One-Year Since Laudato Si’ – How CRI seeks to meet the Holy Father’s Call

A year ago, the Vatican released Pope Francis’ encyclical letter, Laudato Si’, On Care For Our Common Home. As we noted over the several weeks following, the Holy Father’s words held special meaning at CBIS. Through our Catholic Responsible Investing℠ approach, we develop quality, ethically and socially responsible investments aimed at helping Catholic institutions align their portfolios with the teachings of the Church.

“CBIS has made some great strides to protect the environment in the past 12 months,” said Julie Tanner, Director of Catholic Responsible Investing at CBIS. “After successful shareholder votes on resolutions in 2015, BP and Shell responded with extensive climate change reporting and data in the first quarter this year. We also helped carry the Pope’s message to ExxonMobil in May, and the shareholder vote on our climate resolution exceeded expectations,” she said. “It gave us renewed hope and has emboldened our forthcoming efforts with the oil giant.”

“Pope Francis inspires us every day in our work for the common good,” said David Skelding, EVP at CBIS. “We put forth considerable effort this year to build out our participant service, investment management, distribution and CRI teams in service of the Church.” Skelding also noted, “We will leverage staff and resources in our continued focus on the Pope’s call to protect our common home, as well as on other critical issues the world faces such as human trafficking, water sustainability, and pornography.”

We invite you to read our full analysis of the encyclical, A Look Back: Laudato Si’ & The Pope’s Historic 2015 Visit. All of our posts on how our work aligns with, and is inspired by, the encyclical are available in the News section of our website. For your convenience, we also make available our Encyclical Compendium which gathers together all of our posts on Laudato Si’ in a single document. To get a free copy, please call 877-550-2247, and we’ll be happy to send you one.