From 10 to 13 March 2025, German (Arch) Bishops came together for the Spring Plenary Meeting 2025 of the German Bishops Conference at Kloster Steinfeld under the title “Building Sustainability Alliances and Protecting the Most Vulnerable”.
As part of the meeting, the bishops engaged in a comprehensive study session titled „Ten Years of Laudato si‘ – Topicality and Relevance.“ This session marked the decade since the publication of Pope Francis’s encyclical on environmental and social issues, „Laudato si”, and discussed their relevance within the current political and societal contexts.
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Prof. Anna-Katharina Hornidge was one of three speakers who delivered lectures for the study session, alongside Prof Dr Mojib Latif from GEOMAR Kiel and Prof Dr Andreas Löschel from Ruhr University Bochum. In her lecture entitled “Policy for Sustainable Development in Times of Global (Dis)Order”, Prof. Hornidge diagnosed an epochal rupture in the international order. She emphasised that international, where possible plurilateral, trust-based partnerships must be deliberately strengthened not despite, but precisely because of this upheaval. She outlined five guiding principles for a rules-based multipolar world: Reduce structural determinants and ‘root causes’ of social inequality and political polarisation, strengthen multilateralism and rules vs deals with the 2030 Agenda as a framework, reduce (unbalanced) dependencies on global centres of power, expand strategic, trust-based partnerships in a targeted manner, and stabilise and strengthen specifically Europe’s neighbouring regions.
The subsequent exchange among all three speakers and the assembled bishops underlined a shared commitment to sustainable development, protection of a rights and rules based order, as well as solidarity with the most vulnerable and future generations in particular. Professor Hornidge took the opportunity to highlight the influential role the church can play in standing up for these commitments in times where multilateral cooperation and development policy is systematically undermined by powerful international actors and questioned in Germany as well.
