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Thomas Berry, who died June 1 at the age of 94, had a reach well beyond the Catholic church, which was his home. The following is how the editors of EnlightenNext magazine, a quarterly publication dedicated to catalyzing evolution in consciousness and culture, announced his death to its readers.
Here's what they wrote:
The renowned eco-theologian Thomas Berry died in the early morning of June 1st at the distinguished age of 94. Even though we never met Berry, many of our contributors and close friends were deeply inspired by his life and work, including leading evolutionary thinkers like Brian Swimme, Mary Evelyn Tucker, Michael Dowd, and Connie Barlow. Berry was greatly influenced by the evolutionary cosmology of French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
A Catholic priest himself, Berry will be best remembered for helping the religious traditions to recognize the ecological crisis as a deeply spiritual issue. The following is an excerpt from his article "The Spirituality of the Earth" (1990):