"Sustainable development is essential for lasting peace, and both depend on respect for human rights. We need to protect our planet. And only by working together can we make our common home safe for future generations."

Thousands marched on the International Day of Peace Sept. 21 to protest the extrajudicial killings under President Duterte and the 1972 establishment of martial law under the Marcos regime.

"The Earth needs mercy, and we need to give mercy to the Earth and all other creatures rather than dominate over them and take what we don't need."

Since Rodrigo Duterte was inaugurated as president of the Philippines on June 30 and declared a war on drugs, more than 3,100 people have been killed either by police or vigilante groups.

It is rare for me to go through an entire week without discussing issues surrounding multiculturalism, diversity and racism. Racism does become an exhaustive topic, and for me personally, it is exhausting to swim in the waves of racism.

". . . . Ecology speaks to us of our deep interrelatedness within nature, and technology lures us to become something other than nature; to transcend the limits of nature . . . ."

GSR Today: September 25 is IJM's Freedom Sunday, which will feature events across the nation on human trafficking. If you can plan things in a hurry, you can host an event yourself. The Faith Alliance Against Slavery and Trafficking also hosts a Freedom Sunday on that date.

In December of 1983 Cardinal Joseph Bernardin delivered a lecture at Fordham University in which he outlined what we now know as the "consistent ethic of life." And while I was nowhere near old enough to have known about this lecture at the time it was given, the legacy of his words — and the writings that followed — were mainstays in my Catholic schools and in my parish.

"I thank you God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes."