The service, which was broadcast on RTÉ One on Sunday, heard Bishop of Kilmore Martin Hayes warn of climate change dangers at the Cathedral of Saints Patrick and Felim in Co Cavan.
Bishop Hayes urged people to challenge others over the issue where they could, and referred to St Francis, whom he said had a “deep reverence for nature”.
“Chat it out with the person whom you believe is doing wrong,” he said.
“If it fails, bring others along to offer an objective view and, if that fails, involve the community and draw upon their sense of what is right and wrong. ”
The bishop went on to discuss the idea of acknowledging humanity’s “structural sin” in contributing to the ongoing climate crisis.
“We are becoming all too familiar with a certain disregard for life, with the signs of the pressure on our planet Earth, the forest fires, the flooding as well as the scarcity of water, the changing climate due to the ways in which we are polluting the Earth, the warming up the atmosphere due to our overreliance on the burning of fossil fuels as our sources of energy,” he said.
“That is our calling now, to be alert to the wrong of global warming caused by human activity as being among the wrongs that are anti-life and increasingly evident in our world, all of which are ‘accelerating the disruption to the harmonious balance of creation’ according to Pope Leo.”
He added: “We are called to advocate, to protest, to challenge the structures, our governments, our leaders in how we are caring for creation and for life.”