Pope Francis has created a new annual day of prayer to be known as “World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation” which will be celebrated on September 1st annually, beginning this year.

Vatican Radio is reporting that the pope made the announcement in a letter written on the Feast of the Transfiguration and sent to Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity.

In the letter he states that the idea for the creation of the new day of prayer came from the Orthodox Metropolitan Ioannis of Pergamum which has been celebrating a similar day of prayer for some time.

“The celebration of the Day on the same date as the Orthodox Church will be a valuable opportunity to bear witness to our growing communion with our orthodox brothers,” the pope wrote.

“The annual World Day of prayer for the Care of Creation offers to individual believers and to the community a precious opportunity to renew our personal participation in this vocation as custodians of creation, raising to God our thanks for the marvelous works that He has entrusted to our care, invoking his help for the protection of creation and his mercy for the sins committed against the world in which we live.”

The pope has asked that this celebration be taken up by the entire people of God including priests, men and women religious, and the lay faithful.

He went on to order the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace to “set up relevant initiatives to promote and illustrate this Day, so that this annual celebration becomes a powerful moment of prayer, reflection, conversion and the adoption of appropriate life styles.”

The Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity is being tasked with coordinating the activities of the celebration with similar initiatives set up by the World Council of Churches.

“Whilst I look forward to the widest possible cooperation for the best start and development of the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, I invoke the intercession of Mary, the Mother of God and of St. Francis of Assisi, whose Canticle of the Creatures inspires so many men and women of goodwill to live in praise of the Creator and with respect for creation.”
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