Caring for Earth, Caring for You

Catholic Sisters Week Highlights Care for Our Common Home

Catholic Sisters Week is observed March 8-14 each year, providing a wonderful opportunity for Catholic Sisters across our region to raise awareness about the issues that are nearest and dearest to their missions and ministries. Following Pope Francis’ universal call to “care for our common home,” local religious communities are putting environmental issues at the forefront and drawing a connecting line between climate change and its very real impact on the poor.

Sisters of St. Joseph of Baden

Compelled by the Gospel and our Congregation’s mission of unifying love, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Baden are working to create a world that is sustainable, equitable and inclusive for all people and all of God’s creation. 

Beginning with the ways in which we care for our Motherhouse, green spaces, and gardens and extending outward into our relationships and presence in the communities where our Sisters live and work, we are embracing sustainable practices and educating our dear neighbors on how we can better care for our common home, together.  

We look to the “5 R’s” of environmentally-friendly living — reduce, reuse, recycle, repurpose, and refuse — for opportunities to conserve, protect, and share the gifts of creation. Presently, Sisters are: 

• Reducing energy waste and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by retrofitting the Motherhouse with LED light bulbs and replacing the conventional boiler with a more efficient geothermal heating/cooling system;

• Reusing rainwater to nourish plants, collecting it in two 50-gallon barrels at our community gardens and incorporating rock gardens and water retention planting areas into the landscape to slow and filter stormwater runoff;

• Recycling waste and items such as: batteries, pallets, cardboard, cooking oil, glass, paper, metal, cans and plastic, as well as composting grass clippings, chicken droppings, and organic materials from the kitchen;

• Repurposing old beehives into spacers to feed bees and treat pests in workable hives, as well as furniture from apartments and living areas within the Motherhouse; and 

• Refusing to buy single-use, heavily-packaged products or to shop at big box stores, choosing instead to support local small businesses when possible. 

We are also inviting Motherhouse staff and Sisters who reside in local convents to participate in the Green Workplace Challenge — an eco-friendly framework developed by Sustainable Pittsburgh that shares simple, practical ways to care for the Earth, reduce our individual and collective carbon footprints, and preserve the natural resources entrusted to us by God.

Embracing these changes, along with other sustainable practices, have helped us to operate the Baden property using 38.8% less energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 39.3% and devote fewer financial resources to energy costs, saving nearly 68% since January 2009. We have also launched a new resource hub on our website that compiles and shares this educational information: stjoseph-baden.org/sustainability.

As Sisters of St. Joseph, we move always toward deepening our call to “be attuned to how all of creation lives and moves and has its being in God.” We believe in a “sacramental universe” of wondrous diversity, a gift of God that requires our care and respect. Aligning ourselves with the spirit of Laudato Si’, we pledge to collaborate with our partners-in-mission on a seven-year journey of education, advocacy and action for the sake of Earth and all who live on it.

Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill

The Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill are embracing the Catholic Sisters’ Week theme Caring for the Earth, Caring for You and increasing excitement and energy around Laudato Si’ by focusing efforts around care for the environment and community.

To kick off the week a food drive will be displayed in the motherhouse, encouraging monetary and non-perishable donations for the student food pantry at Seton Hill University. Recycling efforts will be showcased throughout the property and the replacement of fluorescent lighting will be switched to energy efficient LED lighting in the motherhouse.  Catholic Sisters’ Week logos will be advertised and on display in the dining room and at the entrance to the building to remind the sisters living in the motherhouse to embrace the Laudato Si’ Action Platform in their daily lives.

A digital floral tour of the beauty and green thumb gardening skills at the motherhouse will be presented by the sisters and distributed through various social media outlets.

On Saturday, March 12 students from Seton Hill University will be invited to volunteer to begin spring preparations for the Sister of Charity garden. Sunday afternoon, March 13, a local botanical enthusiast, Jim Arnold, will present Emily Dickenson’s poetry and gardening expertise in the motherhouse.

To conclude the week, Region IV of LSWR has organized a Public Witness to Laudato Si’ with a blessing of the rivers and water at the confluence of the Ohio, Allegheny and Monogahela Rivers in Pittsburgh on International Rivers Day. Sisters from the community will attend.  

