Founder, President and Professor of the Dialogue Institute at Temple University; Major research field: Interreligious Dialogue; Selected works: Religion for Reluctant Believers (2016), Freedom in the Church (1969), Jewish-Christian Dialogues (1966), Dialogue for Reunion (1962).

Speech Abstract

A Call to All the Earth

Laudato si, Pope Francis’s Circular Letter (in Greek, “Encyclical”), is meant to encircle the whole Earth and every one on it. In a way, like his namesake Francis of Assisi, he also is addressing not only us humans but also all the animals, as well as Sister Water and Brother Wind. For all of its abundance of sage wisdom, deep philosophical insight, and manifold knowledge about scientific matters, I find two main themes running throughout the entirety of Laudato si: (1) the fundamental need for multiple and constant dialogue, and (2) that everybody and everything is connected.

From the very beginning of his time as pope, Francis said that if there is a problem: “Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue!” In the 40,000+ words of Laudato si, Francis used the term “dialogue” twenty-five times. Already at the very beginning of this document, he wrote, “I would like to enter into dialogue with all people about our common home” (no. 3). This is a very important sentence, for in it he not only signals that he is not simply going to state information and give marching orders. He wants to engage in a dialogue; that is, in this text he is going to listen to the laid-out scientific facts as carefully and critically as he can and invite his readers to do so also with him—and then speak to the facts and with each other. Not only that. He wants to have this dialogue not just with all the 1,300,000,000 Catholics in the world but with “all the people.” Yet more, he wants this dialogue to be “about our common home.” In other words, he wishes to launch a dialogue that is both as broad and as deep as possible. Yet, Francis strove to go even further when he wrote: “I urgently appeal, then, for a new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet. We need a conversation which includes everyone”.