Our ‘Common Home’ and Christian Realism, by Robert Royal

By Robert Royal, The Catholic Thing, July 9, 2025

Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent books are The Martyrs of the New Millennium: The Global Persecution of Christians in the Twenty-First Century, Columbus and the Crisis of the West , and A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.

Pope Leo will have celebrated the new Mass for the Common Home (or Care of Creation, Missa pro custodia creationis) in Rome by the time this appears today. It isn’t a radical recasting of the liturgy – on paper. It mostly just introduces several prayers reminding believers that God created the world and placed us here within the Garden “to cultivate and care for it.”(Genesis 2:15) As with the controversies over the Traditional Latin Mass, however, the significance of the Creation Mass goes far beyond the bare words to deep questions.

This Mass clearly has been long in preparation, maybe ever since Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato si’ (“Care for Our Common Home”), though it was only announced, unexpectedly, on July 3, as was the first celebration only six days later. As with that encyclical, controversy is inevitable. …

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