human development, wherein all aspects of the person are to be taken into account when considering human flourishing, but throughout the years, economic concerns had come to dominate the conversation. In Laudato Si’, Pope Francis proposes the idea of integral ecology, which shifts the emphasis to consider humankind’s relationship with all creation, emphasizing that “everything is interconnected.” Father Katongole said that reading the encyclical when it first came out was a personal watershed moment, providing inspiration for his work in Uganda to experiment with ways to address issues of poverty, violence, and human dignity, “confirming that everything is connected,” he said. “Laudato Si’ has really defined my work.”

Tank, from the Environmental Challenge Initiative, agreed, saying: “Laudato Si’ was the first encyclical that I ever read, [and is] certainly my favorite. … Because the word ‘ecology’ just kept coming up, and you don’t read many things outside of your discipline where the word that encompasses what you do is repeated over and over.” Tank said she is encouraged by Pope Francis’ advocacy for multidisciplinary research as the way forward to address the most significant challenges of our time and sees this in her own work with farmers to address water quality issues.

“The solutions are super complicated, [but] it’s not actually because of the science,” Tank said. “It’s because of the complicated nature of humans, and the decisions that they make, and the reasons why they make the decisions they make.”

The panelists discussed the path forward in addressing issues of integral ecology.

“I’m a sort of incorrigible optimist,” said Sister Damien Marie, focusing on the students attending the discussion. “I want young people to have the vision that you could be the person who makes the world a more beautiful place in whatever way it is, whether it’s in your science or in your theology or in your social science.”

“We need a broad cultural evolution,” Father Katongole said. “What are some of the experiments that can be done? What can I do on the ground? I wish I had blueprints, but we need to say, ‘Well, just experiment; let’s try. We might actually fail, but let’s try.’ Be not afraid to try, to experiment, because there is no blueprint of what this broad cultural evolution is going to look like.”

“Cultural shifts happen from the young,” confirmed Bolster. “My daughter changes my habits. I’m a professor in environmental engineering, and she’s teaching me about practices and things that I should be doing. She shames me into that.”

The panel concluded on a positive note. “What gives me hope is the resilience of the environment,” Tank said. “If you treat it in a way that cultivates life, the earth will recover.”

Sister Damien Marie concluded: “I certainly find hope in our faith. … The cross wasn’t the end; the Resurrection was the end. And I think nature teaches us that through resilience, but also maybe in the ways that we could partner with nature. A friend sent me an article from Czechoslovakia about a community that was having water issues. And while they were debating whether or not to put in a dam, the beavers came in and built a dam, and everything was solved. And I just loved that because I thought, you know, if we would have stopped arguing with each other and partnered with nature somehow, we could really do it.”