“Our Power, Our Planet,”
International Earth Day was celebrated with prayerful thoughts and tributes to Pope Francis, who on April 21, 2025, had passed away. Around the world he was recognized for all his efforts to rally and unite all the peoples of the planet to defend and protect Earth as humankind’s Common Home. He urged us all to pay attention to and respond to the “Cries of the Earth and of the Poor.”
All of us may remember when we celebrated Mother Earth Day in gratitude for all that we inherited from God and from our ancestors. Now, we celebrate it by wondering whether Mother Earth and its inhabitants will survive. We are facing two existential crises. Both the acceleration of climate change and the loss of biodiversity are a threat to life on Earth because greenhouse gas emissions have not stopped. Mother Earth Day is now a day to renew our sense of responsibility and to act urgently. The state of Mother Earth today is comparable to a person’s suffering from an extremely high fever. With a close medical exam, doctors can diagnose the cause and prescribe the necessary treatment. If the patient is not able or willing to follow through, the risk may well be death. For Mother Earth, the world experts have identified the root cause of the life-threatening illness as the unabated burning of fossil fuels. The required medication is stopping the irresponsible human activities, such as continued burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, offensive industrial processes, and the neglect of indigenous peoples and their wisdom practices.
Earth Day 2025 called us to take bold, global steps now out of a global sense of urgency. All have a shared responsibility to monitor how we produce our energy and grow our food. We are the principal actors in working together to find ways to live more sustainably with Mother Earth.