Laudato Si’ Day – 19 Sept 2026

There is something wonderfully bold about Saint Francis of Assisi calling the sun his brother and the moon his sister.

Brother Sun. Sister Moon. Sister Water. Brother Fire.

Francis was not being sentimental about nature. He was saying something profoundly Christian. He understood that creation is not a collection of things which happen to surround us. Creation is a family because everything that exists comes from the hand of the one Father.

That is why Pope Francis began Laudato Si’ with the words of the saint whose name he took: “Praise be to you, my Lord.”¹

But there is another side to the story.

The Book of Wisdom today speaks about people who were fascinated by the beauty of creation but failed to recognise its Creator. They were captivated by “fire or wind or the swift air, the wheel of the stars, the impetuous water, the lamps of heaven,” yet somehow stopped there.

They admired the fingerprints but missed the hand of the Creator.

This gives us an entrée into the ecological crisis which Pope Francis addressed in Laudato Si’. At its deepest level, it is not simply a crisis of pollution, climate, consumption or biodiversity. It is a spiritual crisis.

It is an expression of Original Sin.

The story of Genesis tells us that sin fractures relationships. Adam and Eve hide from God. They become divided from one another. Even the earth becomes difficult for them. The harmony of creation is wounded because the human heart has been wounded.

Pope Francis makes precisely this connection. He writes that the harmony between the Creator, humanity and creation was destroyed because we “presumed to take the place of God and refused to acknowledge our creaturely limitations.”²

That is Original Sin in one sentence.

We forget that we are creatures.

The temptation in Eden was: “you can be like God”. And that temptation has never disappeared. We begin to imagine that the world belongs absolutely to us. We can take whatever we want from it. We can consume without limit because we have forgotten that creation is first received as gift.

The ecological crisis therefore begins somewhere much closer than a smokestack or a polluted river.

It begins in the human heart.

And that is why the answer cannot simply be technological. Of course, we need good science. We need responsible government and thoughtful decisions about the way we live. But Laudato Si’ calls for something deeper. Pope Francis calls it “ecological conversion.”³

Conversion.

That is a religious word.

It means turning back to God so that we can rediscover who we are.

And Saint Paul tells us who Christ is: “the image of the unseen God and the first-born of all creation.” Everything was created through him and for him. Everything is held together in him.

That changes the way we look at the world.

The water is his.

The forests are his.

The creatures that share this island with us are his.

And we are his.

Perhaps that is why today’s Gospel is so beautiful. The disciples are crossing the lake when the storm breaks. Water crashes over the boat. The disciples panic whilst Jesus sleeps.

“Save us, Lord,” they cry, “we are going down!”

Jesus rises and rebukes the winds and the sea.

And there is calm.

The disciples ask the question which lies at the heart of Laudato Si’: “Whatever kind of man is this? Even the winds and the sea obey him.”

The answer is given by Saint Paul in our second reading.

He is the one through whom creation came to be. He is the one in whom creation holds together. He is the one through whom God reconciles all things to himself.

Christ has come not merely to rescue isolated souls from a damaged world. He has come to reconcile creation.

So when we come to the water, we remember the water of our Baptism. We remember that we belong to Christ. And when we hear all the works of God summoned to praise him, we recognise that our voices belong within that great choir of creation.

Saint Francis understood this.

Brother Sun does not exist just for me.

Sister Water is not mine to waste.

The earth is not something I possess.

It is gift.

Original Sin makes us grasp.

Grace teaches us to receive.

The conversion Laudato Si’ asks of us today is to look again at this beautiful world, to recognise the fingerprints of God upon it, and to join Saint Francis in the song which creation has never ceased to sing:

Praised be to you, my Lord.

Laudato si’.

Praise the Lord, all you works of God.

Most Rev. Anthony J. Ireland
Archbishop of Hobart
19 September 2026

¹ Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ (24 May 2015), no. 1.
² Laudato Si’, no. 66.
³ Laudato Si’, nos. 216–221.