The following is a reflection given by Sister Carol Curtis, OSU, on our Laudato Si’ commitment as of 2025. She gave this reflection at an prayer service on October 3, 2025: “Peace with Creation.” The service was held on the portico at the rear of the Motherhouse.

All those gathered lifted their voices in celebrating the Season of Creation. We gave thanks for the gift of Mother Earth and renewed our commitment to our Laudato Si’ Action Platform.

The Laudato Si’ Action Platform outlines seven categories of sustainability goals, including responding to societal and climate issues, rethinking ecological education, recovering ecological spirituality, and adopting a sustainable lifestyle.

Four years ago, we, the Ursuline Sisters of Louisville, responded to Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ invitation to set out on a seven-year journey towards integral ecology. In fact, we were already on the road; in our 2020 Chapter we focused on our response to the Cry of Earth and Cry of Humanity. In a few weeks, Sister Jean Anne will convoke our next Chapter. This year is liminal for us, and that colors our Laudato Si’ commitment, as well.

Administratively and personally, we continue to streamline and downsize, upcycling and donating, and although we divest of our properties and hand over ministries, the relationships with those people and places remain. Building resilient community has been concomitant with our mission from the time of our foundation. We named collaboration as a key element in our commitment to Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation (the Vatican office); the Laudato Si’ Goals refer to “community engagement & empowerment.” For decades regional and national connections among religious congregations have strengthened our collective advocacy, raised awareness of justice issues and supported new outreach. Although UNANIMA (which represented 23 religious congregations at the United Nations) has reached completion this year, our global concern continues to find new expression, whether responding to humanitarian crises due to war and natural disaster, or combatting human trafficking. International, regional and local organizations, some longstanding partners and other new coalitions, allow us to stand in solidarity with those in need and creatively respond to ecological challenges.

If ever times and circumstances call for us to do something differently, it is now. Our Laudato Si’ commitment in 2021 coincided with the launch of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Ecological education and spirituality animate our ecological metanoia—conversion from exploitative extraction to an ecologically sustainable economy and restorative ethic. Despite the rollback of environmental protections across the political landscape, grassroots initiatives continue to remediate polluted lands and waterways, to reclaim and rewild strip-mined and blighted territory, and to protect forests, meadows and wildlife corridors. This is Isaiah’s vision, that justice dwell in the wilderness…. May it be so.

“Let us pray that each of us listens with our hearts to the cry of the earth, the victims of environmental disasters and climate change, making a personal commitment to care for the world we inhabit.”

—Pope Francis