I’ve got the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario (ECO), Dianne Saxe, on the phone. It’s late afternoon, in the dead of winter, and she’s on backcountry roads, heading north for a rare weekend off. “I might cut out,” she warns me.

Read full article in the National Observer.

La Monastere performs at St. Jax Anglican, photo Natalie Bull

We’re back, exploring the adaptive reuse and co-use (congregation still present) of faith buildings in Canada and the United States. Funded by the Metcalf Foundations’ Leading and Learning Fund, representatives of Artsbuild Ontario, The Toronto Arts Council, Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre, and Faith & the Common Good finished up our journey in Montreal.

Day two in Montreal (see day one in the last blog) led us to ;St. Jax Anglican and Bourgie Hall at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, a former United Church.

Ecological Conversion in Action: Manifesto of Youth at World Youth Day 2019 for the Care of the Common Home

Catholic youth meeting in January in Panama City, Panama, for World Youth Day, produced a manifesto, and launched the “Laudato Si’ Generation”, a new network of young Catholics committed to care for our common home.

“We, young Catholics from World Youth Day in Panama, would like to raise our hearts and minds in praise, joy and gratitude for the beautiful gift of our beloved “sister Mother Earth” in the lovely words of St Francis. At the same time we are painfully aware, as Pope Francis reminded us, that “our common home is falling into serious disrepair” (Laudato Si’61). Convinced that “all of us can cooperate as instruments of God for the care of creation” (LS 14), we call on everyone, ourselves first, to act with urgency to protect our planet and the poorest and most vulnerable people.”

Read the full manifesto here…