A New Work of Mercy: Care for our Common Home is an article from The Catholic Times that focuses on caring for our Earth from a global perspective. The following paragraph sums up Pope Francis's reasoning, in part, for introducing World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation:
"Until the last few hundred years, most people had a local sphere of influence. It was sufficient to love your immediate neighbor as yourself. But in our globalized economy, we participate in systems that affect our brothers and sisters in the farthest reaches of the planet, most of whom we will never meet. Pope Francis points out the ecological debt between the global north and south caused by 'the disproportionate use of natural resources by certain countries' (LS 51). In proposing care for our common home as a work of mercy, he is inviting us to expand our concept of neighbor yet again."
