Background: As part of the Education and Social Justice Project, in June 2025, undergraduate student Madison Ross (C‘27) interviewed Jesús Sánchez Camacho, director of the Integral Ecology Unit at Comillas Pontifical University in Madrid, Spain. In this interview, Jesús discusses the development of the unit as an institutional response to Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ and other elements of sustainability at Comillas.
To start, would you mind telling me a little bit about yourself?
Yep, well, I am Jesús Sánchez Camacho. I am here professor of theology. My Ph.D. is about social sciences and humanities, and my field of research is communication and religion. I am also director of Integral Ecology Unit. We are working on many issues about sustainability and diversity for the students, for the administration, and for the research. And I teach here and also in Alberto Aguilera campus—it depends on the subject and the different programs.
So, you’re the director of the Integral Ecology Unit. Would you mind telling me about the unit and how you got involved?
Yes. The Integral Ecology Unit is an office which was founded in 2022 and it was because of the Laudato Si’ encyclical of Pope Francis. He called for an integral conversion in ecology related to human dignity and also the planet. And that’s why it was founded: because we wanted to transform the teaching, the research, and the administration of the university in terms of sustainability. That’s why it was founded, and we have many programs, as you can imagine.
And how did you get involved with the program?
Yeah. I am the director, and I have a team of professors and other people that were interviewing with you, I think. We have leaders in the different faculties and centers. They are representatives, that’s the name, delegates, representatives. I said leaders but, representatives. And they are the people who are representatives in the different faculties and centers to do many things in terms of ecology in their faculties. There are other people who are professors, and they are consultants. And the role of the consultants is not… They are not having much work to do. Because the representatives, they have many things to do. You know? Therefore, thinking about the project in general terms, but the representatives need to kind of apply this project, this work. And we have a person who is working in the administration. I think that you interviewed him, he is David Garrido Armisén, and he is working in the administration of the many things to do. He is coordinating many issues related to the integral ecology.
So, my role is to coordinate projects and to build projects around ecology in the teaching, in the research, in the administrative issues related to the resources, water, energy, mobility. And these are things that are important for us, that is the extracurricular activities. And that is good because these students are not going to find integral ecology only in the curricular projects, but they are also going to find integral ecology in other non-formal activities modeled to the sensitivization to take care of our common home.
And, that’s all. These issues are very important to take care of our common home above all, teaching and research. Also, the other projects that are related to transformation of the society, the impact on the society. So, these three things are very important for us. And we are creating it because it was founded two years ago, more or less, at the end of 2022, so we are creating this, building it. And the first thing that we have done is this project. These are conceptual framework.
[Jesús hands the interviewer a physical copy of the Conceptual Framework of the Integral Ecology Unit.]
Oh, thank you.
And you can find it in English on the web. We have a web, Comillas Integral Ecology. And there, you can put on the web English, and it will be translated to English. And, there is a Conceptual Framework for Integral Ecology in English.
And our project is not only doing things, it’s to have a plan and a strategy for the university. So, the plan is the conceptual framework: What is integral ecology for us as a Jesuit university? So, integral ecology, as you know, I imagine, is a protection of the human dignity, the society, and the protection of the planet, as a holistic, worldwide. So, there are not two crises, the social crisis, related to the peace, related to other things, related to politics, but also the common home, the protection of ecosystems, biodiversity. It’s one crisis, only one crisis. In that terms, we are saying that in the conceptual framework. What is the ecology for us, with this Christian social thought or perspective?
And after that, we are having an analysis, and this is, I think, the translation… material analysis? About what do we have in the university, how many students are studying sustainability, how many subjects we are teaching on sustainability and integral ecology? So, we have a map in that terms. This is the second step. After that, we have done it, and in the material analysis, we have interviewed many people on the direction of the university. You know? The vice rector, and the rector, and other representatives from different departments with an online survey. So, interview with the rector and vice rectors, and survey with different services and faculties, and the students also, to know the interests of the community. This is the second step.
And the third step is the political strategy. It’s not so-called politics on sustainability. Because, for us, politics term, it could be confusing for some people. So, I know that in some companies, it’s politics on sustainability, but for us, it’s lines on how to approach sustainability. In that sense, according to the interviews, according to our surveys, according to the conceptual framework, we are doing that. Our team, the representatives and other people. And we are at the end of that process. And this is going to be approved by the direction of the university, the rector, because it’s very important, these lines.
And, after that, we are going to do a report on sustainability. This is going to be the second report, but this is going to be the first report of this project. Because there was a report the university did at the end of the last decade, but it is a very general report, not only on sustainability, so it is very broad. But we are going to limit the report to be only on sustainability and related to the care of the common home and human dignity, but not on everything that is going on in the university. And this is going to be the first report of this project. And I think that this academic year, we are going to do it. We are finishing the politics on sustainability at Comillas after that. And annually, we are going to see, how can we improve on sustainability? And we are going to get a report annually to see, to study, to show what did we achieve on sustainability? And that’s the plan. Because, I, if you allow me, please…
[Jesús opens the Conceptual Framework packet to page 20]
…Because you have here a figure that’s related with what I have just explained. So, this is the conceptual framework, okay? This is the material analysis. This is the politics of integral ecology at the university, and this is the report on sustainability. The first one. And we are going to have times of sustainability, according to the report. And annually, we are going to explore: did we shift the plans toward the post, and how can we improve that issue? And that’s the project that we have.
