The feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of caring for the environment, is on Oct. 4, and on that day, Pope Francis will issue a document encouraging people to care for the Earth, our common home.

For the October Junior Saints, students are invited to draw pictures and write about caring for the environment. The drawings can show God’s creation – a drawing of animal or plant life, or a drawing of the ocean, a river, a lake, a forest, a jungle, mountains or the sky – or drawings can show how people can care for or protect the environment. 

The drawings and writings should be emailed to ZimmermannM@adw.org by Friday Oct. 6, 2023 to Mark Zimmermann, the Catholic Standard's editor, and they should include the name, grade and school or parish of the student printed clearly. 

Due to time constraints involved with reviewing the volume of submitted work, it is requested that schools or parish religious education programs limit their entries to 10 drawings and 10 writings from their students. The best formats to send are jpegs for artwork and word documents or pdfs for writing, if possible.  Thank you!