Lexingtonians meet the Pope during environmentalism conference in Italy

Lexington resident Fran Ludwig knew Pope Leo XIV’s Raising Hope conference was coming up. 

It was scheduled for Oct. 1 through 3 at Castel Gandolfo, Pope Leo’s summer house outside of Rome.

She signed up to stream the conference, but later got an unexpected message from its organizer.

We have a special invitation for you to be at the conference, the message read. 

“I was like, oh my gosh,” she told the Observer. Immediately she thought, ‘well, I can’t do that because I have a nature walk coming up and I have a special Mass soon, so I couldn’t possibly.’ 

After a few weeks of thinking it through and consulting with friends, she decided, ‘you know, maybe I should go.’

The conference was a celebration of Laudato Si’, the late Pope Francis’ message that calls for the world to take action to mitigate climate change. This year is the tenth anniversary of the letter. 

“I read it and I was so excited because it really reflected so much of what I actually believed as a scientist and a person of faith,” Ludwig, who taught science throughout Lexington’s Public Schools for about 45 years, said. “It’s very far-reaching. It talks about science, spirituality, economics, and listening and responding to the cry of the earth, which would have to do with pollution and the cry of the poor because they’re really interrelated — the poor, who have had the least to do with climate change, are going to suffer most.”

Ludwig, who has been doing environmental work with Sacred Heart Parish in Lexington for about 20 years, was invited to the conference because she started the United State’s first Laudato Si’ chapter. 

There were about 1,000 people at the conference representing 80 countries. Thirty of those attendees got to meet Pope Leo before the conference. Ludwig was one of them. 

Pope Leo; speakers such as Iyad Abu Moghli, founder of the UN Environment Programme’s Faith for Earth Coalition; and Arnold Schwarzenegger, former California governor and founder of the Schwarzenegger Climate Initiative; and panelists, including Lexington native Bill McKibben; and Laurence Tubiana, who helped create the Paris Climate Agreement on Climate Change, spoke about how there is more to be done to combat global warming. 

“I think the Church has emerged as the most important global force for a just and sustainable future,” McKibben told the Observer. “If you’d told me I would think that 20 years ago, I would have laughed.”

People have long grappled with the relationship between religion and science. There’s the age-old debate of whether humanity sparked from God’s creation or evolution, for example. But Pope Francis challenged that general conflict by acknowledging that global warming exists and urged humans to do something about it, Ludwig explained. 

“It really pains me to think that people are suspicious of scientists,” Ludwig said. She hasn’t found it difficult to convince church-goers Lexington that global warming exists. 

Convincing Catholics to speak out politically is a different challenge, however. 

“That’s something that a lot of church people don’t want to do,” Ludwig noted. “If people grew up with the ‘pay, pray, and obey’ philosophy, they might be like, ‘well, wait a minute, that’s not church,’ but it really is.”

Everything is related in Ludwig’s opinion.

“Some people who are refugees are moving because of drought at their farms, and it’s all connected,” Ludwig said. “What is our attitude toward them? The church has really stepped up on the refugee-front and said, ‘we’re supposed to welcome the stranger and give human beings their dignity even if they’re incarcerated.’ We (Americans) are not doing that at all. We really do have to speak up and pay attention.”

One issue Pope Leo called guests’ attention to is how Earth’s glaciers are melting because the planet is warming. Pope Leo had a 20,000-year-old block of ice that broke off a glacier in Greenland brought to the conference to show attendees what is happening.

“In our tradition, water has great significance for baptism and cleansing,” Ludwig explained. “The Pope actually blessed this water from the glacier and later there was a ceremonial mixing of waters from all over the earth.”

Toward the end of the conference, attendees were given action items to fulfill when they got home. Ludwig’s commitment was to communicate to the priest who is in charge of health and human services for the Archdiocese of Boston the urgency of speaking up about global warming as a church. The Vatican is promoting a Laudato Si’ program that would help churches reflect on how they are doing environmentally. Part of Ludwig’s goal is to try and get the Archdiocese of Boston to adopt that program.

“I’ve been talking with him for about ten years about promoting this in the Archdiocese of Boston but there has always been something else that is a higher priority,” Ludwig said. “The urgency of this situation is, we really need to let more people know about this, so I’ll talk to him about pushing this harder.”

Ludwig had more than just that commitment to return home to. 

In addition to leading climate groups for the town and the church, Ludwig helps out with Big Backyard, the elementary schools’ nature-walk program, which she created about 30 years ago. 

“The whole idea of the Big Backyard program is to teach the kids to be comfortable outside, to relate to the natural world because they are a part of it, they’re not apart from it,” she said. 

She also gave a presentation on the conference to Lexington’s Climate Action Network, or LexCAN, of which she is a board member.

Her work with Laudato Si’ does not end there. 

Sacred Heart Parish is considering adopting Laudato Si’ as its principal, which means it would do more than just promote volunteering for and donating to environmental causes. It would elevate environmentalism to a foundational position within the church’s identity and mission.

“We’ll be trying to convey the excitement of this conference and just the title of it is something that we need — raising hope — because this can be a pretty dark time right now,” Ludwig said. 

Ludwig will continue to spread awareness of climate change and hopes to get the Archdiocese of Boston on board along the way. 

“A lot of people aren’t aware that the Catholic church is involved with this, even quite a few Catholics have never heard of Laudato Si’ because a lot of the priests are older and haven’t read it. A lot of them are like, ‘oh I don’t know about this’ because of this church and state situation, but we really need to do this for a moral reason,” Ludwig said. “Adding that moral aspect to it is worthwhile and motivates some people that might not be motivated by the science.”