A day of prayer, a decade of action for climate justice

I do not ask this lightly. What generations before us failed to destroy across thousands of years, the last few decades have very nearly achieved.

From greenhouse gases to a changing climate

The exhaust of factories, cars, and machinery has poisoned the air we breathe. Scientists tell us this pollution causes acid rain and other harms we cannot yet fully see. The hole in the ozone layer threatens to strip away our natural shield against the sun, opening the door to new cancers and other suffering. Together, these problems feed the greenhouse effect: the planet's average temperature climbs, and extreme, sudden shifts in climate bring disaster in their wake.

If we do not change course, our world risks becoming an unventilated greenhouse, a place where continued warming leads only to decay. We have already turned rivers and seas into dumping grounds, convinced, in the flush of the Industrial Revolution, that we had reached heaven. We had not. That was our sin.

Clean energy, reforestation, and an alliance of hope

The way forward is not mysterious. We must turn to nonpolluting sources of energy, water, wind, and sun, and retire the ones that poison us. We must protect and restore our forests and oceans, which draw carbon dioxide from the air and give us oxygen in return. Yet as temperatures rise, wildfires spread faster than our reforestation efforts can keep pace, and our oceans remain without the strong, binding international protection they need.

I find hope, even so, in an emerging alliance. The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, meeting in Crete in 2016, made an historic commitment to the environment, one that grows stronger as Orthodox churches at every level take it up. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change (COP21), signed by 196 states, still awaits full implementation, and I take heart from the young people marching in the streets today, whose insistence gives me real hope for the ecological legislation still needed at every level.

Stewards, not owners, of God's house

At the heart of all this lies a question of theology, not only policy. In the book of Genesis, God calls Adam to name the animals and the birds, a small act with enormous meaning. It tells us that from the beginning, men and women have been called to tend and keep creation, not merely to use it. We are not its owners. We are God's trustees.

This is what it means to speak of ecology at all: the word itself comes from the Greek for the "reason of the house" (logike tou oikou). The whole of creation, our planet and everything in it, is God's household, and we are called to protect its dignity as we protect our own. To do otherwise, to treat nature as an enemy to be conquered, as centuries of colonialism and industrial excess have done, is to repeat the arrogance that turned two world wars into a cemetery we still mourn.

Christian teaching asks something different of us: reconciliation with the created world, not conflict. When we protect nature, we protect ourselves. And this ecological struggle cannot be separated from the struggle for justice, for wherever armed conflict, social injustice, or the absence of democratic institutions persists, peace with creation remains out of reach.

A season for repentance and action

The Christian world now marks this call each year through the Season of Creation, beginning on 1 September with the Feast of Creation, in which I am honoured to serve on the Advisory Committee. The World Council of Churches (WCC) has taken up this same call through its Ecumenical Decade of Climate Justice Action (2025-2034), coordinated by the WCC Commission on Climate Justice and Sustainable Development, where I serve as a commissioner.

In this, we stand with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who has said that "the destruction of creation is an offense against the Creator," and with Pope Leo XIV, continuing the legacy of Pope Francis, together with Anglican and Lutheran leaders, all Christians and faith communities, and people of every faith who are demanding justice for our planet. UN secretary-general António Guterres has warned that "a world in climate chaos cannot be a world in peace," a warning echoed by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change secretariat and by climate economists who have long argued that the cost of inaction far outweighs the cost of acting now.

I ask you to join this global call: examine your daily habits, pray for our Creator's help, and take one concrete step toward protecting the home we share. Our planet's future, and our own, depends on it.