Care for Our Common Home

Join us in protecting our environment for future generations inspired by Pope Francis' teachings.

We are a small group trying to help everyone in our parishes to do something about our environment for the benefit of our world, ourselves and our childrens' children and beyoud. We are inspired by Pope Francis' encyclical letter 'Laudato Si'' on Care for Our Common Home (hence our name).

"As Christians we are inspired to be good stewards of the earth, to conserve and protect God’s creation and the earth’s resource." [Catholic Bishops of England and Wales]

Our next meeting on ZOOM

Wednesday 30th July 7:30pm

USUALLY last Wednesday of the month

"...there are no lasting changes without cultural changes, without a maturing of lifestyles and convictions within societies, and there are no cultural changes without personal changes”

Pope Francis, Laudate Deum (70).

Next Volunteer Day at St Teresa's:

Saturday 26th July from 10am

Joint Parishes' Picnic at St Teresa's Orchard

Sunday, 13th July from 12-3pm.

St Teresa’s Estate

Thanks – June 2025

Another beautiful sunny morning, greeted the happy band of volunteers who gathered once again to tackle the estate of St Teresa’s. A most sincere vote of thanks to you all.

Fionnuala and Siobhan took the front of the church by storm, clearing weeds and giving the whole area a good tidy up. Another new volunteer, Richard joined us and got stuck right into clearing and sweeping Finnegan’s Corner and the rear paths at the back of the Social Centre. John did a spectacular job in Finnegan’s Corner in clearing the path leading up to it and even managed to extricate the bind weed from the lavender. For the observant ones, you will have noticed the tree hanging into the carpark has now disappeared! And it also got a good sweep. Even a little low on numbers a great effort was made and it was nice to enjoy a cuppa and a biscuit together at half time.

The next St Teresa’s Volunteer Day will be on Saturday 26th July at 10:00.

It would be wonderful to have a few more helpers. No special skills are necessary, just work clothes, hardy shoes and most importantly: YOURSELF.

We will use the Social Centre toilet facilities and kitchen to make some hot drinks – hopefully to enjoy outside. Again, Thank You to all the volunteers and Regards, Romeo

What we have been doing

Making a difference in 2025

We started the year with

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

From the newsletter:

Care for our Common Home:

We are now into Plastic Free July

when we are urged to do all we can to reduce our plastic consumption (consumption is what it literally is as researchers have found microplastics in our bloodstreams, wombs, brains etc,). It's not easy to avoid plastic and it is certainly a useful material, but we need to reject its overuse. We can reuse containers if thoroughly cleaned rather than recycling them immediately, go to the shops that refill bottles of hygiene and cleaning liquids or buy soap and shampoo bars, buy fruit and veg that is not wrapped, and take soft plastic wrappings (anything that doesn't stick together like clingfilm) to the Coop and other supermarkets that take them in for recycling.. For further information go to: .

St Teresa’s next Volunteering Day will take place on Saturday 26th July from 10am. Please join us if you can; tools, gloves and refreshments will be provided.

See you there!

fOR THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF POPE fRANCIS' ENCYCLICAL LETTER, WE OFFERED:

6 weeks of LENT

6 chapters of LAUDATO SI’

or ‘CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME’

This has now (obviously) finished, but you can follow this material any time you like. Therefore, we have left it here for you to access and use.

Planting trees

We have made a Woodland Trust urban tree pack available to all free of charge. Trees in the Urban Tree Pack for the Wales and West of England are:

• Crab Apple

• Rowan

• Silver birch

The Season of Creation

We celebrated the Season of Creation from 1st September, Creation Day, through to 4th October, the Feast of St Francis of Assisi.

• We gave a short talk at each Mass on 31sth August / !st September.

• There was a Prayer each week during the Season.

• There was a Coffee Morning on 15th September with displays on our work.

• Our desire for an Ecumenical Prayer Service did not materialise (this year).

Clean Green Energy (Octopus Energy)

We offered people the chance to get a no-obligation quote from a major renewable supplier Octopus.

• Check if you are on a green energy tariff with your current supplier.

• If not, switch to your supplier's green energy tariff.

• If you're willing to switch supplier, we can give you a quote from Octopus Energy (clean and green) here.

Fitting Solar Panels

South Gloucester Council are trying to help enable homeowners to fit solar panels through a bulk buying scheme. Interested?

Register for free with no obligation.

Plastic-free July

We joined millions of people reducing their plastic waste. We chose to refuse single-use plastic when shopping as much as possible.

Plastic Free July® is a global movement that helps millions of people be part of the solution to plastic pollution – so we can have cleaner streets, oceans, and beautiful communities. Will you be part of Plastic Free July by choosing to refuse single-use plastics?

In March, some of us took part and counted our plastic waste for a whole week, uncovering that UK households are discarding a staggering 1.7 billion pieces of plastic each week. This collective effort highlighted the alarming scale of the plastic waste crisis in the UK.

The Results are in:

https://thebigplasticcount.com/results

We started with recycling by promoting Recycling for Good Causes for our chosen charity CAFOD, to give people an opportunity to recycle their unwanted mobiles and gadgets, cameras, jewellery and watches, currencies and stamps.

https://thebigplasticcount.com/results

Volunteer Days

Each month during the summer, there is a Volunteering Day at St Teresa's on the last Saturday of each mongh to care for the church gardens and surroundings. Come and join us.

The wonderful external estate of St Teresa’s, comprises of 6 main areas plus some additional associated areas: The Memorial Garden, Courtyard, Path and Side Steps; The Orchard, Fernery, Bank and Woodland Path; The Main Car Park, Rear Tree Line and Drive;The front of the Church – Front hedges, Courtyard, Paths and Planters; Small Car Park and Pavement area; The Old Church Hall, Small Car Park and Pavement area; Finnegan’s Corner and the front & rear footpaths of the Social Centre, plus the rear steps and waste area behind the Church Hall;

Let's care for our own patch as well as we can!

Where we are : our churches

St Vincent de Paul

Glencoyne Square
Southmead
Bristol
BS10 6DS

UK

St Teresa of the Child Jesus

71 Gloucester Road North
Filton
S. Gloucestershire
BS34 7PL

UK