Friday, May 15, 2026
Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Praying, Reflecting and Taking Actions with God's Creation: a Timely Retreat
Have you been with powerhouse of Saints and Popes who care about the Creation?
Twenty-one Catholic faithful gathered to meet, experiencing something refreshing. They brought their friends, husband, wife, fiancé hoping to see what was prepared for them by the Laudato Si' Movement (LSM). People spent time together pondering, listening, learning, sharing and experiencing about the beauty, the gifts, and the challenges of being beloved by God and entrusted to be co-creator of this magnificent world.
We started with a prayer from Fr. Luke, the vicar of the parish hosting the event. We all prayed, and split the participants into six. The six groups were assigned to learn about their eco-saint of the day to ask for their intercession and be as inspired as their saint on loving Creation (including fellow human beings) and caring for all. Each participants were given the opportunity to share in their group using synodal approach, giving voice to everyone about what they like about nature and later on, how they are being invited to care for it or each other. They shared what they have learned from small group to the big group. We were joined by ecological Saints/Pope such as St. Francis, St. Kateri Tekakwitha, St. Hildegard of Bingen, Servant of God Dorothy Day, St. Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis.
To show the love of nature in practical ways, the event mostly optimized the use of natural, reusable, compostable and biodegradable options. The ritual of the earth blessing and seeds helped us to be aware that we are being nourished by the earth.
To reflect on the signs of our time, we watched the movie called "The Letter" by Pope Francis and reflected on our call about its significance. Before ending the retreat, they experienced the beauty of the environment and the beauty of each other's presence. They spent time outside the room where there were trees and a green space reflecting God's Creation.
We had plenty of ways praying, reflecting and finally an invitation on a call to action.
After the "sounds of rain" as a background being played during break time in the retreat, talking about the need for rain in Texas especially in Corpus Christi, and praying for God's Creation, we were blessed to have rain for the next two days. What a blessing to see our Creator's generosity.
Laudato Si' teaches us that addressing the cry of the earth is also addressing the cry of the poor. We are reminded that everything is connected. By being consciencious stewards of God's Creation, we bring love to all, we become the hands and feet of our Creator in the ways that God gives us this time, our borrowed resources and our talents as God's gift, to make it available to all the way the sun and the rain fall on the surfaces without discrimination..
Praised be the Incarnate Word.
Rainfall the next day
If you would ike to join the LSM Texas Chapter email texas@lsmchapter.org or if you would like to join upcoming retreats, activities, or workshops, email us at jpic.office@amormeus.org.
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Sunday, May 10, 2026
Webinar in Solidarity with Our Immigrant Community: No Estan Solos by May 14 7pm CT on Zoom
One of the four categories of most vulnerable affected by Climate Crisis is the immigrant/the poor. No people is protected from Climate Crisis. It can happen to anyone but the most vulnerable people are really those in the Global South as they are the ones who will be most impacted by disasters, natural calamities exacerbated by the worsening Climate situation. It is estimated that there will be about 25 million to 1 billion environmental migrants by 2050. United Nations reported that there are 250 million people internally displaced due to weather-induced disastrous conditions over the past decade.
People in the Global South do not have the coverage or not able to create a disaster plan when they do not have any families, places to go to or not enough funds to support themselves. You can watch "The Letter" by Pope Francis if you would like to learn about these four vulnerable entities of our planet impacted by the Climate Crisis (https://youtu.be/Rps9bs85BII?si=F_CntV17QbJdTpF_). About the film: https://TheLetterFilm.org
To learn about being in Solidarity with the Immigrant Community, please attend the upcoming Webinar below. Some immigrants belong to the poor community especially those who are forced to move out due to disasters leaving without anything to restart their lives. While some immigrants are also caused by political, civil, war and economic instability, it all leads to one common action of migrations for people to seek a safe place to live.
Laudato Si' message is to praise God by Caring for our Common Home. Through this, we care for all in creation, and strive to be peace-makers. By doing this, we are reconciled with God and our neighbor. We praised God, the Creator of all things, visible and invisible.
"This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life." (LS 2)
Not knowing what to do with the immigrants who are trapped, lost, waiting, confused, etc?
Invitation to attend the webinar to know the resources and how to journey with the immigrants. Scan the QR code or link the link below:
Tuesday, May 5, 2026
Saint Anthony Catholic High School Reports on Compost and Garden
Saint Anthony Catholic High School is the recipient of the Gardening class package from Gardopia as the school's award sponsored by Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation (JPIC) in collaboration with University of Incarnate Word's Brainpower Schools during the Season of Creation of 2025. SACHS won the raffle in the artworks that was displayed in Padre Margil World Heritage Center. JPIC through Sister Marylou invited Climate Reality Project of San Antonio through Ms. Darshana Gupte to get the composting project a reality for the Catholic school. In turn with the help of the Eco Centro Collaborative network of resources from Climate Reality, JPIC, and San Antonio Composting, the composting was offered and SACHS was glad to be the first to implement of the Catholic school for this endeavor. The Climate Reality Project opened the door for the San Antonio Composting to make resources available for the school with the support of the City of San Antonio and the training of the students provided by the San Antonio Composting and Gardopia. SACHS has the Earth Angels enthusiastic to get this system working especially supported by Mrs. Jacqulyne Esteves as the adviser/project leader. JPIC is grateful to all these non-profit organizations working together to make this project a community oriented and collaborative project for the care of our common home and particularly making our youth a big part of this project.
