May 4, 2016

By Stuart Korfhage
Reporter, St. Augustine Record.

St. Augustine, Fla. - Father Paul Beyette is happy to talk. He’s a lot happier when that talk leads to action.
The retired priest of the Diocese of Ogdensburg is a man who expects to see results when he acts.

It’s one of the reasons he retired in 1995. He didn’t retire to relax but instead to do more. The main area in which he wants to effect change: the use of renewable energy.

Father Beyette said the church has the opportunity — and the outright responsibility — to be a leader in the move toward solar power. He said it’s a simple, effective way to reduce the environmental problems caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

“If anybody should be speaking about the moral aspect, it’s the churches,” Father Beyette said. “And their mouths are shut.”

The same can’t be said for Father Beyette, who spends several months a year living in a townhouse in the St. Augustine Shores and the rest of the year in Loon Lake, New York.

The 90-year-old priest is perfectly comfortable challenging local church leaders, business owners and his neighbors about the reluctance to switch to renewable energy.

Persistent but never disrespectful, Father Beyette doesn’t hide his frustration at the inaction of people and institutions in the move to solar power.

He says many of the people he engages agree with the argument on an intellectual level but complain that the cost is too high to make a conversion.

His response is not so sympathetic to that argument: “How much do your fossil fuels poison God’s earth?”
More than a spokesman, Father Beyette tries to live the way he talks. His home in New York has been off the grid since the 1970s, and he helped bring about changes at the Diocese of Ogdensburg.

In 2014, Bishop Terry R. LaValley had a solar power system established at his residence. In an article in the North Country Catholic, LaValley credited Father Beyette with introducing him to the idea of switching to renewable energy.

“Father Beyette invited me to meet with the Faith and Ecology Group to discuss alternative energy sources and our Christian responsibility to care for our environment,” the bishop said in the article. “They were very knowledgeable and passionate about alternate energy, and convinced me that I could and should model sound environmental and spiritual leadership by going green.”

It was a good start, Father Beyette said, but he’s hoping to see a much larger expansion of the movement — both in the church and outside.

Father Beyette said he’s been in contact with leaders in the Diocese of St. Augustine but has yet to convince them to invest in solar power equipment.

The diocese is not in disagreement with Beyette’s general message of being a good steward of the earth, though.

According to Kathleen Bagg, spokeswoman for the diocese, local leaders have responded to Pope Francis’ encyclical, “On Care for Our Common Home.”

In the encyclical, the pope says: “There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced, for example, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy.”

Bagg said the diocese is working to implement those ideas into its operations.

“A few years ago, our diocese formed a committee to study ways parishes could make green choices when they renovate their buildings or plan new building projects,” Bagg said in an email to The Record.

She added that the Diocesan Energy Commission has been in place since 2009 to encourage parishes to use green or energy-efficient practices. The two newest building projects by the diocese, the St. John Paul II Mission multipurpose center in Nocatee and the St. Francis of Assisi Mission in Yulee both have “high-efficiency AC systems, high-rated insulation and reclaimed water irrigation systems for their new buildings.”

But none of diocese buildings has converted to solar energy for heating and cooling.

Around St. Augustine, Father Beyette, the man dubbed “The Solar Priest,” has been talking to anyone who will give him an audience. He said his goal is to get 1,000 people in the Shores area to convert to solar power.

“I’d like to make St. Augustine the leading solar city in Florida,” he said. “I just hope we can start a revolution here.”

It hasn’t happened yet, but Father Beyette’s proselytizing is at least helping people become more aware.
For assistance, he’s reached out to the business community. Joe Giordano, a solar advisor for the Volusia County-based Solar-Fit company, is among his main contacts.

Giordano, whose sales territory includes St. Johns County, said Father Beyette has helped him make inroads in getting out the positive message about solar energy. There are still a lot of misconceptions about solar power, he said, which has slowed the movement. Father Beyette’s energy is speeding things up.

“Father Paul is a tremendous asset to the solar industry,” Giordano said. “He’s a phenomenal man who believes we need to do something good for the planet. If more people with big voices spoke out, certainly that would help.”

Giordano said he didn’t know what to think about Father Beyette at first, but now he sees the man as someone who just wants to make a difference in the health of the planet.

“When I became closer with him, I understood how passionate he is about the planet and how solar is one way we can change things,” Giordano said.

For Father Beyette, change has not been as rapid as he’d like. He wonders why people don’t look at the earth and its natural resources as sacred.

He also wonders why all churches don’t see environmental issues as important principles of faith.
“They (churches) don’t treat climate change as a moral issue,” he said.

Until that changes, Father Beyette plans to keep pushing people to look at their conscience and do what they know is right. He hopes that leads to action that will remove all the political opposition to the expansion of solar power.

“What we need is a march on Washington like (Martin Luther) King,” he said. “People are not organizing to show their strength.”
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(This article was reprinted with permission from the St. Augustine Record.)