The CWL Flag was raised in front of the Hyatt hotel on August 15...

Check photos from each day of the CWL’s National Convention in Calgary!

Opening Mass photos

Breakout sessions (power point presentations):

Session 1 was presented by Dr. Peter Baltutis, CWL Endowed Chair of Catholic Studies at St. Mary’s University. Living Laudato Si’: Practical Tools on How We can Care for our Common Home

Session 2 was presented by Sister Madeleine Gregg, fcj, on Spiritual Practice and Care for our common Home (presentation not yet received)

Session 3 was presented by Dr Timothy Harvie of St. Mary's University on What the Catholic Church says about Care for Creation and why it is Fundamentally Catholic that we are “good stewards” of the environment.

Session 4: Marilou Legeyt presented on A Carbon Conversation: Why is it So Hard to Change? How can we respond to the Cry of the Poor? This is a large file and may take a long time to open.

Links can be found within the PPT but are also here:

• Care for our Common Home Dialogue Guide:  https://jesuitforum.ca/resources/dialogue-guides. Marilou still has copies of the guide for anyone who would like to purchase it for $10. 
• Carbon Conversations website: http://www.carbonconversations.co.uk
• Taste the Waste of Water video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYhb0H6OgPE
• Tom Chi - Everything is Connected Tedtalk:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPh3c8Sa37M 
• Read Laudato Si online: http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html
• In time for tomorrow? the international carbon conversations handbook by Rosemary Randall and Andy Brown
• The Carbon Conversations Workbook by Rosemary Randall and Andy Brown
• Carbon Footprint Calculator This is the online carbon footprint calculator referred to in the book "In Time For Tomorrow?" by Rosemary Randall and Andy Brown.  

 Additional resource on how we can respond to the cry of the poor. Pope Francis is supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs

In response to a question during the presentation...define climate change. The presentation uses this understanding of climate change from Laudato Si, 23: 

"The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all. At the global level, it is a complex system linked to many of the essential conditions for human life. A very solid scientific consensus indicates that we are presently witnessing a disturbing warming of the climatic system. In recent decades this warming has been accompanied by a constant rise in the sea level and, it would appear, by an increase of extreme weather events, even if a scientifically determinable cause cannot be assigned to each particular phenomenon. Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it. It is true that there are other factors (such as volcanic activity, variations in the earth’s orbit and axis, the solar cycle), yet a number of scientific studies indicate that most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides and others) released mainly as a result of human activity. As these gases build up in the atmosphere, they hamper the escape of heat produced by sunlight at the earth’s surface. The problem is aggravated by a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels, which is at the heart of the worldwide energy system. Another determining factor has been an increase in changed uses of the soil, principally deforestation for agricultural purposes"

~ Pope Francis, Laudato Si, 23

Looking forward to August 9-12, 2020...