BY ANNETTE BAIRD, HERALD CORRESPONDENT

HOUSTON — Scientists and local leaders at a recent Archdiocesan conference on environmental issues said the Church must do more to heed the call of Pope Francis’s environmental encyclical “Laudato Si’” to mitigate and prevent the dire consequences to human life stemming from climate change caused by human activity.

Quoting the encyclical, Daniel Cardinal DiNardo opened the Oct. 1 conference by emphasizing that the call to action and solidarity by all to be responsible for the care of “God’s handiwork is not an optional or secondary aspect of our Christian experience.”

More than 100 people attended the “Faith in Action for Our Common Home” conference held at St. Dominic Center. The Archdiocese’s first-of-its-kind conference was prompted by growing concern about the state of the environment in light of the pope’s encyclical in which he calls on Catholics and non-Catholics unite to protect “our common home.

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