Scotland: Catholic schools prepare for COP26 by studying “Laudato Si’”. “Greener” institutes

The number of Scottish Catholic schools that choose to participate in the “Laudato Si’ Schools Scotland” initiative, launched by the Scottish Catholic Education Service (SCES) of the Scottish Bishops’ Conference in the run-up to the COP26, is growing by the day. Registration on the dedicated website (https://sces.org.uk/laudato-si-schools-scotland-register-now/) is needed in order to access the resources that can be used in preparation for the Climate Conference that will be held in Glasgow from 1 to 12 November, which even Pope Francis will attend for a few hours. As many as 180 primary and secondary schools managed by the Catholic Church (almost half of the total of 363) have already registered so far, and their number continues to increase. The programme proposed by Laudato Si’ Schools Scotland includes several phases inspired by Pope Francis’ encyclical, which hundreds of Catholic students are now reading, focusing in particular on twelve excerpts from the document. The material made available by the SCES also includes practical suggestions on how to make schools “greener”, for example by encouraging more pupils to use public transport and schools to recycle better, and a poster to record the progress made each month. In the last phase of the programme, schools will take stock of the changes they have managed to introduce thanks to the study of the “Laudato Si” encyclical.
Valentina Bombelli