Creator of the Earth and Northern Lights: A Conversation with Sister Damien Marie Savino

On this episode I speak with Sister Damien Savino, F.S.E., Ph.D., Dean of Science and Sustainability at Aquinas College in Michigan. Sister Damien Marie has a Ph.D in Civil (Environmental) Engineering from The Catholic University of America (CUA),  a M.A. in Theology  from CUA, a M.S. in Soil Science from the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, and a B.S.  Biogeography (High Honors) from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Sister Damien Marie has scientific, ecological, and theological chops, which made this a fascinating discussion.          

For me it was a moving and powerful conversation as Sister Damien Marie spoke of her own revelatory experience witnessing the Northern Lights in northern Norway as a young woman and her recognition of the tight connection she found between place and people as a student among the Sámi people of northern Finland. We also spoke about Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si', the sixth extinction, the difference between nature and creation, and whether Christianity is the cause of the ecological crisis in which we find ourselves.  On the origin of our current ecological crisis, Sister Damien Marie referred to an influential article written in 1967 by Lynn White called "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis" in  Science 155: 1203-1207 which held Christianity, but not Francis of Assissi, responsible for our current ecological woes. She offered some alternative views on the cause of the crisis and how we might imagine or reimagine humanity's role in responding to the crisis.

Sister Damien Marie will be offering a paper at the upcoming Pope Francis Conference in Vancouver called "The Franciscan Roots of Integral Ecology: Ecological Conversion and the Culture of Encounter." In this paper she will "address the Franciscan roots of integral ecology in light of contemporary challenges to ecological conversion and the culture of encounter, two concepts at the core of Pope Francis’ encyclicals Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti." The paper is on Saturday May 6, so please come and join us if you are in the Vancouver area.  

If you would like to know more about her approach to Laudato Si', as well as to Franciscan spirituality in relation to creation and the role of humans, please watch her recent lecture on the encyclical  or read her article on how to live an ecology of daily life. Or, check out the "Educating for Laudato Si'" website (praisebetoyou.org). 

Please enjoy this episode and if you do, would you please rate, review, and pass on the news about this podcast to your friends? I would appreciate that very much!

John W. Martens