As the first signs of spring began to appear in Toronto, a sprightly team of young Catholics decided to celebrate Earth Day by picking up trash at Christie Pits Park. 

WASHINGTON – Caritas Internationalis, the Catholic Church's worldwide network of humanitarian aid agencies, three German banks and more than 30 other Catholic institutions are planning to divest at least part of their financial portfolios from the fossil fuel industry.

VATICAN – The Vatican Gardens has branched out and added a small orchard to its hillsides, becoming a safe haven for a number of endangered native Italian fruit and nut tree species.

LIMA, Peru – Less than two months after Pope Francis spoke out about environmental destruction in the Amazon basin during a visit to Peru, bishops from Latin America and the Caribbean have issued a pastoral letter calling the region's Catholics to an "integral ecological conversion."

In 2015 the Pope gave an interview to the Mexican media giant Televisa and said, “I have the sense that my pontificate will be brief — four or five years.” On March 13 he will have hit the five-year mark. He is 81 years old.

REGINA – In modern society, people talk plenty about nature and the environment, but when it comes down to reality, they don’t actually experience what God has created around us.

Development and Peace has signed onto a political manifesto that reflects in part the teaching of Pope Francis in a call for drastic change in environmental policy.

“The opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation.”

LIMA, Peru – Pope Francis was greeted by the Peruvian president, the country's bishops, a military honour guard and a children's orchestra on his arrival in Peru on Jan. 18. During his visit, he will meet with Amazonian indigenous people from three countries, visit a neighbourhood devastated by flooding early last year, and pray in the place of Peru's greatest popular religious devotion.

Blue is the new green. At least that is the case for the Federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Canada.

The Catholics at the United Nations climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany, are demanding oil and coal be left in the ground starting now.

MANILA, Philippines – Catholic Church leaders in the Philippines are calling on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to take back several shipping containers of toxic waste that arrived in the country from Canada in 2013, reported ucanews.com.

As more than 40 Catholic institutions announced they would no longer invest in fossil fuel companies, a former United Nations chief climate negotiator said the Pope’s environmental vision laid out in Laudato Si’ is becoming even more relevant.

WASHINGTON – Nearly two dozen people, including a juvenile, were arrested as they blocked workers from starting construction of a short leg of a natural gas pipeline on property owned by the Adorers of the Blood of Christ congregation in Columbia, Pennsylvania.

The August and September hurricanes of Harvey, Irma and Jose drowned out two fleeting news items that should keep us awake at night with anguish about how we’re treating our planet.