P. Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam SDB
Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, Vatican

What prompted you to write the book “Ten Green Commandments” based on Laudato si of Pope Francis on May 24, 2015?
It was an inspiration. After the encyclical came out, I was pondering as to how to make it reach a wider audience, given that ‘Laudato Si’ is written for everyone, for “all people of good will” as Pope Francis himself mentions. My query was to how to make Pope Francis’ ideas accessible to as many people as possible? I was guided by two main considerations. First, I thought it was time to offer a new set of commandments. Given the planetary crisis that humanity is facing, we need a new set of guidelines, we stand in need of something like the Ten Commandments of Moses to guide our lives and behaviour. The second consideration was more pragmatic, namely, how to present ‘Laudato Si’ in a more pedagogical way. I thought that if one were to use the “Ten Green Commandments”, it would be easy for people to remember the contents of the encyclical.
Since many years, I engage in personal prayer sitting on the floor. A few days after “Laudato Si’ was published, while I was sitting on the floor, in touch with Mother Earth, an inspiration dawned in my mind. And the inspiration was that Laudato Si’s mission is intimately linked to the command that St Francis of Assisi had received centuries ago. As we all know, Pope Francis was the first Pope ever to adopt the name of Francis, the poverello of Assisi. He chose St. Francis as a model for his life and ministry as the “Bishop of Rome”. Saint Francis’s conversion goes back to the day in 1205 when he entered the dilapidated chapel of “San Damiano” in the outskirts of Assisi. Francis, who had left his own family and renounced everything, was looking for direction regarding his own life and mission. As he entered the San Damiano Chapel, his gaze fell on the large icon of the Crucified Lord. And he physically heard these words from the Lord: “Francis, go and repair my home, which as you see is falling into ruin.” Francis thought that the Lord wanted him to rebuild the little chapel of St Damiano which was in very bad conditions. So he began earnestly to repair the Church, assisted by some of his close friends. However, as St Bonaventure later wrote in the biography of St Francis, the “house” that the Lord wanted him to rebuild was not just the little chapel of San Damiano, but the very Church, the house of God. I realized that Pope Francis, who took the name of St Francis, was tasked was a similar mission. Here was another Francis who has been asked by the Lord “to rebuild a home, falling into rain.” And this time it is not just the house of the Church, but our common planetary home. Pope Francis’ mission as evident in Laudato Si is to rebuild our earthly home. So that was the basic inspiration with which I began to work on this commentary entitled “The Ten Green Commandments of Laudato Si’”.

The world order today is a consumerist capitalistic of extreme private interest. That is someway the hegemony of ego. How different is the pope in his concept of ecology?
Yes, Pope Francis proposes a radically a new way of “inhabiting” our earthly home that is being pulled down by the present consumerist culture and the cut of the ego in which one’s personal interests trump all the rest. I have been working in the area of ecology for nearly a quarter of century. Many of us within the Church were getting a bit frustrated that the Church’s magisterium was not making a strong statement on such a vital issue like creation care. In fact, we expected an encyclical from Pope Benedict who was acclaimed as the “green Pope”. However, it was Pope Francis who came out with the Church’s first encyclical letter on creation care. Now looking back, I’m happy that it came from Pope Francis, because the messenger also makes a huge difference apart from the message in itself.

“We are challenged to take Jesus’ path in today’s India. Our vocation today is to be a prophetic Church. At the same time, we need to do it in nonviolent ways, on the sole and supreme path of love.”

