“Although Fr. Dehon never heard the term ‘global warming,’ he lived in the pollution of the Industrial Revolution in Saint Quentin [France],” said Fr. Jim Schroeder, SCJ (pictured) to participants at the Dehonian Conference on Climate Change and Nuclear Weapons. “And even though Fr. Dehon never heard of nuclear weapons, he knew the horrors of war and what it does to Creation. In the Franco-Prussian War he worked as a chaplain, and wrote, ‘It passed like a long and terrible nightmare, filled to overflowing with anguish and sufferings.’ And then in World War I, he wrote: ‘My Congregation is decimated’—33 SCJs died, San Quentin was on the front line and occupied for 31 months. Dehon lamented, ‘We have been trapped here as one would be in a city under siege,’ no newspapers, no mail, no travel.”
Fr. Jim continued, saying that “God urges us to not only give up our desire to kill, but also give up nursing our anger. God urges us to not only put our weapons of war aside, like keeping nuclear stockpiles, but to turn them into something that helps and feeds people. For God proclaims peace.
“As we enter the Eucharist now, let us thank God for the beauty of his creation, and may we commit ourselves to protect it from pollution and global warming, and from the ‘long, terrible nightmare’ of war in any form.”
Click here to read Fr. Jim’s full homily.
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