Now, that the Composting project and Gardening Classes have been completed, Earth Angels through SACHS Principal Ms. Patricia Ramirez is happy to share their report on composting. Through this report, we can also celebrate the biggest global program on the advocacy on composting, which is May 3 - 9 as the International Compost Awareness Week. This year's theme is "Compost: Feed the Soil that Feed Us."
Article by Earth Angels
Introduction
St. Anthony Catholic High School Earth Angels Environmental Club has partnered with Climate Reality Corps, San Antonio Composting Project, and Gardopia Gardens to create our high school's first compost beds and a school garden. The club is sponsored by Mrs. Jacqulyne Esteves (lead) and Ms. Ava Liebentritt who are both full time teachers at the St. Anthony High School Campus. We are proud to announce that as of March 2026, the garden and compost are fully functional and are integrated into our school lives. Service is a core mission here at St. Anthony, and students are encouraged to give back to their community every single day. The mission of service is at the center of our club and guides each project we decide to take part in.
According to the Environmental Protections Agency, it is estimated that of the U.S methane emissions, 17% of the emissions come directly from landfill waste.1 While our students cannot reform all carbon emissions from buildings nor automobiles, we felt that eliminating landfill waste could be a direct initiative for our community. Based on our projected data we can save almost 800lbs of waste each school year from the landfill. 1 ton of dry waste roughy produces 143 Lbs of methane. This initiative will not only halt methane emissions from our school but will educate students on how to compost. This The compost project was granted to us through Darshana Gupte, Chair of the San Antonio Climate Reality Chapter, and we were assisted by Christiana Rodgers from the San Antonio Composting Project. In December, students assembled four outdoor composting beds near the school garden. The leadership members of the club then performed a wasted audit to gauge the knowledge of composting among current students.
See results below:
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Students are now composting after each lunch and composting the waste that the cafeteria staff would normally throw away. On average, the cafeteria staff is composting 20 lbs a week of unused products.
We hope to use the compost in our school garden for future crops. This closed loop cycle will ensure the future of our garden, the health of students, and a growing connection with nature.
Financial Gain
Composting at our school can provide us with many financial benefits, including providing source of fertile soil that leads to less trash being thrown out, reducing the number of dumpsters that we need and in turn the cost of STA’s facilities. To elaborate, having fertile soil is necessary for the overall health of our garden. This leads to healthier foods that we can use in school lunches, decreasing the costs of purchasing ingredients, which is the main goal of this garden. Additionally, composting allows us to dispose of food scraps other than in our dumpsters. Without the several pounds of food each day, we may be able to rent fewer dumpsters, which would save us a lot of money. Also, besides the many positive environmental aspects, having a garden is also something that would attract many people to our school, which would subsequently increase our enrollment and our financial gain.
The Garden
The growth of the garden will bring a green atmosphere to SACHS. We could have a cooler and more beautiful area instead of a blank space just with grass. By growing the garden, we brought an experience about a sustainable non-profit business from SACHS to everybody. We apply what we learn in real life. This project is a symbol of environmental sustainability in the STA community.
Having a garden adds to the St. Anthony Catholic High School experience, allowing us to be better stewards of the Earth. It ensures that we can give back to the environment in the way that it gives to us. By giving us easy ways to waste and reuse food scraps, we can be more efficient with the resources that we use. This wouldn’t be possible without our generous donors, Climate Reality Project, and Gardopia Gardens. As a Catholic high school, we believe that God’s creation is to be protected. Therefore, it is our duty to do the most we can to ensure that our environment is being cared for. Our solution is to develop a bountiful garden that continues the longevity of our mission as a catholic community.
Educational advantages
One of the more common things that some schools lack is teaching valuable life skills. St. Anthony Catholic High School is able to provide at least three of these through our garden. The first educational value aligns with one of our core values. Service. The SACHS garden was brought into reality by our own students. We have put our time and effort into this garden, just as our school teaches us to always do. Another educational advantage has to do with our students having an interest in the environment they live in. If our students are more educated about the environment, they will be able to inform their peers. An educated student body is a more active student body who will want to create change in their community. The final educational advantage that our garden supplies us with is the beauty of nature. As a Catholic school, we want our students to recognize the beauty of God’s creations and this garden is a prime example of that. Our SACHS garden provides us with so many benefits as shown in this report which is why it means so much to us, our students, and those we work with.
