Last year, Pope Francis published his second encyclical named "Laudato Si" which comes from an old Italian word meaning "Praise be to you". In this encyclical, the Pope wrote about caring for our common home, the earth, and he also wrote about how much we humans have degraded this common home. As a result of this encyclical, a group of catholic climate advocates from around the world teamed up to create the Global Catholic Climate Movement (GCCM).  A few months ago, I was invited to a weekend retreat/workshop about "Laudato Si"and was invited to participate in the World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland from July 25, 2016 to July 31, 2016. It has been a week since my return from Krakow and I continue to remain inspired by my experience there.

The GCCM Youth's most important task was to set-up the "Laudato Si Eco-Village" at the Park Krowerderski in the outskirts of Krakow.  The Eco-Village was created by GCCM, which was composed of different Catholic climates advocates from Poland, The Philippines, Kenya, Burundi, Colombia, Brazil, Australia, Argentina, Great Britain and the USA. We had exhibits from different continents and organizations like 350.org. We also had workshops about different topics like the encyclical in general, fossil fuels and different ways to save our common home. We also had a prayer tree wherein pilgrims were encouraged to tie ribbons with their prayers written down on ribbons and tied all around the tree.

During the whole week, my fellow youth and I from GCCM went around town to collect selfies with other international youth and signatures for our campaign to promote "Laudato Si".  We were able to meet many youth from all over the world who were amazed by what we were doing and wanted to do their part. We probably didn't reach all the 2.5 million pilgrims that joined the World Youth Day, but we hope our message is re-echoed by all those we met.  Sometimes, we did not get the feedback we expected especially from some Catholics who when asked, had never heard of "Laudato Si". We just took this as a challenge for us to work harder knowing that the message of the Pope has not been fully disseminated.

Our team is now looking into the future and planning for the next World Youth Day in Panama with the hope that "Laudato Si" will be a more familiar topic that millions of Catholics all around the world talk about and live by.