Vatican City – Today, the Holy See Press Office announced that on 3 July 2025, a press conference will be held to present the new Missa “pro custodia creationis”, which will be included among the Missae “pro variis necessitatibus vel ad diversa” in the Roman Missal.
Participants will include Cardinal Michael Czerny, S.J., Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, and Archbishop Vittorio Francesco Viola, O.F.M., Secretary of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
This marks yet another step in what we can now plainly call the socialisation of the liturgy. A Holy Mass “for the care of creation” may well earn applause in certain media circles, but it increasingly resembles a political operation disguised as worship, rather than an act of adoration offered to God. Some have clearly forgotten that the Holy Mass is a serious matter. The altar is being turned into a podium, and the liturgy into a political platform — an ideological stage.
From the praise of God to sacred greenwashing?
In the name of “ecological conversion”, there is an ongoing attempt to adapt Christian worship to the world’s current emergencies. But it is being forgotten that the liturgy is not born to respond to sociopolitical needs. By its very nature, it is adoration, thanksgiving, sacrifice, and supplication. It is not — and must never become — a collection of ecological good intentions perfumed with incense.
What remains of the authentic spirit of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, which declared: “The liturgy, through which, especially in the divine Sacrifice of the Eucharist, the work of our redemption is accomplished, contributes in the highest degree to the faithful expressing in their lives and manifesting to others the mystery of Christ and the genuine nature of the true Church” (SC 2). And again: “The sacred liturgy is above all the worship of the divine Majesty” (SC 33).
Not the worship of nature. Not the cult of “mother earth”. Not the liturgy of environmentalist agendas. But the worship of God.
An ideological agenda
There is a widespread illusion that adding a new formula to the Missal will awaken a more Gospel-rooted ecology. In truth, it is a silent manipulation, which removes Christ from the centre and reduces the Mass to an activist tool. The pattern is familiar: start with a universally accepted value (care for creation), inflate it with ideology, and then insert it into the liturgy to make it “untouchable”.
Meanwhile, we continue to ignore the profound crisis of faith and sense of the sacred in our communities. Empty churches, confused faithful, priests abandoning their ministry. But all this seems of little importance, so long as the Missal can be filled with “modules” aligned with the communication strategies of the moment.
A cult that speaks of everything but God
The real scandal is that we keep talking about everything — except the essential: that the liturgy is for God, not for anyone’s agenda. If the Mass ceases to be the place of the living presence of the crucified and risen Lord, and becomes instead a setting for climate awareness campaigns, then we should not be surprised if people eventually prefer attending an environmental conference over going to church.
The risk is plain: a politicised Mass hollows out the faith, for it exchanges redemption for awareness, and the glory of God for the world’s approval.
Those who truly love the liturgy, and still believe it is the encounter with the living God, can only feel deep bitterness at this latest operation. An operation which, beneath the liturgical veneer, conceals an ever more horizontal, self-referential, ideological theological vision.
Let us return to God, before we try to change the world.
s.S.A.
Silere non possum