Laudato Si’ offers a radically new way of looking at Earth. The subtitle of the encyclical is “On the care for our common home”. In Laudato Si, Earth is seen not as mere “environment”, but our “common home”! It’s a revolutionary paradigm change. This means, first of all, that earth is not just external environment, but our very home! If Earth is our common home, humanity is invited to live in this abode as a family. I believe that Pope Francis is offering us a powerful antidote to our problems today, most of which spring from an exaggerated anthropocentric vision of reality centred on the ego. Right from modernity, from Descartes and Bacon, we live in this anthropocentric world where we humans are the absolute centre. Our post-modern contemporary culture has only accentuated the individualistic turn and the cult of the ego. Pope Francis emphatically says no to such a restrictive vision. He reminds us that we are called to live together as a family in our common home. Pope Francis’s theological vision is that church is a family, that the entre humanity is one family. So when Fratelli Tutti came out, what I call the “sister encyclical” of Laudato Si’, I was very personally happy. If Laudato Si told us earth is our common home, Fratelli Tutti reminds us that we are all really sisters and brothers living together. We are in it all together!
Such openness and communion would be a real solution for our problems today. We are so centred on ourselves, on our petty and exclusive identities, often drawn from our ethnic, religious, race or caste, and political affiliations. A clear expression of this worrying tendency is the emergence of nationalistic, fascist groups around the world. Most of these groups are ultimately the expression of our collective egoism where one is a prisoner of the self-interests of oneself or of one’s group. In this context, Pope Francis challenges us to recover the vision of the earth as our common home, in which we live as a common family.
However, we live in a divided world. I’m more and more convinced that the climate crisis, the economic crisis, and the many crises we face ultimately stem from huge socio-economic inequalities. The latest report from Oxfam (based in Oxford) published in early 2023 lays bare this truth. According to this report, since 2020, two-thirds of all wealth has gone into the richest 1% of humanity. Earth is destroyed not by ordinary people or indigenous communities or farmers. Our planetary home is devastated mainly by the rich. Unfortunately, the consequences are paid by the most vulnerable people. So it is very much a question of justice.

There is a group of people, certain individuals with deep and very radical ecology, who go back to nature or to the forest. What do you think of them? Pope, following them, how is he different?
I would say that Pope Francis is far away from deep ecology. I think that one big mistake we made all these years was to think of the environment as something separate. Deep ecologists, for example, think of nature without humanity. Some of them engage in apparently contradictory practices like driving hundreds of kilometres to go into wild nature in big cars, while not worried about the huge greenhouse emissions that you cause in the meantime. In the past, we have had environmentalists concerned about exotic species, pandas or polar bears, and not concerned about children dying of hunger or farmers committing suicide because of droughts. So these are the contradictions we have been living with. Laudato Si proposes an integral ecological vision. Everything is connected. And I think one of the master strokes of Laudato Si is paragraph 49 when Pope Francis tells us that we need to listen to the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor. For many decades, environmentalists were not concerned about the poor, and in the same way social activists looked down upon environmentalists and considered ecological concerns as a hobby that only the rich and elite could indulge in. Pope Francis says no. According to him, unless you respond to the cry of the earth, you cannot respond to the cry of the poor and vice versa. I think this was his ecological conversion! A couple of years ago, I had the fortune to be with him an entire morning as part of the shooting of the movie that was made on Laudato Si’ (THE LETTER). Pope Francis told us how he himself thought that environmental concerns were problems of the rich, until he visited the Amazon, as the head of the Latin American bishops’ conference. In the Amazon he saw in first person how the indigenous people were suffering as their lands were being grabbed for mining and ecosystems destroyed for agro business. The Amazon taught Pope Francis that the cry of the earth is intimately linked to the cry of the poor. Laudato si is the fruit of this integral vision. This is the road we need to take.
Today, we need to recover a holistic vision of reality and a metaphysics of interrelatedness and interdependence, as Pope Francis does in Laudato Si where in speaks of integral ecology. I also think of someone like Raymond Panikkar with his “cosmotheandric” vision of reality. It is important to remember that reality has all of these dimensions: the cosmic dimension, the human dimension, and the divine dimension. The problem is when we lay overemphasis on just a single dimension of reality. Christianity, in fact, speaks of a God fully immersed in the world and in human affairs. I think that’s the beauty of the incarnation also, as we have a “God who took flesh and dwelt amongst us” (Jn 1:14).

