The following is the first installment of an interview conducted with Fr. Joe Rozansky, OFM, international director of the Franciscan Office for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation (JPIC). In it, Fr. Joe explains the role of JPIC and how he became involved in the area of environmental justice. The article was written by Alicia von Stamwitz and appears in the August 2012 issue of St. Anthony Messenger.
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How can we work together to defend the poor and . . . the world that we all love?” asks Fr. Joe Rozansky, OFM, international director of JPIC.
The General Constitutions of the Order of Friars Minor affirm the centrality of environmental justice in the Franciscan mission. Father Joe Rozansky, OFM, is international director of the Franciscan Office for Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation (JPIC).
The Bronx native has been based in Rome since his 2005 appointment to the JPIC office. He is a member of the Holy Name Province of Franciscan Friars, based in New York City.
Father Rozansky traveled back to the United States not long ago to facilitate a seminar for JPIC animators and interested friars of the English-speaking Conference. St. Anthony Messenger caught up with him after the seminar, on the grounds of Our Lady of the Snows Shrine in Belleville, Illinois.
‘You Can’t Be Just a Tree Hugger’
Q. Describe the JPIC office and your role in it.
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A. Our office deals with environmental justice, which is the relationship between the environment and justice for people. It deals with peacebuilding and reconciliation in the friars’ work with the excluded of our society. And it deals with the ethical use of resources, both financial and natural. The last phrase, “integrity of creation,” basically means concern for creation.
Essentially, our work is to reflect with the friars and educate them: to see what they’re doing in these areas and then to encourage them to do more. Originally this work was seen more as something for activists, and I think we still need activists — people who look at a situation and can organize a specific project. But what we’re trying to do right now is to make JPIC values part of our everyday life and ministry as Franciscans.
Q. Can you say more about the phrase “environmental justice?”
A. Environmental justice includes our concern for both the environment and the people. We should not have an environmental concern that discounts our concern for people. And our concern for people should also take into account our concern for the environment.
The idea is that you cannot be just a tree hugger. A bunch of people live underneath those trees, and there are all sorts of social relationships and connections to the trees and forests. So what we try to do is show the relationship between the two.
When we address poverty, for example, we can’t destroy nature in the process — because in the end that’s going to come back and bite us in the tail. And when we address the issues of the environment, we need, without question, to address the issues of economics. The question becomes: How can we work together to defend the poor and to defend the world that we all love? We need an integrated approach.
Q. Is climate change a part of this?
A. Yes. People are very concerned nowadays with climate change, especially in the United States. How many wildfires are burning around the United States right now? And what about the tornadoes? I just heard a government official on television comment that climate change is responsible for a lot of these problems. Most people now agree that this is more than speculation: weather patterns are changing, and they are creating the conditions for these disasters.
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Another example is the oceans. A major article just came out about the oceans, saying that they’re much more “dead” than we thought. If we lose the oceans, what happens then? That’s a huge part of the way that we sustain ourselves.
For too long, people wouldn’t believe the idea of climate change, but it seems that scientific evidence now points to the impact of human activity on the climate. We need to find ways to address that impact and to change the ways that we live.
Here in this country we have a big responsibility. A lot of our development has been based on the unlimited use of natural resources. There’s no question that the entire population of the world cannot live as we do in the United States or like the people in Western Europe. There are not enough resources in our world.
We also need to see how climate change impacts the poor — not only the environment — because the poor have the least resources and suffer the most when disasters occur. I’m very concerned about the environment, but I would never address the environment alone.
The Cost of Hope
Q. What drew you to this work?
A. A lot of it goes back to my experience in Brazil, where I was from 1975 to 1985. I saw firsthand so many injustices, so many problems, and the poverty of the people. The first five years I worked in a very middle- to upper-middle-class school. But then I moved from the city of Anápolis in central Brazil to the city of Goiânia, which is the state capital.
In Goiânia, I was encouraged in many ways by the Church itself to be much more aware of the reality around me and the difficulties our people faced. So I ended up working in a number of slum areas, called favelas. I met lots of families in the favelas who were struggling to survive, yet they were still committed to changing things for the better. They inspired me to do the work that I’m doing today.
Q. Were there any people in particular who inspired you?
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A. There obviously were, and I would say that they came from across the spectrum. One was the archbishop of Goiânia, Dom Fernando Gomes. He was one of the big voices in the bishops’ conference at that time when the military was in charge of the government. The government was very repressive, as was true throughout Latin America. There were dictatorships everywhere, and Dom Fernando would speak out against that; he would speak out in favor of justice for everybody.
Goiânia also had the national headquarters for the Pastoral Land Commission. In Brazil one of the big social problems is land reform, and I was inspired by the people who worked at the commission, both at the local level and at the national level. I mean, there were people I knew who were tortured, people who had family members who were killed because of their association with these groups.
All of those people were, in a sense, models for me. Many of them were very poor, they had very little time to themselves, and yet they would give the little time they had to this organization or to coming to church. They went to Mass to be inspired by the whole message of Jesus, by the message of Francis. And they weren’t asking for handouts; they were about this task themselves. They were asking people to walk with them and help them understand how they could improve their situation.
Q. Chico Mendes and, later, Sister Dorothy Stang were two well-known environmentalists in Brazil, both of whom were assassinated. Did you meet Mendes while you were there?
A. Chico died in 1988. I met him in Washington, D.C., through a friend who works at Environmental Defense [Fund]. He was a rubber tapper and the president of the rubber tappers’ union. His whole approach was to save the forest, not just because the trees were important, but because for him and for the people who worked in the forest it was their livelihood, it was their home. He loved the forest, too, but at the same time he saw it as a means of sustenance for himself and for the people.
He was murdered for his work, and these problems continue in the Amazon. Just before I came here, we were talking in our meetings about the Amazon and how we want to create a comprehensive evangelization project that will include all of these issues. Of course, we’ll have sacramental ministry and pastoral ministry, but we also want to be ministers of human rights, ministers of the environment.
Click here for further information on the Franciscan Office for Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation (JPIC).
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