“Every act of care for creation becomes part of a global stream of hope”.

By Dr Jennifer Jones

Scientist and nature writer 

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Some months ago, I had a profound experience in Scotland. My friends and I watched a mountain hare lumbering along beside a loch. 

The animal paused momentarily and looked at us. We felt privileged to gaze on its beautiful face, with its stunning eyes. We were mesmerised. Our contact was brief, but it felt ethereal and uplifting. More recently, I saw a bug on a leaf in our garden. Taking a closer look, it appeared to have a barber’s red and white pole embossed on its tiny back. It was beautiful. Research revealed that it was a rosemary beetle. 

They feed on rosemary plants and, as we have none in our garden, I was relieved. Reading further, I learned they also like lavender plants and can defoliate them rapidly. We have several lavender plants. I can never kill a creature, so I left it to go about its business, hoping it didn’t find our lavender. These two experiences gave me some insight into the many dimensions of our natural world. 

September is the Season of Creation, a time when we can focus on all that God the Creator has given us, from the tiniest bacteria to huge mountain ranges. The season begins on 1 September and ends on 4 October, the Feast of St Francis of Assisi. A global ecumenical celebration of prayer and action to protect our common home, it was established in 2015 to coincide with the publication of Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’. This year’s overarching theme is ‘Living Water’, a vision of hope and ecological restoration. As we have seen, Pope Leo XIV constantly promotes a message of peace, so it is no surprise that his theme for the Season of Creation 2026, taken from Isaiah, is “they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks”. 

This theme hints at a link between armed conflict and environmental degradation. We need look no closer than our own continent, and the war between Ukraine and Russia, to see evidence of this. Whilst, correctly, most media report on human deaths or infrastructure damage arising from the conflict, environmental devastation as a result of the war is extreme. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) estimates that 3 million hectares of Ukraine’s forests are affected by war - that’s 1.5 times the size of Wales - while other agencies report that 28% of the country’s land surface is degraded. Fires and rocket attacks have increased particulate pollution, damaging human health; soils have been contaminated and disturbed; abandoned military equipment releases toxic metals and radionuclides, while the presence of unexploded ordnance compromises forest management. Ukraine has a great diversity of soils, home to some of the world’s most fertile soils. Before the war it was known as the breadbasket of Europe. Damage to the soils has disrupted agricultural production, which, together with interrupted transport networks, has resulted in food insecurity and severe economic losses for farmers and rural communities.

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There is, of course, substantial evidence of wider human damage to the environment. Plundering of natural resources, the astonishing decline in biodiversity, impacts on water quality, and evidence of climate change are all issues in which we humans have played a part. So, where does faith come into all this, and why a Season of Creation? 
The Season of Creation enables us to renew our relationship with God the Creator. As Pope Francis wrote in Laudato Si’, “the deterioration of the environment and of society affects the most vulnerable people on the planet”, so the Season invites us to “hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor”. It encourages us to reflect on our impact on the planet and its peoples, and how we might mitigate this. This can feel overwhelming, so it is understandable if we feel compelled to switch off and bury our heads in the sand. The good news is that no matter how small and vulnerable we may feel, every action, every prayer, has positive consequences. 

We can adopt some simple but significant actions: 

• Pope Francis emphasised the importance of rest on the Sabbath: “the day of rest, centred on the Eucharist, sheds its light on the whole week, and motivates us to greater concern for nature and the poor”. Our Sabbath celebration could include a peaceful walk where we notice birds, or plants and trees, or gentle breezes on our faces. 

• Pope Leo calls on us to imitate “the poor man of Assisi”. During this season we could look around at our belongings. Is there anything we could do without? Perhaps we can donate items to a charity shop or aim to spend our time more wisely. 

• CAFOD has resources for the Season of Creation, including a Novena to St Francis to begin on 25 September and complete on 4 October. These prayerful reflections are based on St Francis’s beautiful Canticle of the Sun (cafod.org. uk/news/uk-news/celebrate-world-day-of-prayer). 

As the Season of Creation team says: “Every act of care for creation becomes part of a global stream of hope”.