Opening Address at 2026 Sustainability Summit
These remarks were presented by Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., on Thursday, March 12, 2026, to open the inaugural Sustainability Summit hosted by the Just Transformations to Sustainability Team at Notre Dame Rome.
Good morning, everyone! I’m delighted to welcome you this morning as we launch Notre Dame’s inaugural Sustainability Summit, “Sustainability of Hope: Envisioning a New Horizon for Planetary Flourishing.”
I’d like to start by thanking Arun Agrawal and the entire Just Transformations to Sustainability team for bringing us all together. I would also like to thank Silvia Dall’Olio, Anna Ricigliano, and the Notre Dame Rome team for making it possible for us to be here in this beautiful facility.
Notre Dame’s Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative, or JTS, for short, is one of eight University-wide strategic initiatives at Notre Dame, launched to spearhead multi-disciplinary research and education to address the world’s most pressing problems. These initiatives are linchpins in our efforts to become the Notre Dame the world needs, an ever-greater engine of insight, innovation, and impact.
The JTS Initiative was formally established one year ago, when Arun joined Notre Dame’s faculty and became the initiative’s inaugural Director.
Since then, the Initiative has made tremendous strides, developing a distinctive model of sustainability that has at its core a concept of human flourishing inspired by Laudato si’ and rooted in hope, justice, and community.
We gather here at a critical moment. Crises are accelerating, and signs of instability are evident. Climate patterns are growing more volatile, species are disappearing at unprecedented rates, and deepening inequality continues to cast the most vulnerable to the margins. We are approaching a tipping point, where the cost of delay grows more severe.
This moment calls us to something deeper than technical solutions, as important as they may be.
This moment calls for a deep reflection on who we are as human beings, our place in creation, our interdependence on one another and on the entire created order. We must take the fruits of reflection and confront these realities with honesty, courage, and a renewed sense of responsibility. And we must take a positive approach to promoting the change needed.
We have many challenges. Yet, at the very moment when bold leadership is most needed, we are witnessing signs of retreat. We have seen rollbacks of environmental protections, reductions in scientific funding, and even a retreat from basic insights that once anchored responsible public action. These actions reveal a troubling tendency to turn away from what is before us at a time when clarity and courage are essential.
As these challenges intensify, we must also acknowledge that important work is underway. Across nations and institutions, there are many who are advancing scientific innovation, expanding our understanding of environmental and social systems, and investing in sustainable initiatives.
Yet we must be candid, these actions are not keeping pace with the scale of the crises we face. The signs of strain are accelerating faster than our responses, and the gap between what we are doing and what the moment demands continues to widen.
I believe it’s important to ask, what does this moment demand of us?
For Notre Dame, we find the answer to this question in the transformative vision for planetary flourishing articulated by Pope Francis in his encyclical, Laudato si’.
Rather than trying to solve the world’s ecological problems separate from the economic, political, and social systems that have exacerbated them, Pope Francis called for an integral ecology, a holistic approach to planetary flourishing that unites care for people with care for the planet by embracing the interconnectedness of environmental, social, and economic wellbeing.
A true ecological approach, Pope Francis says, always becomes a social approach that is attentive to both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.
In addition to providing this framework, he also identified the numerous structural and moral shortcomings that impede true transformation: an overreliance on technology and markets, weak political systems steered by special interests, global inequality, and overconsumption.
Undeniably, the core ideas, values, and approaches in Laudato si' resonate today as much as, and possibly more than, they did when originally published ten years ago. The goal of the JTS Initiative is to answer Pope Francis’ call to action through leading-edge research, holistic educational programs, and, critically, global partnerships.
True transformation requires more than academic excellence; it demands collaboration. We aim to link our research and educational efforts with action-oriented partnerships across communities and regions, and in doing so cultivate the shared capacity to elevate local knowledge, co-create innovative tools, and scale evidence-based approaches where it matters most.
Our partners, their goals, and their needs should be central to everything we do. They should inform our research questions and curricular programs. They have the ability to unlock hands-on learning opportunities for our students. And they can ensure that the tools, knowledge, and strategies we create together reach the institutions, global leaders, and communities that can benefit the most.
As an exciting and timely example: Earlier this week we partnered with the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and their Borgo Laudato Si' Centre for Higher Education to host the inaugural convening of the Global Alliance for Laudato si’, an international network committed to advancing integral ecology through scholarship, teaching, and practice.
Over the course of two days at the Borgo in Castel Gandolfo, Notre Dame and the Dicastery led over 80 researchers, educators, and practitioners to co-create a shared research-to-action agenda and establish interdisciplinary working groups to advance the priorities that emerged.
And as we speak, Notre Dame undergraduates are piloting a new hands-on learning course at the Borgo on the principles of integral ecology, responding to Pope Francis’ call to train the next generation of leaders by forming their heads, hands, and hearts.
We are excited and immensely grateful for this growing partnership with the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, and consider it an excellent example of how our research and our teaching can align with and advance the vision of Laudato si’.
At a high level, this is also why we are gathering here.
Over the next two and half days, we hope to achieve three goals:
- First, we want to advance forward-looking and action-oriented discussions that articulate bold ideas for how sustainability research and education can be translated into transformative global action.
- Second, we want to generate new collaborations and research contributions that can help shape the field of sustainability as an academic discipline, while also supporting policymakers, practitioners, and communities around the world.
- And, third, we want (we need) your help in refining and strengthening Notre Dame’s vision for its work on sustainability: A vision that does not begin with isolated problems or end with technical fixes, but rather, is guided by a positive and holistic vision of a world where all life can flourish, and the hope that it is still within our collective capacity to make that future possible.
Pope Francis calls us all to ecological conversion. As I noted, this means an inner transformation that begins reflection and a richer understanding of our place in creation as well as our responsibilities to one another and the world around us. Without attending to these deeper moral and spiritual dimensions of the human person, we will struggle to achieve lasting change.
This is precisely where hope becomes essential. Hope is not blind optimism or naivete, but rather a commitment to seeing problems clearly and choosing to act.
At Notre Dame, we strive to be seekers of truth, sustainers of hope, and builders of bridges.
- Seekers of truth refuse to look away, naming problems honestly and searching for root causes.
- Sustainers of hope trust that we can redirect our steps toward change. They create conditions in which a better future can be imagined, knowing that hope is a shared resource that we cultivate together.
- Finally, builders of bridges turn hope into action. They connect people, disciplines, and experiences, transforming shared understandings into the action that carries us toward a more sustainable future.
In this way, hope is the force that makes action possible.
So, as we embark on this Sustainability of Hope Summit, let us answer Pope Francis’ call, to think boldly, to act courageously, and to work together to build a more just and sustainable world.
Thank you very much. Many blessings to you all!