Brooklyn Diocese starts solar panel installation for church-operated housing

(Photo by Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images)

(NEW YORK) Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzo last Thursday cut a ceremonial ribbon for a solar energy project that intends to bring solar panels to buildings managed by the church, The Catholic Sun reported.

The project is in response to Laudato Si, a 2015 encyclical, or papal memo, that urged Bishops to take action against climate change.

“The urgent challenge to protect our common home includes a concern to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change,” wrote Pope Francis in the encyclical.

Catholic Charities of Brooklyn and Queens formed the Laudato Si Corporation as a green energy initiative that will mount solar panels on the roofs of affordable housing buildings managed by the church.

The Bishop Thomas V. Daily Residence in Prospect Heights will be the first building to receive solar panels.

The Brooklyn Diocese currently operates 44 buildings.

The agency intends to install solar panels on three of the Brooklyn residential buildings by the end of the summer.

The energy produced by the solar panels will be pumped back into the grid and will generate income from Con Edison. Laudato Si Corp. intends to reinvest that money into the buildings.

“We cannot abuse creation,” said DiMarzo. “Pope Francis has said, God forgives all the time, people forgive some of the time, but nature never forgives. So we cannot destroy the nature that God has given to us."

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