Church Worldwide: New Mass Approved Centered on Care for the Environment

The Banner has a subscription to republish articles from Religion News Service. This story by Claire Giangravé, was published July 3, 2025 on religionnews.com. It has been edited for length and Banner style. The Banner added the last paragraph to provide context for the Christian Reformed Church.

As much of Europe endured record‑breaking heat waves—with abnormally high temperatures, wildfires, and deaths reported—the Vatican on July 3 released a new liturgy for the Mass reflecting concern for the environment, offering prayers, readings and hymns that highlight the church’s responsibility to protect the Earth.

This new Mass “can be used to ask God for the ability to care for creation,” said Cardinal Michael Czerny, who heads the Vatican’s Dicastery for Integral Human Development, at a news conference.

The new Mass, Pro Custodia Creationis (For the Care of Creation), was initially ordered by Pope Francis, who made the environment a major theme of his papacy and the subject of his second encyclical, “Laudato Si’,” subtitled “On Care for Our Common Home,” in 2015.

Pope Leo XIV has signaled that creation care will be a key area of interest for him as well and a point of continuity between Leo and his predecessors.

Pro Custodia Creationis will be added to the existing list of 17 Masses for special civil needs, which also include Masses for the harvest, rain, and migrants.

A collaboration between Czerny’s department, which is concerned in part with how climate change affects vulnerable populations, and the Dicastery for Divine Worship, the new Mass takes inspiration from Francis’s 2015 encyclical and St. John Paul II’s message for the World Day of Peace in 1990, which emphasized the relationship between humanity and creation.

“In a world where the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters are the first to suffer the devastating effects of climate change, deforestation and pollution, care for creation becomes an expression of our faith and humanity,” Czerny said.

The liturgy includes references to creation as a reflection of the glory of God; the broken relationships among humanity and God, neighbors, and the Earth, due to sin; and God’s care for all creation as seen in a reading from the Gospel of Matthew with God providing for “the lilies of the field and the birds of the air.”

Czerny said, “This Mass is a reason for joy. (It) calls us to be faithful stewards of what God has entrusted to us—not only in daily choices and public policies, but also in our prayer, our worship and our way of living in the world.”

The Christian Reformed Church in North America has resources for churches regarding ecological and environmental awareness, as called for by Synod 2008 in response to concerns about stewardship of the world in which we live. The CRC’s position on creation care affirms “‘a commitment to work vigorously to protect and heal the creation for the glory of the Creator, as we wait for the restoration of the creation to wholeness’ (Agenda for Synod 2010, p. 46)” and laments “‘that our abuse of creation has brought lasting damage to the world we have been given: polluting streams and soil, poisoning the air, altering the climate, and damaging the earth.’ … (Our World Belongs to God, para. 51).”

c. 2025 Religion News Service