The Interchurch Center Chapel

Season of Creation Interfaith Gathering

On September 1, 1989, Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios I issued a prophetic message on the urgency of care for the environment, marking the first annual “Day of Prayer for Creation.” The message was taken up, and in the decades since, a Season of Creation has been observed across many Christian denominations worldwide between September 1 and October 4 (the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of all animals and the environment). Over the last two years, a seminar in Assisi attended by leaders from nearly all major denominations has been working to institute the Feast of Creation formally as a shared major feast in liturgical calendars across the Christian world—the first such achievement since 1456. This year also marks the ten-year anniversary of the late Pope Francis’ landmark ecological encyclical, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.

Wednesday, October 1, 2025
12:00-1:00 pm Eastern

The Interchurch Center, in 2025, will honor and participate in this process by adding a Season of Creation Interfaith Gathering to its own calendar. We recognize that, as inspiring and important as the Feast of Creation will be among the Christian churches, the integrity of creation is a bedrock for interfaith collaboration and fraternity far more broadly, and we take the opportunity to recommit our diverse religious communities, hand in hand, to moral and institutional responsibility to the Earth of which we are a part.

The gathering—on Wednesday, October 1, 2025, 12:00-1:00 pm—will be hosted by Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute (GEII) and the Interfaith Center of New York (ICNY), in collaboration with the Interchurch Center’s Committee on Ecumenical, Interfaith, and Community Concerns (CEICC) and Union Theological Seminary’s Center for Earth Ethics (CEE).

The Interchurch Center Chapel
61 Claremont Avenue
New York, NY 10115

In-person and livestreamed: YouTube link to follow
Optional service project to follow on Friday, October 3rd

Additionally, on Friday, October 3rd (9:30-11:30 am), the organizers will host an ecological service project in collaboration with the Riverside Park Conservancy. Learn more here.