Father Edwin Gariguez won the 2012 Goldman Environmental Prize. (Photo by Mark Saludes)
A leading environmental activist has called for "urgent and collaborative action" to avert the worsening effect of dirty energy.
Speaking during an international gathering in Chicago, Filipino Father Edwin Gariguez said "voices of faith" should be part of campaigns in framing the agenda for collaborative action.
The priest, winner of the 2012 Goldman Environmental Prize, emphasized the "challenge for ecological conversion in energy policy" to protect and sustain the "common home."
Father Gariguez said the Catholic Church had been "very slow and somehow ambivalent" in responding to ecological problems.
With Pope Francis' encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’, church people have "taken up the challenge of pursuing a transformative ecological consciousness," said the priest.
Father Gariguez said Catholics are challenged "to come together as a church, to be in solidarity with the global community, to protect the planet and to pursue our campaigns for a sustainable future."