To mark the 10^th anniversary of Pope Francis’ historic encyclical Laudato sí, Fr Jojo Fung SJ reflects on the precious gifts Pope Francis has graciously offered to the Church.

The legacy of Pope Francis can be compared to the cherished offerings of lustrous gems placed upon the altar of thanksgiving (eucharistia). His writings—Christus Vivit (CV), Evangelii Gaudium (EG), Laudato Sí (LS), Laudate Deum (LD), Fratelli Tutti (FT), Querida Amazonia (QA), and Spes Non Confundit (SNC)—are treasures meant to be embraced not only by local faith communities but by the entire global society.

1. Walking with the youth

In Christus Vivit, Pope Francis shows how leadership can cross generations. He connected with young people even through simple gestures like using social media and taking selfies. His leadership alerts us that the youth are never “passive followers” and that adults need to learn from young people the art of “walking alongside them, allowing them to be active participants in the journey” (CV§246).

He emphasises that “youth ministry has to be synodal”—a “journeying together” that values “the charisms that the Spirit bestows” on every baptised member of the Church. Their contributions help build up “a participatory and co-responsible Church capable of appreciating its own rich variety”. No one, regardless of ecclesial associations or movements, should be excluded or exclude themselves” (CV§206).

Listening to young people becomes a way of listening to the Holy Spirit about what it means to “bring young people to take the lead in striving for a more just social order” (Papal Message, 22 July 2022) and to be “protagonists of the revolution of charity and service” (CV§174; papal address at a private audience, 20 September 2024, Rome).

2. An eco-mystical vision

As a Jesuit schooled in the all-inclusive Ignatian spirituality of “God in all things; all things in God,” Pope Francis presents in Laudato Sí a vision of deep ecological spirituality. He states that we are all interconnected and interdependent (LS§16, §70b, §73, §91, §111, §117, §138; QA §73). As humans, we have to mature into cosmocentric beings, awakening day by day to the innate sense that we are “part of nature” (LS §139). We do “not look at the world from without but from within,” for we are “included in it and thus in constant interaction with it” (LD §25). As such, human life, intelligence, and freedom are not separate from nature but enrich it (LD §26).

His vision offers an insight that all otherkinds and humankind are invited to become co-creators with God. The eschatological orientation of his vision enables us to envisage a creation that is basking in the fullness of God, because Pope Francis firmly believes that “creation is projected towards divinisation” (LS §236) at the end-time when God is in all, through all, all in all (Eph. 4:6).

This is a state best described as the “total eschatologisation” of creation/cosmos. In other words, co-creation is a collaborative process involving both God and all-kinds, by which God brings about a new earth and a new heaven (Is 65:17, 66:22, 2 P3:13, Rev 21:1). Emerging out of the new earth and new heaven is a new creation (2 Cor 5:17) now till the end-time.

3. Ecological conversion and oneing

To live this vision, we need what Pope Francis calls ecological conversion—a change of heart and lifestyles (LS §218). For me, conversion to the everyday practice of “oneing” (Meister Eckhart с 1260-c. 1328) is crucial for all earth sojourners to deepen our sense of integral ecology. “Oneness” is an ancient spiritual term that means recognising and living our oneness with God, others, and creation. This enables us to navigate personal challenges and struggles, including the polycrisis and climate emergency, at the macro level.

Oneing deepens our experiential sense of “being-with” or communion with the Creator-Sustainer-God, the Risen Lord, God’s Rûah, with ancestors, saints and blessed, reputable shamans, mystics, prophets, healers, herbalists, midwives, chiefs, and elders of primal and world religions, who constitute the eschatological community of the New Creation (ECNC).

“God has loved you with an everlasting love (Jer 31:3)”. God loves not just the heaven and the earth into a new heaven and a new earth, but each lifeform (bacteria, microbes, and viruses), creature (chicken, deer, dog, rabbit), and created thing (blanket, mattress, pillow, laptop, table, pencils, pens), has value beyond their use to humans. ECNC prays with and for creation to be reconciled, sacralised, sensitised, and sustained daily.

The conversion to oneing demands practical changes. We are led by God’s Spirit to experience an inner peace and to bring this peace into our homes, campuses, neighbourhoods. Promoting peace between peoples, nations, and continents means building up a nuclear-free world, especially remembering the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic blasts. At the same time, we need to take a daily stand against plastic use. The UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee convened in Geneva from 5 to 14 August to arrive at a global treaty to address the crisis of plastic pollution and its impact on climate change, human health, marine life, and the economy.

4. Fraternal solidarity

Oneing cascades into solidarity with the vulnerable on the margins of society. In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis urges us to behave like the Good Samaritan who embraces “the bruised and abandoned person on the roadside” and does not ignore the wounded as “a distraction, an interruption from all that,” or as someone “hardly important, a ‘nobody,’ undistinguished, irrelevant to their plans for the future” (FT§101).

His message of solidarity, in which “the more fortunate should renounce some of their rights so as to place their goods more generously at the service of others” (QA§33), becomes all the more urgent in a global society where power, resources, wealth, and benefits are unevenly distributed.

5. Polyhedron: unity in diversity

Pope Francis uses the image of a polyhedron to describe the Church and humanity as one family (EG §236) FT §§145, 190, 215; QA §§29-32;).

“Let us dream, then, as a single human family, as fellow travellers sharing the same flesh, as children of the same earth which is our common home, each of us bringing the richness of his or her beliefs and convictions, each of us with his or her own voice, brothers and sisters all” (FT §8).

This inspired the vision of the Polyhedral Christianity of Sacred Sustainability (PCSS), which advocates for a global Christianity that embraces, dialogues, and listens to the inter/multicultural-religious complexities of our contemporary world to discern where God’s Rûah is leading us into a single family of all-kinds.

PCSS calls for leaders to be “enspirited”— to draw from God’s indwelling spirit (Rûah), as explained in creational pneumatology, to guide communities towards an indigenous and interfaith sense of sacredness and sustainability. This spirituality of cosmicism promotes harmony rooted in the oneness of all-kinds in the sacred web of life in the cosmos/creation.

6. The lamp of hope

Hope is necessary in the face of personal challenges, struggles, and polycrisis. In Spes Non Confundit, Pope Francis writes that the “Holy Spirit illumines all believers with the light of hope” and urges us to “keep that light burning, like an ever-burning lamp, to sustain and invigorate our lives” (SNC§2).

Further, in his message for World Day of Peace 2024, Pope Francis invites us to hope and act with creation “together with all men and women of good will” (§6), to live the “incarnational faith” that “enters into the suffering and hope-filled ‘flesh’ of others” so that our lives become “a song of love for God, for humanity, with and for creation, and find their fullness in holiness” (§9).

Pope Francis’ six gems are not abstract ideas. They are gifts meant to be lived, shining like jewels on the altar of our hearts. From these inner altars, may the divine glory of God radiate outwards, for all-kinds to become one with all in God for God is one with all in creation.