Pope feeds fish as he opens Vatican's ambitious model of sustainable farming and education

Pope Leo XIV fed fish in the fishpond, pet horses and visited organic vineyards Friday as he inaugurated the Vatican’s ambitious project to turn Pope Francis’ preaching about caring for the environment into practice.

Leo formally opened Borgo Laudato Si, a 55-acre utopian experiment in sustainable farming, vocational training and environmental education located on the grounds of the papal summer retreat in Castel Gandolfo. The Vatican hopes the center, open to student groups, CEOs and others, will be a model of ecological stewardship, education and spirituality for the Catholic Church and beyond.

Leo travelled by helicopter to Castel Gandolfo and then zoomed around the estate’s cypress-lined gardens in an electric golf cart to reach the center, which is named for Francis’ landmark 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si,” or Praised Be. The document, which inspired an entire church movement, cast care for the planet as an urgent and existential moral concern that was inherently tied to questions of human dignity and justice, especially for the poor.

Leo has strongly reaffirmed Francis’ focus on the need to care for God’s creation, and celebrated the first “green” Mass in the estate’s gardens earlier this summer, using a new set of prayers inspired by the encyclical that specifically invoke prayers for creation. On Friday, some 10 years after Laudato Si was published, Leo presided over a liturgy to bless the new center after touring its gardens, farm and classrooms.

https://apnews.com/article/vatican-pope-leo-sustainable-farming-environment-e288d07e88bc438f5ca30e4473e1929d

This is VERY cool. Viva il Papa! (and I'm not even Catholic, but I like Pope Leo a lot!)