At St Stephen’s Church we take seriously our God-given responsibility to care for his creation. We have been appointed stewards of the earth and all its creatures, and as individuals and as a church we seek to fulfil this role. Below you can find information about our work in this area.

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A Prayer for God’s Creation, by Glenda

Father God, Saviour of the world, the world that you made for us in your glory: we ask Father that in your mercy you will look upon the suffering of the animals everywhere, here on earth, in the skies, and in the seas. We thank you Lord that there are kind people, stewards of the earth and all its beauty. They give their time and sometimes their lives in saving your beautiful creatures. Humankind can be cruel, selfish and thoughtless and your world suffers because of this. Teach us to protect your beautiful world. Make us courageous custodians who will do all we can to protect the blessings you have bestowed upon us. We pray for Animals Asia and their great work in saving the moon bears and other animals, and for all those in our country who care for animals and birds, saving, rehabilitating and educating for the future.

Amen

For more information about Animals Asia, please click here.

Monthly Blog Post - All Things Bright and Beautiful

For a summer holiday around 15 years ago, Brian and I were lucky enough to be able to visit Assisi. It was a pilgrimage of sorts for Brian as he was involved with the Franciscans but also a place that both of us were very keen to just visit as tourists. One of the strange things we remembered was the number of shops selling icons and people dressed (presumably) as Jesus standing in doorways – not what we had expected at all. However, when we went down to the Basilica we were blown away by the beauty of the buildings but also the sense of peace – that and the giant ‘Pax et Bonum’ carefully cut into the large gardens on the approach.

Most of us know that St Francis is the patron saint of animals but did you know he is now also the patron saint of the environment and ecology (Pope John Paul added in this additional responsibility)? There is a recognition that how we treat animals directly affects our environment, whether it be pollution in our seas which hurts sealife or how animal agriculture creates greenhouse gas emissions. But who was St Francis as a person and how did he end up being a patron saint?

For a start he wasn’t called Francis – his name was Giovanni di Pietro di Bernadone (essentially ‘John’ after John the Baptist). His father renamed him Francis after working in France for a long period. He was born into a wealthy family around 1180 but chose to give it all up to travel around and take up vows of poverty (he had been a soldier, a scholar, a version of a social worker , a poet and much more). Francis considered nature as the ‘mirror of God’ and there are many stories of him preaching to birds and other animals (which is also why, when you see pictures of him, he is always surrounded by small animals.) He called animals his ‘brothers and sisters’. There is also a famous story of how he persuaded a wolf not to attack a village. How much of any of this is true we have no idea and obviously stories from so long ago can be embellished, changed, mistranslated back and forth until they bear little resemblance to what actually happened but nearly a thousand years later, we do know that he was a man of consequence and is still revered today. He also co-founded a female movement mirroring the Franciscans which became known as the Poor Clares after St Clare of Assisi, a noblewoman who like him, took vows of poverty. He was canonised after a miracle where the stigmata appeared on him.

It is really difficult to write just a short article on his life as it was so full but, I suppose, what we should remember is that animals and the environment were deemed important enough to have their own patron saint. And if they are important enough to have St Francis then we should give them the focus they deserve in our daily lives.