THE PROBLEM OF GOD-WORLD RELATIONSHIP IN POPE FRANCIS’ ENCYCLICAL “LAUDATO SI’”: ATTEMPTS AT PANENTHEISTIC INTERPRETATION

Abstract

The article critically analyzes the literature on the panentheistic interpretation of the encyclical of Pope Francis (1936–2025) “Laudato si”, over the ten years since its publication. The relevance of the article is related to the need to study an innovative (at the level of church teaching) philosophical and theological understanding of the relationship between God and the world, which specifically emphasizes the immanence of God in the context of the ecotheological movement, as well as the “spatial” and “panentheistic” turns in philosophical, religious and theological thought.If we can confidently assert, thanks to the emphasis on the ontological distance between God and the world in “Laudato si”, the absence of pantheistic ideas in the encyclical, then a valid question arises about the possibility of interpreting some of its fragments in the categories of the panentheistic model of the God-world relationship.Authors such as V. Mancuso, S. Williams, and F. Crabbé give a positive, more or less well-founded answer to this question; however, in our opinion, their argumentation does not provide sufficient grounds for such a statement. The articles by V. Mendonca and T. Messias indicate the proximity of the ideas presented in the Encyclical to panentheism, and the works by R. Battocchio and A. Clifford already express serious skepticism. The article also draws attention to the article by A. Woźnica, which emphasizes Pope Francis’ understanding of the world as a sacrament – a concept close to one of the versions of panentheism – pansacramentalism. The difficulties associated with the panentheistic interpretation of the encyclical “Laudato si” (as well as other examples of philosophical and theological thought) can be seen in the lack of clarity of the concept of panentheism (and hence the lack of clear criteria for analysis), as well as the limited and selective inclusion of works whose authors (e.g., A. N. Whitehead, J. Cobb, P. Teilhard de Chardin, J. Moltmann, A. Peacock, I. Gebara, etc.) are considered panentheists.