A Study of Pope Francis’ Integral Ecology in the Universal Catholic Church and Ecological Movements in the Korean Catholic Church as a Local Church

This study examines how Pope Francis’ vision of integral ecology has been received, interpreted, and translated into practice within the Korean Catholic Church as a local Church. It advances three related arguments. First, integral ecology operates through two analytically distinct but mutually reinforcing dimensions: cultural conversion, involving changes in values, ecological spirituality, education, and ways of life, and structural transformation, involving ecclesial institutions, administrative practices, public engagement, and environmental policy. Second, ecological engagement within Korean Catholicism did not originate with the promulgation of Laudato Si’. Rather, the encyclical encountered pre-existing local ecological traditions and provided them with a renewed theological vocabulary, ecclesial legitimacy, and global horizon through which earlier practices could be reinterpreted, coordinated, and institutionally intensified. Third, this interaction is best understood as a historically layered process of receptive adaptation and religious glocalization, whereby universal Catholic teaching is locally appropriated, reinterpreted, and embodied in culturally and institutionally distinctive forms. Drawing on papal and ecclesial documents, peer-reviewed theological and Korean scholarship, and purposively selected case materials, the study demonstrates that the reception of integral ecology is neither a simple top-down transmission of universal teaching nor merely a process of institutional implementation. Rather, it emerges through the reciprocal interaction of universal teaching, pre-existing local traditions, cultural formation, and structural change. The study thereby contributes to a more dynamic understanding of the relationship between the Universal Church and local Churches in contemporary Catholic ecological engagement.