Workshop for staff members of the Jesuit Social Centres

“One year after Laudato si” was the theme of the one-day workshop for staff members of the Jesuit Social Centres in Europe that took place in Brussels on June the 9th. There were participants from Centre Avec and JESC (Brussels), CERAS (Paris), Institute for Development Studies (Munich) and Cristianisme y Justicia (Barcelona), also via Skype joined the conversation, at some moments, representatives from Aggiornamenti Sociali (Milan) and the Centre for Faith and Justice (Dublin).

The morning focused on “Ecology and spirituality”. The centres introduced the different initiatives undertaken during this year in this area as publications, seminars or courses. A wide diversity that was shared more in detail through the repository where all these materials are now accessible for the participants and their centres. The discussion followed with two presentations. The first by Emeline De Bouver, researcher at "Centre Avec" and author of the book “Moins de biens, plus de lines. La simplicité volontaire”. Emeline highlighted the tension that those engaged on environmental movements feel between an attitude of action, and transformation, and the necessity of contemplation and acceptance of reality. The second presentation by Jose Ignacio Garcia SJ; JESC, showed same “Strengths and weakness of the Ignatian Spirituality in the path of the ecological conversion”.

The afternoon was devoted to the analysis of the present political momentum of the international negotiations on climate change. For this we counted with contributions by Adalbert Jahnz, member of the International Negotiations Team of DG CLIMA of the European Commission, and Meera Ghani, CIDSE Advocacy Officer Climate Justice. Both experts offered a comprehensive description of the perspectives after COP 21, the challenges ahead and the risks of a very complex process. This time it was after the input from the experts that we shared the activity developed by the centres on these topics. We had the opportunity to acknowledge the important amount of work done by the centres to disseminate the message of the encyclical, but also to promote individual and community engagement on sustainable life styles.

During the workshop, Bertrand Heriard (CERAS) updated the participants on the project of a virtual platform, software, that aims that our writing materials can be used through different formats operating from a single data base. The project looks that this professional software can be shared by the social centres, increasing their performance and promoting collaboration.