Making all things new: wrapping up a pontifical success

Well, it’s a wrap. Or is it?

“Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Nature: Our Responsibility,” the Vatican super-conference of some sixty of the greatest minds in academia, was apparently so well-received that we might have witnessed not the end of the conversation between the natural and social sciences, but “the beginning of something, a new sort of communication across the disciplines.”

Those were the words of conference organizer and atmospheric scientist Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan. He was speaking during one of the many spontaneous times of reflection during the five-day event, when it seemed unanimous that the work of this pontifical gathering must continue.

But for now, the event's organizers need to rest. And we need to ponder all that happened and all that was shared.

What follows is a summary of summaries of conference news and commentary. There is certainly more—or at least there should be—and so if you know of any other event coverage or commentary, please share it in the comments below.

First, there is conference material from the event’s organizers, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. The event website is here; the event program is here; and video of the proceedings can be found here for Saturday, here for Monday, and here for Tuesday. (Friday’s archive seems absent, but when a source is found I’ll revise this page and add it.) Presentation documents can be found here.

As for coverage, Andy Revkin of The New York Times was present during the conference and also participated in it with questions and with a final conference reflection, which can be found at about the 10:39:30 mark of this YouTube archive.

Dan Misleh, at the Catholic Climate Covenant, who was also an observer, has been blogging about the conference here.

Brian Roewe at the National Catholic Reporter has written about the event and I would image there is more to come.

Commonweal’s Dominic Preziosi has this posting, and John Allen at the Boston Globe provides coverage towards the end of this posting about all things Vatican.

And besides my blog entries (this first one, this one, and this one), Catholic World Report was kind enough to publish my analysis.

Again, if you know of any other coverage, please share it below.

Catholic Ecology Home

Photo credit: Pontifical Academy of Science. Used with permission.