See, there is a tendency in the world today, to return to nature that is a type of fascism. Where the nature there, race, nationality, and community, are all because of fundamental basics. And that fascism basically, originates from returning to nature, how do you react to such a situation?
Yes, such a tendency has deep roots, as you just mentioned. In fact, even well-intentioned philosophers like Heidegger fell into this trap. Heidegger has also inspired by many deep ecologists like Michael Zimmerman who incidentally has been very critical of Laudato Si ! We need to realize that at the heart of deep ecology there is a latent anti-humanism, a sort of misanthropy, a belief that the natural world will flourish only without the interference of the humans. Some of them have even said that the problem is that we humans are too many, cleverly putting the blame for environmental degradation to the poor countries with their huge populations. Such an approach can degenerate into contempt of the poor and a sort of self-justification, while not realizing that a child born in the US before his or her first birthday would have consumed more resources than a person in Tanzania during his or her entire life! So if one is not careful, deep ecology can degenerate into narcissism.
It is important to realize that domination and exploitation of the natural world are intimately connected to other historical dominations like colonization, the oppression of women, indigenous groups and minorities, etc. What is at play in every form of domination and exploitation is a metaphysics of dualism. Within such dualistic thinking one’s identity is built almost exclusively around a single element like one’s nationality, political allegiance, religion, caste, class, etc., and the “other” is seen as those who do not belong to “my” exclusive group. We have had unfortunately many historical examples in this regard. Think of Nazism, Fascism, centuries of colonization, or the caste, class and race hegemonies that continue to reign consciously and unconsciously in so many regions of the world. I find very helpful in this regard a central insight from Amartya Sen. According to Sen the problem is that we just highlight one element that constitutes my identity, overlooking the very many other features that make up our shared identities as human beings. For example, a Jew in Israel sees oneself only in terms of his or her Jewish identity and sees a Palestinian as totally the “other” because he or she is a non-Jew. The same thing happens when a Hindu, or Muslim, or Christian, defines oneself exclusively in terms of a singular feature or element of identity, and sunders all elements of commonality with others, seeing them as enemies to be vanquished. Amarta Sen reminds us that in a multi-cultural and pluri-religious context like India, or anywhere else in the world, it is important to accept and integrate all the elements that weave my relational existence. Sen says, for example, how he himself is a Bengali, a Hindu, an economist, a thinker, a writer, and all these multiple identities need to be accepted together. Unfortunately, we are racing down the road of separation and domination, ultimately driven by false and blind ideologies. We need to be prophetic to warn about such divisive and ultimately destructive tendencies that will make peaceful coexistence very difficult, if not impossible.

Heidegger is a terribly against science and technology for they destroy the world and nature. What is Pope’s and your personal view about how to integrate that science and technology into your life?
I think that in Laudato Si, Pope Francis offers a much more balanced view of technology. He doesn’t idolize technology, and, in one of the paragraphs of the encyclical, points out how some inventions of technology can indeed make us marvel. An example he quotes is that of an aircraft. An aeroplane is a marvel of human technology! However, Pope Francis is highly critical of the dominant technocratic economic paradigm of today and dedicates an entire chapter to discuss it. It is the third chapter of Laudato Si, entitled “The Human Roots of the Crisis”. Pope Francis bases himself mainly on the thought of Romano Guardini who has been very critical of Modernity, like Heidegger. Heidegger like Romano Guardini think that technology has taken domination over humanity. In fact, the later Heidegger becomes poetic and argues that we need to go beyond the calculative thinking so characteristic of Modernity. Modern science, technology, economy are all based on calculative thinking. Pope Francis says that technology, like economy, need to be placed at the service of humanity and not vice versa. It would be interesting to see in this regard how the debate around “artificial intelligence” would shape up. We certainly need to grapple with such questions that will shape the future of humanity and civilization. Returning to Laudato Si, Pope Francis insists that in economic and political decisions, the concerns of the poor be placed at the centre. And I think that’s very Christian because in the poor we encounter God.