Saint Anthony Catholic High School has been featured in Telemundo: https://www.telemundosanantonio.com/video/noticias/local/pequenas-lombrices-una-gran-mision-jovenes-transforman-residuos-en-vida/2493433/
1 https://www.epa.gov/lmop/basic-information-about-landfill-gas
“Make Mothers’ Day Great Again”
Sr. Martha Ann Kirk and Rev. Julie Brenton Rowe invite you sign and to spread the peace petition from their Palestinian and Israeli friends, “The Mother’s Call” https://www.womenwagepeace.org.il. Learn about Mother’s Day Home - juliebrentonrowe. In May 2025, they were on a peace-building trip in the Holy Land which you can read about “Hopeful Pilgrim” and see Sr. Martha Ann with Yael Deckelbaum who wrote the song.
Rev. Julie Rowe and Sr. Martha Ann Kirk with Women of the Sun in their Bethlehem Office.
“Make Mothers’ Day Great Again”
Rev. Dr. Julie Brenton Rowe
In 1870, decades before Woodrow Wilson instituted the current Mothers’ Day holiday in 1914, peace advocate Julie Ward Howe issued a proclamation calling for a day to be set aside for women to gather to strategize about seeking peace and ending war:
“Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears!..
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs…
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel with one another whereby the great human family can live in peace….I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held ..to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”
Paraphrased from Julia Ward Howe’s Mothers Peace Day Proclamation
Few women are at the table when men let slip the dogs of war. But they are often the ones to pick up the pieces of the lives shattered by it.
An Israeli woman peace advocate Gila Sviersky used to say:
“Why do they give the peace process to generals? All they know how to do is fight. They should give it to mothers. They know how to negotiate.”
What if we did? What if we placed more women at the seats of power in the peace processes instead of endlessly funding the generals who never miss an opportunity to turn plowshares into spears?
Studies show that women’s participation in peace processes increases the probability of peace agreements lasting 2 years by 20% and lasting 15 years by 35%. Just ask Leymah Gbowee of Liberia or the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition party in Northern Ireland. They were instrumental in stopping the worst of the violence in their countries.
In 2014, in response to yet another bloodbath in Gaza, Israeli women formed a group called Women Wage Peace, calling for an end to the violence and return to negotiations, this time with the novel idea of involving more women. They grew, and in 2022, partnered with the Palestinian peace group Women of the Sun to issue the Mothers’ Call, which basically said let’s stop killing one another’s children and work instead for peace and equality for both Israelis and Palestinians. In 2023, they celebrated their work in a festive day in Jerusalem and at the Dead Sea. Unfortunately, it was October 4, 2023.
Three days later, one of their founders, long-time Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver, was killed in her home near Gaza by Hamas. Over the next 2 years, almost thirty Women of the Sun peace activists were killed in Gaza. Despite the complexities, they remain committed to working together, but it is a tough go.
Leaders from the partnership have been honored for their work by the BBC and Time Magazine and have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The partnership was awarded a grant in 2023 before October 7 for its program Women Building Bridges. Unfortunately, it was partially funded by USAID. So much for US support for peace programs.
More than 50,000 people have signed the Mothers’ Call. Add your signature and join the movement at https://www.womenwagepeace.org.il.
Rev. Julie Rowe and Sr. Martha Ann Kirk with Peta Pellach, a leader in Women Wage Peace, who serves at the Elijah Institute Interreligious Center in Jerusalem.
It’s not that all women see peacemaking the same way or that they have magic answers. But their peace work has tended to emphasize non-violence, reaching across divides, and upholding equal human dignity. Much of their work improves conditions on the ground: healing trauma; building cooperative networks; and improving schools, social programs, and health care. These are not just feminine values. They are human values.
Some say non-violence is naïve. But how much more naïve is it to believe that bombing children and devastating cities – again - will do anything other than create traumatized children who will go on to perpetuate the cycle? How much more naïve to believe that people living under a brutal military occupation will somehow stop struggling for freedom with whatever they have? Freeing people from occupation and oppression and insisting on justice and equal human dignity are the only ways to long-term peace.
In the year 2000, the United Nations passed Resolution 1325, which called for, among other things, the inclusion of more women in formal peace processes. Twenty-five years later and still you won’t find many women in pictures of the executive Board of Peace or any of the leadership teams of the current warring nations.
Leaders like US Secretary of the “Department of War” Pete “raining down death and destruction” Hegseth have made sure of that. He “proudly” ended the US Women, Security, and Peace Initiative, saying that it “overburdens our commanders and troops – distracting from our core task – war-fighting.”
If “war-fighting” is our core task as humanity, it’s news to Hegseth’s hero Jesus.
It’s time for regime change at the peace tables.
Rev. Dr. Julie Brenton Rowe just finished her Doctor of Ministry degree in Public Theology at Austin Presbyterian Seminary with a focus on women and peacemaking in Israel and Palestine. She is the author of “Why Peace and Prayers are Not Enough: A Primer on Justice and Peace in Palestine and Israel.”
See Rev. Rowe’s creative reflection on Mother’s Day with the
music of Yael Deckelbaum www.juliebrentonrowe.com
Julie Ward Howe’s Mothers’ Peace Day Proclamation of 1870:
Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
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