Fr Darwin Orozco, OFM Capucin
\nCoordinator of the JPIC Commission
\nat the Conference of Religious of Ecuador<\/p>\n
Mother Earth Dear Earth, you are my mother, you saw me born and raised in Choc\u00f3 Andino, in Nanegalito, where in the ancestral culture the Yumbos I had to live in harmony with creation. Thank you for a wonderful land dressed in flowers and woven with silver threads, for its countless waterfalls, with abundant flora and fauna unique in the world. Clotilde, also my dear mother, you were particularly passionate about orchids, thank you for teaching us to love and take care of creation. I remember each of your children had one or two meters of land in front of the house to grow roses, dahlias, carnations, geraniums or other ornamental and medicinal plants, it was our first school, thank you very much!<\/p>\n
It makes me happy to see Jesus of Nazareth feeding the hungry, healing the sick and seeing how the water, the wind and the sea obey him. It fascinates me that Jesus takes elements of nature to explain who he is, he says “I am”<\/em>: real life, living bread, living water, the door, the light of the world, the way. I feel identified with Jesus’ mission \u201cGo into the world, proclaim the Good News to all creation.\u201d<\/p>\n Taking care of the earth and good relationships is present in the Word of God. I always like to believe that we are creatures of God, made in his image and likeness, that the Creator has given us his spirit to take care of and cultivate the earth (cf. Gen 2:15)<\/span>. We must re-imagine the earth as God dreamed it.<\/p>\n Pope Francis asks us to listen to the moan of the earth and the cry of the poor, he tells us that the crisis we are going through is socio-environmental. With the encyclical Laudato Si ‘, he invites us to contemplate “What happens to our house”<\/em>, and demands from us the commitment to water, warns against the loss of biodiversity, the deterioration of the quality of human life and social degradation. He also denounces planetary inequality and the weakness of reactions. In the third chapter, he invites us to go to “the human root of the ecological crisis”<\/em> and encourages us to live an integral ecology to ensure a worthy land for future generations. The Pope urges us to \u201c\u2026 accept the challenge of dreaming and thinking about another humanity. We can aspire to a planet that provides land, shelter and work for all.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The Earth Charter was born in 1987 within the United Nations World Commission for Environment and Development. It is made up of 16 fundamental principles for sustainable development.<\/p>\n\n\t\t