Sisters of the Humility of Mary

The Sisters of the Humility of Mary have been committed to caring for Earth since their founding in France in 1854. An ever-present theme has been a commitment to an HM heritage of care for the whole Earth Community.

With their mission to bring more abundant life to God’s people, especially the poor, as their foundation, and guiding documents such as their HM Land Ethic and Principles of Sustainability, Living Document, and Litany of Hope and Promise, the sisters have committed to using their resources to “work toward the sustainability of creation.”

The Sisters have put that promise into practice in a number of ways. The Villa Maria Farm has always operated around the idea of care for creation and principles of sustainability, but it received organic certification in 2020 after an extensive documentation process. The Land Management staff recently received a renewal of that certification. A portion of the produce grown on the farm is donated locally to food banks, shelters, and parishes, while the rest is sold at the farm market and used in the kitchens at Villa Maria. Ongoing projects at the farm, including the nature trails and designated Audubon Sanctuary, all keep the focus on spirituality, sustainability, simplicity, and the preservation of all local life systems.

The HM Shareholder Advocacy Committee encourages responsible investment and using the management of those investments to promote more sustainable and just business practices. Committee members are active participants in the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) and LCWR Region VI Coalition for Responsible Investing.

Beginning in the 1990s, Earth education and spirituality programs, especially land retreats, became a focus of Villa Education Center and Evergreen Ministries. Villa Maria Education and Spirituality Center carries on the tradition of those programs today with farm-based environmental education for local schools and other eco-spirituality programming.

The Sisters have also undertaken a number of projects at their motherhouse, Villa Maria Community Center, with the aim to reduce their carbon footprint. These include composting, recycling, forest management, and an LED lighting project.

The Villa Land Committee, which helps encourage these efforts around campus, was formed to preserve and maintain the sisters’ land in a just, sustainable, and peaceful way so that it continues to provide a special place for spirituality, education, sustainability, and simplicity. They work toward this goal by sparking reflection, education, and action across the Villa Maria campus and beyond with displays and educational series on a variety of environmental topics, such as hydraulic fracking concerns.

The LCWR invitation to participate in the Laudato Sí Action Platform deeply resonated with the HM mission to work with others to bring more abundant life to all God’s people and to do justice, so the sisters formed the HM Laudato Sí Committee late last year. This committee is facilitating a community process to determine how to participate in the Laudato Sí Action Platform effort.

Our Land Ethic strengthens our hope for a sustainable future as we celebrate our unique place in the cosmos. Our HM Principles of Sustainability motivate us to join in solidarity with those most affected by the degradation of Earth locally and globally.

School Sisters of St. Francis

Our work to care for both the environment and underprivileged families continues through our Monocacy Farm Project, a sustainable farming ministry that serves Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. The farm saw a record-breaking year of productivity and impact in 2021, providing more than 5,000 pounds of fresh produce to needy families and reaching the 100-member threshhold in its Pick-Your-Own program.

Hosting more farm visits and educational programs than ever before, MFP reported that individual donations rose by 140 percent, and support by local businesses climbed by 900 percent. MFP got a jump on its 2022 goal of raising $25,000 by receiving more than $8,000 in donations on Giving Tuesday in November. Such support and engagement enables MFP to continue to provide fresh produce to needy families through partnerships with a dozen food pantries and soup kitchens.

“The generous community spirit of caring and sharing demonstrated by our donors significantly impacted the role MFP played in addressing food insecurity in our community last year,” says Sister Bonnie Marie Kleinschuster, project director.

Locally, the School Sisters are addressing food insecurity by hosting a collection of nonperishable food, grocery store gift cards and monetary donations from March 6-19, encompassing Catholic Sisters Week. All donations in the Pittsburgh area will go to the Light of Life Rescue Mission Food Pantry on the North Side. Our Sisters are also reaching out to those in need in Bethlehem, Pa.; Somerset, N.J.; and San Angelo and San Antonio, Texas. For complete details on how to contribute no matter where you live, please click here.

Sisters of Divine Providence

In the name of our Founder, Bishop Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, we challenge ourselves, Sisters and Associates of the Marie de la Roche Province, to carry on his legacy of social justice by addressing the issues of our day, which include the care of Mother Earth herself.