The World Meeting of Families will begin Tuesday, August 21, in Dublin, Ireland, and culminates on Sunday, August 26, with Pope Francis celebrating Mass with an estimated 600,000 pilgrims in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.
Back in February 2018 in Maynooth, Ireland, John O’Shaughnessy, FSM’s CEO and CFO, joined with five others passionate about care of creation to imagine how the World Meeting of Families might become a catalyst for ecological conversion for the participants and their families and for the Catholic Church worldwide.
The “mustard seed” planted during that meeting blossomed into the “Our Common Home” (OCH) project, funded primarily by the Franciscan Sisters of Mary and coordinated by Dr. Lorna Gold (Ireland’s foremost climate advocate) and Janet Mellett.
Dr. Lorna Gold shared the Our Common Home overview:
“We are one human family. We have a common home—planet earth. Pope Francis in all his teachings urges us to take better care of our home. The Our Common Home Project at WMOF is an initiative which crosses over all elements of the pastoral conference from liturgy, to the programme and the facilities. Our Common Home Globe—which will be highly visible . . .—invites each pilgrim to stop and think, reflect and act in ways which show a new love for creation. It urges each of us to start the process of changing our wasteful habits and undergo an ‘eco-conversion.’ Centrepieces of this project will include a bio-diversity contemplative garden on Simmons Court Road, an Our Common Home teen tent, and a climate justice prayer space as well as a roving drama team bringing the ecological crisis to life. A full programme of talks, workshops and events in these spaces will be available on the WMOF app and from the team of eco-volunteers in green t-shirts.”
At the conference center will be the 12-foot Our Common Home globe; it will also be at Phoenix Park for the Papal mass. 
OCH efforts will ensure that WMOF events and facilities are as sustainable as possible.
Jane Mellett shares more about OCH’s goals for the World Meeting of Families in the video:
https://www.icatholic.ie/our-common-home-wmof2018-going-green/
At the World Meeting of Families ordinary people of all ages can learn practical ways to live out Pope Francis’s vision for caring for our common home.
