Praise be to you, our Lord, and all your Creation!
A group of Our Lady’s parishioners took up Pope Francis’ invitation to ALL people of good will to Care for our Common Home, reading and sharing the faith and meaning of Laudato Si’. This second encyclical is one of the major communications of the late Pope and an important contribution to the social teaching of the Church, guiding the thought of leaders of the world of every hue. A full copy of it can be downloaded from the links here.
What does it mean to be Human?
See more here about Pope Leo’s address to the nations of the world at UNESCO headquarters in Paris on25 September.
Season of Creation 2026
Call to Action
ABOUT SEASON 2026 16-17
SEASON OF CREATION 2026: LIVING WATER
Immersion in Living Water (Ezekiel 47:9,12)
The legacy of Pope Francis in the Care for Our Common Home continues across the world in increasing numbers of communities and individuals joining their voices, advocacy, commitment and prayer. This year’s Season of Creation started on 1 September and continues till 4 October, the feast day of St Francis. As the late Pope gathered ecumenical leaders and groups, Pope Leo builds on the wholistic approach to unite all peoples in faith and prayer towards a spiritual conversion that builds the fullest relationship with God, with our Neighbours and with Creation.
Click to watch the recording of the prayer service held on 1 September. It was a truly international event, demonstrating the effectiveness of uniting people with a common goal, across the globe, ONLINE!
1 September 2026
WORLD DAY OF PRAYER FOR THE CARE FOR CREATION 2026
Pope Leo XIV’s message on this 11th World Day of Prayer gives a deep reflection on the conflict and crises we face in the world today.
“The human heart is the place where the deepest struggles unfold and our fallen condition reveals itself. It is not merely the seat of emotion, but the center of the person — the place where reason, desire, will and conscience converge. It is here that we wrestle with the contradictory desires within us between love and indifference, truth and illusion, justice and injustice (cf. Jas 1:14–15).
The wounds of war and the degradation of the earth, then, are profoundly linked to the condition of the human heart. The conflicts that torment humanity are in many ways the outward expression of interior discord and division. When the heart is distorted, relationships suffer, and the structures we build begin to reflect that disorder.”
He continues, “The prophetic call to ‘beat swords into plowshares’ (Is 2:4) is therefore not only a vision for nations, but a call to each person. It invites us to transform harm into life. Yet this transformation cannot be achieved through external change alone. It requires, through cooperating with God’s grace, a deeper personal and collective conversion — a returning to God, who will reorder our desires, heal our wounds and help us grow in virtue.”
On the beginning of this year’s Season for Creation, Pope Leo XIV invites us again to contemplate the gift of life and to cherish the earth that sustains it, for they are tangible ways of offering praise to our Creator.
Read the full message here.
5 SEPT 2026
This event is a great opportunity to find out more about what the Dioceses in Scotland as well as the ecumenical community are doing to build our relationship with God, with our Neighbour and with the Earth itself.
Guest speaker Lorna Gold is head of the global Laudato Si’ Movement — no doubt she will give an update of the incredible year of work and developments in global environment issues! Lorna’s commitment is inspirational to all fellow Scots as we strive to achieve Pope Francis’ legacy in Caring for our Common Home.
INVITATION
Join an international learning forum that builds greater understanding of what Care for Our Common Home means in daily life. How can we respond to renewal of spiritual identity through connectedness to all of Life? On this short course, you’ll share the journey with hundreds of others concerned for our World and its People.
For Information: jdei.english@unigre.it
For online enrolment: https://corsionline.unigre.it/
ADVENT 2025
CHRISTMAS CONCERT IN ROME
Michael Bublé topped the bill at December 6th’s Concert for the Poor in Paul VI Audience Hall, Vatican City, in the presence of Pope Leo. Watch the performance by clicking below.
A BLESSED CHRISTMAS TO ALL!
4th Sunday of Advent
21 December 2025
OUR COMMON HOME GROUP held a short Advent Retreat, online via ZOOM on Tuesday 16 December, It was the first event using this new form of communication to build connection within the Parish and we hope learning from the experience will lead to more ways we can reach out to each other and develop our community of faith.
The focus of the Retreat was a presentation by Sr Damien Marie Savino, FSE PhD on What Makes an Action Truly Laudatio Si?
The group has met in the Chapel regularly on Tuesday afternoons since September, looking deeply into the spirituality of Laudato Si’. Members are encouraged by the simple yet direct intent of the encyclical: to improve their relationships with God, with Others and with the Earth, in a call to on-going conversion as the driving force in living our lives in Christ.
