What's Happening

July 29, 2019, Omaha, Nebraska – Sister Patricia Siemen, OP, brought a recent conference, “Laudato Si’ and the U.S. Catholic Church” to a close June 29, 2019, with a special challenge to all who care about Earth: “tell stories that invite others to enter into an experience of wanting to become involved in protecting creation and our ecological world.” Sister Patricia, Prioress of the Adrian Dominican Sisters, was the closing keynote speaker at the conference, sponsored and hosted by Creighton University in Omaha and co-sponsored by Catholic Climate Covenant. The conference aimed to show Catholics and Catholic organizations how to live out Laudato Si’, a recent pastoral letter by Pope Francis on caring for Earth, our Common Home.

Read the full article, written by Brian Roewe and published by the National Catholic Reporter. 

April 27, 2019, Santa Cruz, California – Sister Mary Ellen Leciejewski, OP, Vice President of Corporate Responsibility for Dignity Health, notes in a special Earth Day article in National Catholic Reporter that the hospitals in her health care system are focusing on their responsibility to be good stewards of natural resources. Sister Mary Ellen has long been in the forefront of ecological efforts at Dignity Health, now part of CommonSpirit Health since the merger of Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives in February 2019. Under Sister Mary Ellen’s leadership, Dignity Health set a number of specific goals to “reduce its carbon footprint by 2020.” To read the portion of the article on Sister Mary Ellen and her work with Dignity Health, click here and scroll down a bit more than half way through the article.