There is also a problem of nature being seen as divine. For example, that is so dominant or relevant all over India. The nature’s nature is divine?
While nature is not divine, it would be important to remember that the natural world is God’s creation, it is God’s handiwork, and as such has something sacred about it. The natural world reveals God’s goodness, love, beauty and glory. In the early centuries of Christianity, some of the Fathers of the Church used to speak about the “two Books of God”: the Book of Works and the Book of Words. However, especially since Modernity we have forgotten and totally neglected the “First Book” of creation, God’s first and primordial revelation. Of course, we don’t idolize nature. Nature is not god. However, we should not forget that it comes from God’s hands. Similar visions of the natural world as revelation of God exist also in a religion like Islam which speaks of the entire world as the “great Mosque of God”. The great Eastern religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Shinto, etc. have much to offer in his regard. We need to recover a religious and sacramental vision of the natural world and overcome Modernity’s one-dimensional perception of the natural world solely in terms of utility and profit.
In the context of the contemporary ecological it is especially important to look at the natural world as God’s creation against the current secular and consumerist mentality. I think theologians have not sufficiently reflected on the second chapter of Laudato si. Pope Francis proposes a revolutionary title to this chapter: “The Gospel of Creation”. According to the Pope, creation is “Evangelion”. It is indeed “Good News”, with all its implications. The natural world is a “symbol” of the Divine, as Saint Francis of Assisi has beautifully taught us. I remember the words of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur in this regard: “Idols must die so that symbols can live”. Today we adore too many idols: money, power, luxury, consumerism, and the list can be endless. In this context, we need to recover the symbolic value of nature. St. Francis of Assisi is great because he would look at the flower which put him in relation with a greater reality, the Creator. That’s something modern human beings have lost. As Christopher Derek says, our problem is not materialism. Our problem is a lack of respect for the matter. We have to recover the symbolic dimension. Unless we recover that, we won’t protect the natural world, because we won’t love it and respect it. We will just keep recycling things and recycling schools of thought like the deep ecology. We need to rediscover the sacred Ground of all reality, the “Love that embraces everything” as the great poet Dante used to say and whom Pope Francis quotes in Laudato Si.

George Steiner, a world-renowned literary critic and a Jew said, three Jews invented man, namely Moses, Jesus and Marx. As an Indian don’t you think India is in trouble with respect to the idea of man and the idea of India?
Yes, the idea of the human being is fundamental. Here Christianity has something very original to offer. We consider each person sacred because he or she is created in God’s image, “imago Dei”. Especially in a context like India, where human dignity is often trampled upon, Christianity can indeed be counter-cultural and liberative. Look at our caste system and so many forms of socio-economic, religious and political discriminations! At the core of the Christian vision of reality is the intrinsic and sacred dignity of each and every human person, especially of the poor and marginalized whose dignity is often violated with contempt. I am deeply touched by the way Pope Francis meets the poor, with such respect and compassion! He literally touches the flesh of Christ in the poor. I think this is the path forward. The central message of Christianity is that of love. Our uniqueness is not in our doctrine or our elaborate theology. Our uniqueness is the capacity to love one another, without measure, and bring God’s liberative love to those who need most, the poor and oppressed, those contemptuously flung into the fringes of society. I think of Tagore who in one of his poems challenges the priest to come out of the darkness of the temple, to leave the mute idol he worships, and to go and worship God’s dusty feet in the poor! So I would say that Christianity has a very prophetic role to play in India. Let us also not remember the Gospel passage that inspired Mother Theresa of Kolkata: Mt 25: 31-6. Yes, Jesus continues to visit us in the poor, in the hungry, thirsty, sick, stranger, abandoned, imprisoned! So I would say that when we have so much work to do here in India, especially where human dignity is trampled upon, especially of the poor.

From the Christian point of view, especially in the Indian church, do you think the Indian church arises up to the political situation and cultural situation of India or someway becoming a silent partner in the fascist system? Sometimes it apparently became a party to the whole thing.
When I look at the Indian church, I see two churches. One is the institutional church. We have lots of institutions, and we are recognized publicly. We enjoy a certain prestige. But I think that the real church is where Christ is served in the neediest. I think, for example, of so many religious sisters and others serving in remote areas catering to tribals, Adivasis, Dalits, lepers, children on the street or in bonded labour, poor farmers or landless labourers, and those most neglected. I think this is the one thing we have not highlighted enough in the church, that our vocation is to be “the leaven” of the society, even though we are a tiny minority, as Pope Benedict often used to say.