We now take a break until the new year and hope to work closely with the Diocese towards wider use of the synodal approach in our efforts.
Please scroll down this page to read a few of their weekly discernments.
If you would like to know more about Laudato Si’, on the Care for our Common Home, do email RaisingHope@ourladysauchterarder.org.
REMINDER:
There will be no Tuesday group meeting on 9 December. Instead, we are looking forward to the Advent Mini Retreat by Zoom call on December 16.
INVITATION
OUR COMMON HOME Tuesday Group is winding down its activity for the year by hosting an online Advent Mini Retreat on Tuesday 16 December at 8PM. During a short 40 minute Zoom call, attendees will be able to reflect and pray on the Attentiveness we strive for in being and living our Catholic faith.
We will watch a 12 minute presentation by Sr Damien Marie Savino, Franciscan sister of the Eucharist, on What Makes an Action Truly Laudato Si’. The rest of the time will be for listening and sharing our understanding of the Practical Transformation that leads and builds our relationships with God, with Others and with the Earth,
Parents, workers and all others interested in joining the event are asked to sign up on the list in the church porch, or by email to RaisingHope@ourladysauchterarder.org. Your email address is all that is required and you will be sent the link for the call.
This Tuesday 2 December
We will continue to reflect on the spiritual conversion we are all called to by our faith in the Christ, whose birth as the Baby Jesus we await. We want to further explore the greater meaning of how “… spirituality can motivate us to a more passionate concern for the protection of our world”, a spirituality capable of inspiring us, with an “interior impulse which encourages, motivates, nourishes and gives meaning to our individual and communal activity”. (LS 216)
Tuesday 26 NOV, 3-4pm in the church
Our Group’s discernment of the integral ecology of Laudato Si’ digs deeper into the spirituality of Care for Our Common Home.
Sr Damien Marie Savino, FSE, PhD will guide us through a short reflection, arising from the snippet you can watch above. Please clink on the photo to watch.
We walk alongside scientists, leaders and pastors of every nation and creed.
We are guardians of creation, not rivals for its spoils.
Pope Leo IV, 17 November 2025
“The Paris Agreement has driven real progress and remains our strongest tool for protecting people and the planet.
But we must be honest: it is not the Agreement that is failing, we are failing in our response. What is failing is the political will of some.
True leadership means service, and support at a scale that will truly make a difference. Stronger climate actions will create stronger and fairer economic systems. Strong climate actions and policies, both are an investment in a more just and stable world.”
In his message to the Particular Churches of the Global South, gathered at COP30 on 17 November, Pope Leo continued
“Let us send a clear global signal together: nations standing in unwavering solidarity behind the Paris Agreement and behind climate cooperation.”
The full text of Pope Leo’s message to is here.
Click on the Reuters screenshot above to view the video.
TUES 11 NOV 2025 3-4PM
Our Tuesday Group continues its discernment of Laudato Si’, as an “educaton in the responsible simplicity of life, in grateful contemplation of God’s world, and in concern for the needs of the poor and the protection of the environment.” (LS 214)
In responding to the call to Care for Our Common Home, we pray that the Holy Spirit will guide us this week to use what we have experienced in the group, with others in the parish and across the wider community.
Discussion notes are below and the full articles 199-208 of the Encyclical can be read here or via links further down this webpage.
REFLECTIONS FOR TUESDAY 11 NOVEMBER
MONDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2025
COP30 BEGINS IN BELÉM, BRAZIL
Our RAISING HOPE page, (click icon below) features the message of Pope Leo to the Conference, and the prayers he entrusted to delegates, organisations and all interested parties for concerted movement forwards and for concrete resolution of our collective global climate concerns, in the Care for our Common Home.
Your will also find below a copy of the Vatican’s
NATIONAL DETERMINED CONTRIBUTIONS
(Climate actions plans countries promised to provide under the Paris agreement)
Submitted in September 2025
Read the NDC below. Click on the document, hold and slide up to see Page 2.
VATICAN NDC 2035_September 2025
TODAY, Monday 10 Nov at 1300/1pm
Watch the Mass LIVESTREAMED from St Andrew’s Cathedral, Glasgow
(Click on picture above to open the link to the Mass.)
TUESDAY 4 NOV 3-4PM
This week, with the UN’s annual Climate Change Conference COP30 coming up in Brazil, the group focuses on Laudato Si’s Chapter V: Lines of Approach and Action.
