via Brian Roewe:

In the classroom at Creighton University was San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy, who sat at a student desk and listened. For most of the three days, McElroy was a regular participant in the conference co-sponsored by Catholic Climate Covenant and Creighton. He joined small-group discussions, sat in the audience during presentations and shared meals at a campus cafeteria.

The San Diego bishop has become one of the leading voices among U.S. bishops on Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home.”…

McElroy, 65, said he would like to see “a structurally deeper level of commitment” to the encyclical within the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, beyond the work already done by some of its offices and programs on environmental policy and climate adaptation and mitigation. (The USCCB helped form the Catholic Climate Covenant in 2006, and remain among its 18 national partners.)

“If we don’t get this issue right, in the end none of the other issues are going to matter, because human dignity will have been destroyed as we know it if our planet is destroyed,” he said.