Reflections on Pope Francis’ Laudato Si'

It was 1999. We were hurtling towards the millennium, and, somewhere in all the millennium noise, an electronic dance group called Phats & Small released a track called “Turn Around (Hey What’s Wrong With You?)” for some reason, it's the soundtrack that plays in my head every time I revisit Laudato Si’ published in 2015—Pope Francis’s passionate, urgent letter to all of humanity about our broken planet.

Bear with me!

Because the opening line of the song goes; Hey, what’s wrong with you?” - it sounds a lot like Pope Francis trying to get my/our attention. You know that moment when someone calls out, “Hey you!”—and you look up, confused, and point to your chest like, Me? That’s exactly how I felt reading Laudato Si’ for the first time.

Yes. You. Me. Us.

The encyclical doesn’t hide behind complex theology or distant platitudes. Pope Francis speaks plainly and urgently. He calls out our addiction to fossil fuels, our compulsive consumerism, and what he describes as a “throwaway culture”—a whirlwind of pointless buying and equally pointless discarding.

The climate crisis, Pope Francis tells us, is not some vague future threat. It’s here. It’s now. It’s a constant ringing in the world’s ears—unignorable, persistent, a daily reality.

For someone like me, working with CAFOD and who has travelled to communities on the climate frontlines—in Northern Kenya, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, for example, the crisis isn’t abstract. I’ve seen the droughts. I’ve listened to mothers explain how they struggle to feed their children, or find safe, clean water. These are not “future problems.” They are today’s pressing issues.

And yet, like many people, I sometimes wonder: can I really make a difference? Isn’t this just too big?

Pope Francis heard my ‘little voice’. “Obstructionist attitudes,” he writes, “even on the part of believers, can range from denial… to blind confidence in technical solutions.” He’s not wrong. It’s easy to throw up our hands. Or wait for someone else to invent the solutions.

But Laudato Si’ doesn’t let me, us, off the hook. It insists that change starts with an “informed and engaged public.” In other words, us—paying attention, asking questions, doing the work, and maybe dancing to a different beat.

Because in Phats & Small’s chorus it doesn’t just call you out—it calls you in.

“Listen to what I say / Gotta turn it around…”

Exactly. Ten years on, Laudato Si’ remains our call to turn it around. Not just as individuals, but in global solidarity. Because climate crisis is a human issue. A scientific issue. And It’s a spiritual one. And as Pope Francis puts it so beautifully, “climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all.”

So yes—it starts with me. It starts with you. With how we live, how we vote, how we consume, and crucially, how we love. Because this isn’t about saving “the planet” as some abstract concept. It’s about protecting our global neighbours, our global children, our global common home.

Pope Francis says, “We must regain the conviction that we need one another.” He’s right. We need to hear his message again and again—maybe even with a bassline that cuts through the noise, grabs our attention, and makes us sit up, and act. The beat might be borrowed, but the wisdom is all his.

Nana Anto-Awuakye
Catholic Engagement Coordinator