Day of Prayer for Creation calls Christians to protect environment and God’s creation

The Day of Prayer for Creation is observed on 1 September, at the beginning of the Ecclesiastical Year, as the Church calls for environmental protection and greater responsibility for God’s creation.

Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios I launched the initiative in 1989, calling on the Christian world to pray for creation and its protection. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I continued the initiative, known for his longstanding commitment to environmental protection.

In his message for this year’s observance, His All-Holiness reaffirmed the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s commitment to promoting responsibility towards creation:

“We will continue, through word and deed, to promote the ecological vision of the Holy Church of Christ and the ecological dynamism of the Eucharistic, ascetic and doxological relationship with creation.”

A crisis of human freedom Patriarch Bartholomew I said environmental problems cannot be separated from the way humanity understands freedom and its relationship with God.

“The multidimensional contemporary ecological crisis is a crisis of human freedom, of our religion and philosophy, of our ethos and our culture. What comes first is the “harmful…