The Encyclical has marked its 10th anniversary this year, with world leaders and activists joined in their respect for the late Pope’s voice, vision and integrity in bringing attention to the global crisis of the Cry of the Earth and the Cry of the Poor.
Already, he had shared his disappointment with the lack of progress in global climate action, in his 2023 Exhortation, Laudate Deum, essentially an update on the 2015 Encyclical. What would he have said about the increased backsliding in politics and commitment to resolving the crisis, in these two years!
WHAT CAN WE DO?
Not much has changed in this Laudato Si’ list of the practical areas that are credible options for establishing an Integral Ecology where we and our Planet thrive and progress.
We will discuss this list and other local opportunities for our Parish on Tuesday.
Praise be to you, Our Lord
Click on the link below for the articles of Laudato Si’ that will be looked at this Tuesday.
CHAPTER FIVE LINES OF APPROACH AND ACTION
The full Encyclical can be downloaded here.
JOIN US!
Our Tuesday Group is discussing how best to share the knowledge and spirituality built since September around Laudato Si’, Care for our Common Home.
If you would like to join our efforts, by taking part in a discernment or an action group, please contact us via the email:
RaisingHope@ourladysauchterarder.org
OCT 28 TUESDAY 3-4 PM Chapter 4: the Principle of the Common Good
A rich seam threads through today’s meeting:
How does Interdependance oblige us to think of
ONE world with a COMMON plan,
where dialogue, transparency, diplomacy and effective governance matter and build inter-generational justice, intra-generational solidarity in our global systems of politics, economics, justice, enforceable agreements and more, to produce results for All.
The COMMON GOOD: a central and unifying principle of social ethics —
“the sum of those conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfilment”. (Gaudium et Spes, 26)
Join us on Tuesday or follow the discussion by reading Laudato Si’, Article 156 onwards. Click below.
Our Common Home Group will also discuss this page from Caring for our Living Planet.
LET'S TAKE ACTION 1. our living planet pdf
TUESDAY GROUP, OCTOBER 21 3-4PM
Every thing is closely interrelated, and today’s problems call for a vision capable of taking into account every aspect of the global crisis. (Laudato Si’ 137)
The group moves to the central theme of LAUDATO SI’, Pope Francis’ widely acclaimed encyclical: INTEGRAL ECOLOGY, which encompasses every component that facilitates our very existence, enabling us to thrive and flourish.
What are the challenges for us all, in our parish and further afield?
Read below Chapter 4 discussion articles. Slide page upwards to see second page.
CHAPTER 4 INTEGRAL ECOLOGY
OCTOBER 14: The group discerns Laudato Si’s Chapter 3: The Human Roots of the Ecological Crisis, from Article 101.
From the Roots to reality.
Ecological culture cannot be reduced to a series of urgent and partial responses to the immediate problems of pollution, environmental decay and the depletion of natural resources. There needs to be a distinctive way of looking at things, a way of thinking, policies, an educational programme, a lifestyle and a spirituality which together generate resistance to the assault of the technocratic paradigm. Otherwise, even the best ecological initiatives can find themselves caught up in the same globalized logic. To seek only a technical remedy to each environmental problem which comes up is to separate what is in reality interconnected and to mask the true and deepest problems of the global system. (Laudato Si’ 111)
NEW SUNDAY GROUP, OCT 5
Starting this Sunday 5 October, a new group will meet in the sacristy right after Mass. Please join us then. You may find it helpful to read this introduction beforehand:
INTRO1INTRO2
ZOOM GROUP, 7-8 PM
Still to be arranged. Thank you for your patience!
TUESDAY 3-4PM GROUP
We are taking a break this week but will meet again on Tuesday 7 October!
Previously
3-4pm Tues 23
Chapter 2 – The Gospel of Creation: IV. The Message of Each Creature in the Harmony of Creation.
Reviewing our discussion from last week, we search deeper to ask where we fit in the big picture of life. Should we care?
Please download the Laudato Si’ copy below on this page and read Chapter 2 (pages 25-29).
On Tuesday we’ll work through the summary booklet and try to discern the important reflections.
PLEASE NOTE
Two other group options are still being finalised. Sign up list in the porch.
- Sunday morning, right after Mass. Starting 5 October.
- ZOOM call meeting from 7pm on a weekday. Parents with young children may wish to enter the room when they can. Please suggest suitable days on the sign up sheet. Probably starting in early October.
For the full encyclical, click above or: LAUDATO SI: On Care for our Common Home
Prayer and Reflection leaflet for Our Lady’s parishioners: 2025 SEASON OF CREATION PRAYER v2
