SUMMARY: After outlining the most significative features of the Conciliar teaching on the role and responsibility of man for creation, placing them in their theological and cultural con­text, the Author confronts the traditional christian ecological model with the main models of environmental ethics present in contemporary reflection: the anthropocentric as well as the antianthropocentric, and also the attempts to overcome them both through the various de­clensions of Deep Ecology. The present study highlights the peculiarity of christian ecotheo-logical model as a theory of the intrinsic value of natural realities in the context of a relative anthropocentrism, drawing forth precise criteria of decision-making and some consequences on the operational level. The emblematic figure of St. Francis is, in the end, presented as a model of a new ecological ethos.