As a leaven as a minority, are we becoming a creative minority?
I would say at least some in our fold are becoming the leaven that Christ wanted us to. They are really making a difference and they are also persecuted, yet again in keeping with Jesus’ promises. I think of one of our most recent martyrs like Fr. Stan Swami, and many others like him. But I think that as an institutional church, many of us remain in the comfins of our walls. We are not willing to pay the price, especially in the face of injustices. However, we need to remember that a Church that fails to be leaven, will soon become irrelevant! That’s what can really happen. I would prefer a church that suffers, that is prophetic, and that raises its voice in defence of the poor and persecuted than a Church afraid to risk and be content with the crumbs of power and privileges. We are challenged to take Jesus’ path in today’s India. Our vocation today is to be a prophetic Church. At the same time, we need to do it in nonviolent ways, on the sole and supreme path of love. I think that the churches in India are really at the crossroads!

See, the church has always been tempted by a sort of dualism. Look at Hegel and Marx and their dialectics which is becoming the temptation to which church also falls. During the crusades and persecution of the heretics didn’t we become Manichaean dualists of the Grand inquisitor?
I think that is the temptation of every age which tries to swallow the church and absorb it into the so-called majoritarian way of thinking. Of course, we need to dialogue with the times and cultures. Historically, the Catholic faith has been able to stand shoulder to shoulder with any of the schools of thought and not succumb. But our faith is much more than a creed. Our faith centres on the person of Jesus Christ, the Emmanuel, God-with-us. Bringing God’s love, revealed in Jesus, to our brothers and sisters is our supreme mission. Pope Francis emphasises this very much. According to him, evangelization is the core of Christian life and mission. In fact, in the re-organization of the Roman Curia, he has placed the Dicastery for Evangelization in the first place. Earlier it used to be the then Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. Let us also not forget that even Pope Benedict who was a great intellectual, often stressed that Christianity is encountering the person of Christ and having a very personal, intimate relationship with him. So I would say the first thing to recover would be this intimate, personal relationship with Christ which will then flow into all other areas of our life and ministry. Of course, faith is always “enfleshed”, it is always “in-carnate”. We need therefore to touch Christ, not in abstract, but in the flesh of the poor, in the flesh of the culture in which we live, and in so many forms that the Risen Christ continues to live among us. In the context of the unprecedented ecological crisis that we are facing, we are invited and challenged to touch Christ in the flesh of creation on Earth, our common home, which is also God’s home, especially with the supreme event of the Incarnation.

Pope Francis is giving us a lot of courage, hope and enthusiasm. These inspirations are very precious. But the Pope is also a person severely criticized within the church. Even the Cardinals were criticized, what is the role of criticism in the church, father?
I would like to recall what Pope Francis has himself often repeated, namely, that he is open to criticism and would like to be criticized. What he has in mind is healthy and open to constructive criticism which is vital for the Church and for anybody whatsoever. What Pope Francis does not like is destructive criticism. Criticism is constructive when it serves to build up the community. This is something that we see already from the times of the early Church. One might recall Paul’s disagreements with Peter and how the apostles came together to discern together the direction that the Holy Spirit wanted to take, so that the Gospel of Jesus Christ could reach the ends of the earth. So criticism, discussion and debate do help, provided they are done within the overall framework of unity, of communion which is what the Church is by definition. But if criticisms are just for self-preservation, then, we are not really allowing the Holy Spirit to continually renew the Church and the world. And Pope Francis does suffer when he sees certain forms of criticism which is merely a strategy of resistance to change. One of Pope Francis’ struggles has been to take the Church on the path of renewal initiated by the Second Vatican Council. He is convinced that the Council was the work of the Holy Spirit, as augured by Saint John XXIII. Pope Francis sees his mission as moulding the Church in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, and unfortunately there is resistance from some quarters, even after so many decades. It is evident that Pope Francis pins a lot of hope on the coming Synod which he hopes will renew the Church in the spirit of the Council, its ecclesiology of Church as the People of God, its emphasis on the Word of God, its openness to the Holy Spirit, its pastoral and missionary thrust, its eagerness and willingness to dialogue with the modern world, and with other Churches and religions, etc. Let’s hope and pray that the forthcoming Synod be a new Pentecost for the Church and the world.