Pilgrims of Hope Lecture Series – Rachel Holmes

Following in Francis’s Footsteps: Applying a Catholic Conservation Framework in a Dynamic Landscape

Sunday, September 21, 11:15am

Living in this Land of 10,000 Lakes, most can appreciate the grace and beauty of the natural world, which Catholics consider the gifts of God’s Creation. With those gifts comes the responsibility to ensure our Common Home – our Earth – can provide nature’s benefits for not only our generation, but the many generations to come. Previous Basilica lectures and workshops have highlighted individual actions we can take in our own backyards. In an effort to complement those conversations, we will explore a contemporary Catholic framework to conserve nature at multiple scales, focusing especially on opportunities to act for systems-level change. This nonpartisan exploration will draw on the teachings of both historic and contemporary Catholic saints, theologians, ethicists, and lay leaders to answer the question of how we can individually and collectively use our own respective prophetic voices to conserve Creation. Hint: we start with Hope.

Bio – Rachel Holmes is a national conservation leader, focusing on protecting the health of our nation’s forest resources. From an early age, Rachel has been curious about how we view our role in the natural world as a function of our individual and collective belief systems. This curiosity brought her to Yale University where she was the first to concurrently earn a Master of Forestry and Master of Divinity. While at Yale, she served as a teaching fellow under prominent scholars of Religion and Ecology, Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim. Most recently, Rachel spent over a decade leading a national urban forestry initiative for The Nature Conservancy focusing on collaborative solutions to conservation challenges in front line communities, developing tree equity programs like the award-winning Treesilience. She is the former chair of the Sustainable Urban Forests Coalition, a broad-base national coalition dedicated to advocacy for fair access to nature. She currently manages national forest health communications and reporting for the USDA Forest Service – Washington Office. She is also proud to be a wildland firefighter and Flamenco dancer. Rachel is on the Executive Team of the Basilica’s Creation Justice Committee and lives in South Minneapolis with her husband, Joe, step-children and beloved dog, Banjo.

Click here for information on the other speakers in our Pilgrims of Hope series.