How can we build and spread lifestyles that allow to increase our level of well-being without depleting the natural resources that we must preserve for our children? How can we make sure that those new lifestyles are not only eco-friendly but even desirable? And how to bring families to adopt them so that we can speak of “ecological conversion” of society? Difficult but unavoidable questions for the future of humanity, as the Papal Magisterium and the international scientific community have repeatedly underlined. To try to answer those questions, the Pontifical Council for the Family, in collaboration with the non-profit Association Greenaccord, will organize on March 29th, at the Vatican (Hall of St. Pius X – Via della Conciliazione 5, 9am), the study day “Family, Safeguard Creation”.

 

“It 's impelling to find innovative and audacious ways and to establish the parameters for a new relationship with “nature” that focuses primarily on the development of every person and of all humanity.” - says S.E. Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family - “The family is one of the crucial points of this process, in fact it reaffirms a constitutive US that opposes the dictatorship of an absolute I (ie loose from every bond) which claims to be master of the earth and dispose of it arbitrarily.”

 

“The aim of the meeting - says the president of Greenaccord, Alfonso Cauteruccio - is to investigate those crucial issues through the analysis proposed by high-level scientists, economists and theologians. The hope is that their studies, their thoughts, their contributions can lead to a significant change of direction towards a model of development and consumption which does not abuse resources and makes the family an active, capable economic entity, through the daily choices regarding household and the awareness that every single gesture can be more respectful and with less impact on the Creation”.

 

Two working sessions are scheduled. In the morning, the speakers will be: S.E. Msgr. Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family; S.E. Metropolitan Ambrosius of Helsinki; Felix Finkbeiner, founder of the international movement “Plant for the Planet”; Luigino Bruni, an economist and coordinator of the of the EdC International Committee; Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

In the afternoon will speak P. Guido Innocenzo Gargano, camaldolese monk of San Gregorio al Celio, Gary Gardner, a researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, Leonardo Becchetti, economist at the University of Tor Vergata.

 

The two sessions will be concluded by the testimonies of a family, adhering to Coldiretti, who has opted for agriculture as a lifestyle choice, of a Neapolitan family who participated in the project “The Earth is your home” which Greenaccord has put in place together with the Diocese of Naples with the aim of encouraging the adoption of sustainable lifestyles, and a family who lives the drama of the “Land of Fires”.

 

To participate to the meeting, accreditation is suggested. Accreditation is required for press, photographers and cameramen within 27th March. Please write to: press@greenaccord.it