So, we are doing many things. For example, in terms of mobility, the bus that we have, all of the things that we organize, but this is the core of our mission as a unit. Because these things, for example, the bus, we organize everything at the administrative level, but this is not... it could be done by other services. But the core of our mission is this plan, this project, is going to be transversal for all of the services. And that’s relevant. I insist on that, on teaching, on research, on reaching the society, on extracurricular activities.
That’s a very extensive project. What would you say has been going really well recently for the project, in general?
Yeah, we were doing things that are related to the plan of environmental ecology that we are going to do annually, because of the necessities, because of the urgencies. For example, we calculated the carbon footprint. We have the calculation because a center of the university needed it. We weren’t going to do that. But they needed it, and we have that calculation. And this is going to be very useful because we need to explore it and study how to improve, how to bring that carbon footprint down. And another thing that we did was the bus. It was a study because we didn’t really know if it was going to be useful. We started the bus, and it cost a lot, and we didn’t know if it was going to be used by the university.
So, it was a project of three phases. And we started off three different tiers of ordinary time of the university with the lectures, and with exams, and with no exams time. And it was used by the community above all in the first phase, in ordinary time. For example, as you know, on this campus, we organize many things in terms of extracurricular activities. Heike [Clara Pintor Pirzkall] founded this kind of project; I think that you interviewed Heike. And we, in some times, with different circumstances of necessity, we translate this project to other centers and faculties with other necessities. And we are studying the implementation of this project in the different centers of faculties. This was this year. We created that this year.
Another thing that we created this year, it was the first year of the representatives. We have the different teachers or professors. We created this tier that is going well because they have time for this unit to be representatives. They are going to teach less classes because of that, because they are committed to that task. And this was one of the things that we did, for example. We have an office, it was founded this year, also, on this campus, in building C, where other offices are. It is very cool because we are not lost; we are there. It is very good to have a place where other people can visit us. And it was one of the things that we did this year. And the declaration of this project, we are doing that, but it was last year. But it was a creation at the end of 2024.
So, a lot of things are going well. Is there anything that’s been challenging?
Many things. We are new. We are walking. People need to know us. We are knowing the interest of the people in integral ecology thanks to the interviews and the people. So, communication for us is very important. And it has been very important in the two last years. So, it is very important to me. And they are proposing different things, the community. Person after person, different things, proposals. And also, the students to improve in terms of sustainability.
For us, that’s very important because we don’t want to create by ourselves a sustainable university. We are a community, we are going to coordinate many projects, but other people need to have an implication on the project. And other challenges to build this building of sustainability, the plan we started with. So, many things, the students. For example, I am a professor, for me it’s very important also, the teaching and practice. To teach and practice is very important for me. But the people, all of the students are involved in the content of integral ecology because they have a subject of ethics where integral ecology is addressed. But they consider that that’s not enough. It’s very complicated to transform the teaching because of all of the organization, many things. But I think that in the next year, we need to move forward, to get it to everyone on sustainability.
So, the goal is to have everyone take a class on sustainability?
Yeah. So, this is not being formalized in any project because we are going to. But in my head, I have it. Because I think that I need to teach to the directors of the university that this is not enough, only one unit on integral ecology, on sustainability. But, now, there are some students who are taking more than one unit because of their subjects, but it depends on the discipline. But in general terms, we need to find only one subject on sustainability for everyone. And I am speaking about sustainability, but I think that also integral ecology, social and environmental dimensions united in one subject. For example, the title could be, why not, Social Environmental Justice or something related to people, to unite both dimensions, the society is one thing, and the environment. That’s one of the challenges that we have. And other ones that you can imagine in the administration, like how to practice sustainability here in the university. They think that this is very good. We are trying, you know? We have other buildings that are not so good, so new. That’s why we have challenges.
And, would you say that the unit, the Integral Ecology Unit, is accessible to the community right now? Either in activities or information?
We tried to... all that we work is for the community. We have that office, we have an email, we are at the service of the community, so, yeah, people can access it.
The other thing is how to practice the suggestions. Because every suggestion we receive in this moment: we cannot do that, but what we can do is, in the future, maybe, or not, it depends on what the suggestions are. We try to study all of the suggestions that we receive. If anyone wants to see me or other person of the team, yeah that’s possible.
Are there any suggestions that are common, or that a lot of people say?
