The Roman Catholic Church on Wednesday launched a tree planting exercise with the church looking to plant over 200,000 trees this year.
The launch took place at St John’s Catholic Church in Lilongwe with financial from support Cadecom. It brought together all the eight archbishops of the church from across the country.
Speaking with reporters, Archbishop of Blantyre Archdiocese Luke Thomas Msusa said the exercise is aimed at bringing back the environment and encouraged all the Christians as well as religious leaders to take part in tree planting exercise.
Msusa added that as a church they follow and protect what God created for them to use since it pleases the Lord as a creator when the environment is care of at all times.
“As a church we are planning to plant more trees, we are therefore calling on all Christians, stakeholders and chiefs to protect this creation because it is our life. Let us be leaders in trying to mitigate this climate change issues as the message of Pope said let us take care of our mother home,” he explained.
He then asked the stakeholders to take care of the trees to make sure that they survive.
Cadecom National Coordinator Chimwemwe Phiri said their role is to support the efforts of the church in restoring the environment as way of addressing climate change and also to ensure that members of the communities are taking care of the already existing trees.
Phiri said they are planning that in each of the Catholic Dioceses they should plant 35,000 trees so at the end of the year over 200,000 should be planted.
Different stakeholders both from the government and private sector have been planting trees during this tree planting season.
Simply excellent job