Australian Christian Brother Moy Hitchen tells the Catholic News Service that he encourages adoption and teaching of the principles of the Earth Charter by the Christian Brothers, because it offers “guidelines for stewardship of the earth.” Advocacy for environmental justice has taken Brother Moy, who blogs his Eco-Journeys at the web site of Edmund Rice International. into some of the globe’s most economically and ecologically challenged communities.
“In a sprawling slum in Nairobi, Kenya,” reports the CNS, “he was struck by the contrast between environmental disaster — a “filthy black river (of) industrial waste, human sewage and plastic bags full of household garbage” — and vestiges of the natural world that were struggling to survive.”
“I saw five species of birds from the local area and 12 species of plants in that slum, hanging on by their claws and by the tips of their roots,” he said. “If the people in the slum don’t deserve a decent environment, who does? The slum will only be rehabilitated when the earth is back, when the river is clean and the trees are growing.”
Brother Moy visits Christian Brothers around the world explaining the connections between ecology, spirituality, and social justice. “The great spiritual traditions are in partnership with the earth,” he says. “And the Congress of Consecrated Life in Rome in 2004 had 16 recommendations, one of which was to maintain a triple dialogue — dialogue with the poor, dialogue with the world religions and dialogue with the earth…”
Read more: Catholic News Service, “‘Love your local ecosystem,’ Christian Brother tells others,” by Barbara J. Fraser, 02 Jan 2007.