Something new for many people is prayer of compassion for Earth herself. She is being violently pushed into a new stage of evolution and losing millions of her species. Jesus wept over Jerusalem and we can weep for God’s creation and our stubborn refusal to listen to what Earth is telling us. Pope John Paul II often spoke of compassion for Earth and wrote in his 1990 World Day of Peace Message:

… in a profound sense the earth is suffering (Hos 4:3) and the greenhouse effect has now reached crisis proportions as a consequence of industrial growth, massive urban concentrations and vastly increased energy needs … [T]he resulting meteorological and atmospheric changes range from damage to health to the possible future submersion of low-lying lands … [N]o peaceful society can afford to neglect either respect for life or the fact that there is an integrity to creation.