In time for the 2023 monthlong celebration of the “Season of Creation,” the Vatican Philatelic and Numismatic Office published the designs it has chosen for stamps drawing attention to the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. They are very “Laudato Si’,” which is the opening phrase of St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of Creation. The observance runs Sept. 1-Oct. 4.
The new stamps feature a watercolor by Franciscan Father Giuseppe Murdaca, pastor of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi in Reggio Calabria, Italy.
The words, “Laudato il Signore Opere Sue” (“Praise the Lord, all his works”), are in the center of the painting, surrounded by water, a dove, the sun, the moon and a lamb walking on green fields.
The figures’ placement around the words are meant as “a sign of the embrace of God who was pleased to create the conditions necessary for human life,” the Philatelic and Numismatic Office said in a press release. “Its message calls humanity to ecological conversion.”
