Encyclicks 

Word Counts 

Words Matter

Pope Francis' encyclical, Laudato Si': On Care For Our Common Home, is organized into six Chapters and 246 paragraphs. We note with interest that the most frequently used word or word group, "human/humanity", appears in the encyclical - remarkably - 246 times.   

10 words or word groups used most frequently in the text:

  • human/humanity 246
  • God 175
  • world 171
  • life/living 169
  • environment(al) 155
  • creation/creatures/creativity 137                        
  • need(s) 124
  • economic/economy 81
  • ecological/ecology 76
  • technology/technological/technocratic 76

10 words or word groups used infrequently or not at all:

  • pollution 9
  • degradation 9
  • corruption 6
  • scarce/scarcity 5
  • profits 5
  • wealth/wealthier 4
  • money 2
  • abortion 1
  • capitalism 0
  • goods and services 0

10 words or word groups used frequently:

  • love/loving 65
  • relationship(s) 61
  • earth 59
  • growth/growing 57
  • system(s)/ecosystem(s) 57       
  • poor(er)(est) 57
  • society 47
  • water 46
  • production/productivity 45
  • resource(s) 43

10 words or word groups used repeatedly but less frequently:

  • responsibility 29
  • waste(ful)(ness) 29
  • crisis 26
  • integral 25
  • respect(ful) 22
  • justice/injustice(s) 22
  • health(y) 21
  • market 19
  • climate 15
  • warm(ing) 13

Please let us know if we missed a key word indicator. 
Email us at Editors(at)CivicStory.org.  Thank you!

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