Pope feeds fish and pats horses as he opens Vatican’s sustainable farming centre

Pope Leo fed fish in the fishpond, patted horses and visited organic vineyards on Friday as he inaugurated the Vatican’s ambitious project to turn Pope Francis’s preaching about caring for the environment into practice.

Leo formally opened Borgo Laudato Si’, a 55-acre utopian experiment in sustainable farming, vocational training and environmental education located in the grounds of the papal summer retreat in Castel Gandolfo.

The Vatican hopes the centre, open to student groups, chief executives and others, will be a model of ecological stewardship, education and spirituality for the Catholic Church and beyond.

Leo travelled by helicopter to Castel Gandolfo and then zoomed around the estate’s cypress-lined gardens in an electric golf cart to reach the centre, which is named after Francis’s landmark 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’, or Praised Be.

The document, which inspired an entire church movement, cast care for the planet as an urgent and existential moral concern that was inherently tied to questions of human dignity and justice, especially for the poor.

Leo has strongly reaffirmed Francis’s focus on the need to care for the planet, and celebrated the first “green” Mass in the estate’s gardens earlier this summer, using a new set of prayers inspired by the encyclical that specifically invokes prayers for creation.

On Friday, some 10 years after Laudato Si’ was published, Leo presided over a liturgy to bless the new centre after touring its gardens, farm and classrooms.

The Pope recalled that according to the Bible, human beings have a special place in the act of creation, created in the “image and likeness of God”.

“But this privilege comes with a great responsibility: that of caring for all other creatures, in accordance with the creator’s plan,” he said.

“Care for creation, therefore, represents a true vocation for every human being, a commitment to be carried out within creation itself, without ever forgetting that we are creatures among creatures, and not creators.”

Leo spoke from the heart of the project, a huge greenhouse in the same curved, embracing shape as the colonnade of St Peter’s Square that faces a 10-room educational facility and dining hall.

Once it is up and running, visiting groups can come for an afternoon school trip to learn about organic farming, or a weeks-long course on regenerative agriculture.

The centre aims to accomplish many of the goals of the environmental cause.

Solar panels provide all the power the facility needs, plastics are banned and recycling and composting systems used to reach zero-waste.

Officials say water will be conserved and maximised using “smart irrigation” systems that utilise artificial intelligence to determine plants’ needs, along with rainwater harvesting and the installation of wastewater treatment and reuse systems.

There is also a social component. The Vatican’s first vocational school in the grounds will aim to provide on-site training in sustainable gardening, organic winemaking and olive harvesting to offer new job opportunities for vulnerable groups including victims of domestic violence, refugees, recovering addicts and rehabilitated prisoners.

The products made will be sold on-site, with profits re-invested in the educational centre: Laudato Si wine, organic olive oil, herbal teas from the farm’s aromatic garden and cheese made from its 60 dairy cows, continuing a tradition of agricultural production that for centuries have subsidised monasteries and convents.

While school groups are a core target audience, organisers also want to invite professionals for executive education seminars, to sensitise the world of business to the need for sustainable economic growth.

Officials declined to discuss the financing of the project, other than to say an undisclosed number of partners had invested in it and that confidential business plans precluded the Vatican from releasing further information.