Theological research on the theme of “creation”, renewed lifestyles, and environmental sustainability: these are the new challenges for Christians in Europe as enunciated in the report “Responsibility for the Creation in Europe”, published by the CCEE in the run-up to the Third European Ecumenical Assembly (EEA3) at Sibiu (in Romania, 4-8 September). The research embodied in the report, conducted by the Lanza Foundation (Italy), reviews the six conferences promoted by the CCEE on the environment between 1999 and 2004, presents some positive environmental experiences realized at the national level and, explain its editors, may, in preparation for EEA3, help to “propose new and stronger commitments for the future, and also be an occasion to assess the situation in dialogue with the other Christian Churches”. The CCEE secretariat sent 34 questionnaires to the individual Bishops’ Conferences (BC): 24 have been compiled and returned. The findings, observe the analysts, show “a significant attention to the safeguard of the creation: 19 national episcopates have a specific delegate” for it. Various initiatives have been undertaken: meetings of theological and spiritual study/formation, and events aimed at the promotion of sustainable lifestyles (16 BC). Interventions in the form of denunciations and protests have also been made in the public arena (12 BC), but “the option of formation rather than political action” seems to prevail. The most “active” Churches in the protection of the creation are those in the German-speaking area. “The diffusion of an effective network of collaboration with Catholic and ecumenical agencies” is “wide and promising”, says the report. What also emerges from the replies to the questionnaire is the fact that various Bishops’ Conferences consider “of particular importance the meetings promoted by the CCEE, from which “encouragement and aid” are awaited.
