Catholic Archbishop in Sierra Leone Proposes Creation of Environmental Clubs to Foster “care for our common home”

Freetown, 08 December, 2025 / 3:47 PM

Sierra Leone’s Catholic Archdiocese of Freetown has launched its 2025/2026 Pastoral Year with a call on the Metropolitan See’s pastoral units to establish environmental clubs to promote awareness of the care for the environment.

In his address at the inauguration of the Archdiocese’s 2025/2026 Pastoral Year, Archbishop Edward Tamba Charles highlighted the “care for our common home” as one of the key areas in the new year, in addition to Safeguarding of the vulnerable people, and the move towards a synodal Church in the Archdiocese.

He found it unfortunate that Pope Francis’ appeals in Laudato Si’ to care for the environment “remain largely unheeded as human activities continue to destroy the environment for profit.”

“Our country, Sierra Leone, is no exception to this deplorable trend,” Archbishop Tamba Charles said in his December 5 address at the event that was held at St. Anthony’s Hall in Freetown.

“As a way of putting into action our faith in God, the Creator of heaven and earth, I encourage all pastoral units to establish environmental clubs,” the Archbishop said, and suggested that the clubs be christened ‘Laudato Sì Clubs’ in memory of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical letter, Laudato Sì.

The Sierra Leonean Archbishop called for the awareness of the existential relationship between human well-being and the environment, saying, “When we take care of the environment, the environment also takes care of us. The opposite is also true. When we do not take care of the environment, when we treat it as we like for profit or for any other reason, it comes back to hurt us.”

Archbishop Tamba Charles recalled that Pope Francis drew attention to the interconnection of all the creatures of God, so much so that the welfare of one impacts all the others.

He recounted witnessing daily the indiscriminate disposal and sometimes burning of plastic and other waste products that he said had affected the environment, especially in Freetown.

“It saddens me that each time some of our parishes and Church organizations have celebrations, they leave behind plastic waste and bottles that could easily be put in bags or bins and disposed of properly. During their lunch breaks, children throw dirt around their school compounds that had been swept well by elderly cleaners old enough to be their grandparents,” he said.

In his address, Archbishop Tamba Charles highlighted several issues of pastoral concern that he said should not be overlooked in the Archdiocese of Freetown’s 2025/2026 pastoral year.

Archbishop Tamba Charles said that the Archdiocese’s new Pastoral Year would focus on issues of safeguarding, the promotion of lay evangelization, and the move “towards a synodal Church”.

On the need for collective responsibility for the mission of the Church, and the promotion of lay evangelization, the Archbishop of Freetown appealed to all pastoral units in the Archdiocese to engage their faithful to be proactive in spreading their gospel of Christ, “beginning at home, in their families, at their places of work, and in their professional engagements.”