On Wednesday, February 23, 2022 MLSM Canada celebrated the virtual launch of the Catholic Eco-Investment Accelerator Toolkit, offered participants a quick tour and heard about its inclusion as a resource for a North American campaign. You can view the recording on the Faith & the Common Good YouTube channel, here.

The host pointed out methods to navigate the on-line Toolkit and some useful features that can be adopted by users as they begin conversations in their own contexts. Agnes was proud to share one of the short videos in the Toolkit, “Climate is a Common Good”. Other highlighted features included the Discernment Questions in the JUDGE section, and opportunities to apply investment considerations to Truth and Reconciliation calls to action.  In the ACT section she pointed out the many options for reinvestment, including how to evaluate financial market investments in energy and other sectors, non-financial market investment ideas, and examples of ecological investments made in communities, buildings and land use.

Karen Van Loon shared her knowledge of Scarboro Mission’s 2014 decisions around energy efficiency, an ecological financial policy and how these are tied to the order’s ecological mission statement.

Representing the Laudato Si’ Movement International Secretariate, Svitlana Romanko brought an endorsement for the new Toolkit from Tomás Insua, Co-founder and Executive Director.

This Catholic Eco-Investment Accelerator Toolkit will enhance a call for fossil fuel divestment in Canada and is a powerful act of faith that will advance the end of the supply side of fossil fuels in a petrol state. People of faith are divesting at scale from dirty coal, oil, and gas, and reinvesting in climate solutions. We must finally conclude that there is no future for the greenwashing of fossil fuel companies and governments that subsidize climate injustice. As Pope Francis said, ‘enough of the thirst for profit that drives the fossil fuel industry’s destruction of our common home.’ “I truly believe we will have more divestments from Canada in 2022 and in upcoming years” she said.

A short 7 hours following our webinar, Svitlana’s home city was shelled by Russian artillery. On February 28th she penned this prophetic statement, which appeared on a Laudato Si’ Movement blog page.

Watch the Full Video of the Webinar: Click HERE!

The slide deck for the webinar is available here.
And you can find a list of links and resources mentioned in the webinar here.

If you would like to find more ways to get involved, subscribe to the MLSM Canada newsletter, Laudato Si’ Dialogues, to learn about future webinars, initiatives, and events. We hope the presentations were inspiring and will support your efforts to address the Laudato Si’ Action Platform Goals. 

If you have any questions or require more information,
please email Agnes Richard at [email protected].