By Bill Jacobs, Founder and Executive Director
Breaking News: “Catholic religious order sells land to developers.” This is sad news that no one wants to hear, much less the religious orders that feel pressured to sell their land.
Catholic religious orders today face a difficult choice: to keep their land, including forests, meadows, and farms, or sell it to fund schools and the retirement needs of older members.
As Catholic-owned lands are sold, our faith is diminished as we lose a sense of the sacred in the land. This is made worse when religious images are removed from the land, such as crosses and statues of Mary and saints. Native plants and wildlife are also removed, no longer able to speak to us of the Book of Nature.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has said, “Our Earth is talking to us and we must listen to it and decipher its message if we want to survive.” Tragically, as land is sold and haphazardly developed, it can no longer communicate the full language of creation.
Fortunately, there is hope. Several Catholic religious orders have preserved all or part of their land. For example, the Sisters of St. Joseph in Brentwood, New York, preserved 27 acres of farmland on their 212-acre campus by selling the development rights to a local government agency, while retaining ownership of the land for community farming. The sisters follow an ambitious land ethic, which they adopted in 2015. The project was facilitated in part by a local conservation group, the Peconic Land Trust.
While secular conservation groups do good work, the Saint Kateri Conservation Center can go a step further by acknowledging God, our Creator and Redeemer, at the center of our work. God has made all of us his co-workers in creating and conserving the order and beauty of creation.
In 2018, the Saint Kateri Conservation Center submitted an expression of intent to apply for accreditation to the Land Trust Accreditation Commission, an independent program of the Land Trust Alliance. The Alliance serves as the voice of the land trust community and the national leader in policy, standards, and education to support land trusts so they can save and secure more lands now and for future generations.
To be eligible for accreditation, the Conservation Center must complete at least two land or easement acquisition projects. We are actively seeking Catholic landowners who wish to conserve their land, as well as supporters who can provide the resources needed to cover the costs of land acquisition and applying for accreditation.
For more information, or to express interest in supporting this program, please email us at saintkatericenter@gmail.com or visit our website at www.Kateri.org. Also, please follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at @SaintKateriCtr.
Saint Kateri, pray for us.