The Vatican is putting 1,000 solar panels atop its huge Paul VI Audience Hall, where Pope Benedict meets and greets thousands of pilgrims each Wednesday.The massive building costs a fortune to heat and cool, and the solar panels, once in place, will provide all the electricity necessary to maintain temperature and lighting, and then some.
It is expensive, but they say the costs will be recouped in a few years.
What a super idea!
For years, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace has led the Catholic paper charge on environmental issues.
Staffers wrote papers, gave speeches and even made a few interventions at the United Nations.
Now all that hard work is coming home, and the Vatican is starting to “go green.”
Not so with U.S. Catholic dioceses, however. I wrote to some 30 diocesan public affairs officers to ask what their dioceses are doing. It was just a sample, to be sure. The average response was, well, we recycle where we can, but the nuns in our diocese are really involved in all that.
To be sure, American nuns are indeed involved in “all that” and more. In fact, while “going green” is now in vogue in corporate America, Catholic nuns — they prefer to be called women religious — are way ahead of the curve.
Nearly 27 years ago, Dominican Sister Miriam Therese MacGillis began Genesis Farm in New Jersey, now operating on 226 acres in Blairstown in permanent trust from the Dominican Sisters of Caldwell.
The project includes a community-supported agricultural program and an ecological learning center, rooted “in a spirituality that reverences Earth as a primary revelation of the divine.”
Corporately, nuns wield significant eco-power.
For example, the 14 hospitals in the St. Joseph Health System operated in California, Texas and New Mexico by the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Orange, Calif., have an entire “green guide” for building operations, construction and renovation projects.
One of the biggest entries in the guide is elimination of VOCs — products containing Volatile Organic Compounds that emit toxic gases — in construction and supplies.
Systemwide, they negotiate with suppliers to eliminate eco-dangers where they can. Packaging, recycling, and eliminating mercury all fall in the mix.
Ecological issues are considered in constructing and running convents, too.
In San Rafael, Calif., the Dominican Sisters formation house has been certified by the U.S. Green Building Council. So has the Sisters of Mercy Convent in St. Louis.
In Los Gatos, Calif., the Presentation Sisters built a “green” welcome center from the bottom up — using straw bale walls strengthened with waste fly ash and insulated with recycled cotton.
And in Cleveland, the Sisters of Saint Joseph have electricity-producing windmills behind their motherhouse.
Elsewhere in Catholic USA, there are many grass roots projects. Individual parishes — especially in Vermont — are doing what they can to save the planet. The Diocese of Richmond (Va.) has an “ecological educator.”
But I could not find one Catholic diocese on the U.S. Green Building Council list.
That just does not make any sense.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has a fine Department of Social Development and World Peace, and the position for Environmental Justice/Climate Change Project Coordinator will be refilled soon.
The USCCB headquarters is in the process of getting green-certified, and Catholic bishops nationally and regionally have made statements.
But what changes — beyond paper recycling — have individual bishops implemented in the buildings and systems they control?
Have they used a “green guide” for building and remodeling?
Have they switched to hybrid vehicles?
Do their central purchasing agencies refuse VOC products?
Have they banned bottled water and Styrofoam cups from their buildings?
Have they even changed the light bulbs?
In 1999, the Vatican changed the lighting in St. Peter’s Basilica and cut the building’s energy consumption by 40 percent.
If only U.S. Catholic bishops would follow suit.
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