Yeah, that’s related to small things. For a student, for example, this was one of the submissions of last year. A door of a building was open; it wasn’t closing automatically. And he was seeing that day by day and he thought, “I need to do something,” not only to close it. So, he sent us an email. So, there are small things that people say to us related to the bus, related to the buildings, related to the energy, how to get the energy, related to the activities that we have. I think that the suggestions are not a priority about a course of sustainability, but small suggestions are very useful to improve. So, we changed the door; it was broken, it had been changed before, but it was broken. And we didn’t know it. And I can confess that I was walking by that door, but I didn’t realize that one of them was open. I thought that it was because many people were walking, but thanks to the student, we realized that it was broken in the system. So, small things more than bigger things. If you do many small things, you can change your community.
And, back to you: why did you become the director of this unit?
So, I was appointed by the vice rector. Not this vice rector, the last vice rector. It was because I was introducing my research on integral ecology, little by little. I don’t know if it was because of that because my studies have been theology related to integral ecology. And my studies, maybe, it was communication, I don’t know why. I thought about the possibilities, and I was afraid of not doing well, you know? Because it was a new thing for me. Because, for me, it’s easier to teach and write, research. But the administration was something new of this university. So, I said yes, and after that, because I love things related to social-environmental issues. And I said, “Okay, this is a good opportunity to service the community,” and I said yes. And I said, “Okay, if things are not going well because of my limitations, then I can go back.” But for me, a very important thing in that terms is that I come from different disciplines, social sciences, communication, and theology, but I need other voices. That’s why I have a team, a very full team, related to engineering, related to other fields of sciences, so that I am not...I have not studied these issues, but they are creating the integral ecology team, you know? They are helping me a lot.
Moving a little bit away from the unit itself, would you describe yourself as concerned about the environment or climate change?
Yeah, but I have many limitations. You are asking me in personal terms, not in professional ones?
Or both, yeah.
Both, yeah. But personal terms. It’s complicated. For example, in personal terms, I try to apply many small things in my style of life with the limitation of living in a modern world. So, I have a family, I have two daughters. And sometimes, it’s very difficult, with all of the things you have to do in a family, it’s difficult to do things better. It was easier when you were young, you know? When you have a family with many issues to organize, buy, it’s very complicated. I am very concerned, and when I have to buy something, or we need something in the family, I usually think about, “How can we buy this in relation to sustainability and care for the planet?” But I have to say that it is very difficult to organize, to articulate your style of life with all of the things that you need to do, to use the car to go to the school. We have daughters that go to school, in kindergarten and the other school, so we need to go. To me, at times, we need to use the car, for example. Sometimes, there are things that are complicated now, but in the big picture, we need to articulate many issues.
For me, that’s important. I don’t want to transform sustainability only at the university, the society. But, it’s going to start with myself, with my example, and with my style of life. And I know that because I want Comillas to get a very good picture in the rankings, but I want to transform the society, to have a better world and a better planet. And that is my goal. And I imagine that is the goal of my team and the persons I am working with.
So, how would you describe culture here at Comillas, generally? Among staff, with students, how people interact with each other generally, how they see themselves in relation to the world, things like that?
I think that we are a Christian university in a modern world. So, our principles are grounded on the Christian social thought, in the document of the church, [the] Catholic perspective. But, at the same time, exploring the sign of the times. So, we are concerned of the biodiversity. We are living in a pluralistic society, and in that sense, we welcome many kinds of students in the different perspectives of the world related to faith, related to politics, or related to other dimensions of life. So, I think that we have many students who are Christians, but inside of the university, you know that there is diversity, so, we have other students who are not Christian. And I think that point which our university is. Because when you have in a class different perspectives, different students, different positions on society, and also, in environmental issues, you have different positions. I don’t think that this is a difficult thing when you express your ideas with respect. This is going to bridge our values; it’s going to build a community with different perspectives.
But, in the final point, you have to make a decision. And I think that those decisions need to be related to the social thought, and that’s related to [the direction] of the pope. I think that, sometimes, in terms of past, it’s not good. But what is involved here is the future—of the planet, of the future generation. So, it’s going to cost to keep the planet. So, we need to move forward in the declaration, I think.
We have a diverse community, but at the end, we have our principles. We welcome everyone, but we have our principles. And we need to explore the sign of the times. And we need to serve also all the world, not only the university community, all of the world.
How would you describe the relationship between your work with the unit and maybe, the culture and identity of the university?
Well, I think that your generation… I think that, not in the university, I am speaking about the project of the Jesuits, not only in the university, is the integral ecology of our planet, is the fourth apostolic reference, as you know. And I think that’s very important for all of the institutions which are working in the Jesuit institution. So, that’s why the direction from the up is coming. But, we think that this principle, the principle of the preferences, is not an idea. So, they need us, all of the offices on sustainability in the different institutions. They need us to practice and the implementation of that program. That’s why I think that it’s coming from both directions, so yeah.
So, those were all of the questions that I had already written for you. Is there anything else you’d like to add that I haven’t asked about?
No.
Well, thank you for taking the time to talk to me, to do this interview about your experience.
Thank you.
