By Giuseppe Riggio, SJ |Aggiornamenti Sociali, Euro Mediterranean Province
[From “Jesuits 2024 - The Society of Jesus in the world”]

Insights from Laudato si’ urging new political action.

Tourists visiting Naples in the 1930s had no reason to go to the Bagnoli district, where the Italian government had set up a number of steel mills, considered strategic for the area’s development, in place of the old thermal plants. In the 1990s, the decision was made to dismantle them, and the public administrations were faced with the heavy legacy of the past: high levels of pollution, major employment difficulties, and a compromised urban and social fabric. In a little less than a century, a quality area was reduced to an abandoned suburb, disrupted in social, labor, health and urban planning terms.

The brief reference to the events of Bagnoli – just one of many possible examples – helps one understand how well-founded is the insight of Laudato si’ that everything is connected, everything is interconnected, “concern for the environment thus needs to be joined to a sincere love for our fellow human beings and an unwavering commitment to resolving the problems of society.” (LS, 91). It also highlights well the crucial role that politicians (along with other figures from civil society and business) have in caring for the common home.

Pope Francis has often addressed the world of politics, calling for a profound change of perspective, in which it is key to question the root causes of problems or the consequences that result from choices made. Many times, politicians focus instead on short-term or very short-term goals, in a frantic search for solutions to play down more or less unexpected emergencies while chasing electoral consensus. Little political attention is then paid to the demands and the needs of the excluded, or to the impact on the planet of the choices made.

Laudato si’ identifies as the two factors that condition the actions of politics: the technocratic paradigm – particularly the unbridled reliance on technology and the idea that every limit is surmountable, and the dominance of finance – the pursuit of profit maximization in the short-term, without considering the consequences for the human family and creation. This way of acting leads to neglecting the task of expressing an overall vision of society not only for today, but also for tomorrow. Forcefully, the encyclical affirms that “Politics must not be subject to the economy, nor should the economy be subject to the dictates of an efficiency-driven paradigm of technocracy” (LS, 189).

The countercultural proposal of integral ecology offers an alternative. Assuming fully the principle that “everything is connected” implies that issues are approached by recognizing the complexity of reality and the need to look at it from various points of view that complement one another. In this way, policy decisions can take into account the deep interweavings that exist between seemingly distant fields, avoiding the harmful consequences of sectoral approaches (cf. LS, 111). It’s also important to maintain a broad vision capable of setting priorities in light of a horizon not narrowed down to just the present moment. What’s valuable here is discernment, repeatedly recalled by Pope Francis, which helps to search for the magis, considering the concrete situations of people, times and places.

We find this approach in some choices at the international level, such as the United Nations’ Agenda 2030, which tries to combine the three dimensions of sustainability: economic, social and environmental. But in Laudato si’ there is more: attention to the excluded, victims of the culture of waste, is translated into the recognition of their dignity and thus the choice to consider them not so much recipients of philanthropic initiatives, but co-protagonists of change, putting themselves in an attitude of listening and dialogue with them.

It helps policymakers who wish to enter into the spirit of integral ecology to approach Laudato si’ not as a document to be read, but as a path. Pope Francis writes, “Let us review, however cursorily, those questions which are troubling us today.” It also makes us “become painfully aware, to dare to turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering and thus to discover what each of us can do about it.” (LS, 19). Transparent in these words is the influence of the dynamic of the Spiritual Exercises. This realization has encouraged various elements of the Society of Jesus, including the Aggiornamenti Sociali social studies centre, to develop various proposals, such as exercise courses or formation activities, that take their cues from the contents of the encyclical to foster the experience of ecological conversion. Offering paths to people who play a role of responsibility is crucial, since they can initiate and accompany processes that involve a majority of people, thus affecting the cultural level as well as the elaboration of the legal rules of society. The necessary change will be lasting only if there is also a community conversion (LS, 219).