NEW YORK -- When Pope Francis releases his teaching document on the environment and climate change in the coming weeks, a network of Roman Catholics will be ready.
These environmental advocates -- who work with bishops, religious orders, Catholic universities and lay movements -- have been preparing for months to help maximize the effect of the statement, hoping to make an impact in the fight against global warming.
"This is such a powerful moment," said Patrick Carolan, executive director of Franciscan Action Network, a Washington-based advocacy group formed by Franciscan religious orders. "We're asking ourselves, 'What would be the best way for us to support the faith community in getting this out and using it as a call to action?'"
Francis is issuing the encyclical by the end of June with an eye toward the end-of-year United Nations climate-change conference in Paris. While previous popes have made strong moral and theological arguments in favor of environmental protection, Francis will be the first to address global warming in such a high-level teaching document.
The pope, who will address the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 25 when he visits the U.S., has said he wants the encyclical to be released in time to be read and absorbed before the Paris talks. Advocates are pressing for a binding, comprehensive agreement among nations to curb rising global temperatures, which scientists say are largely driven by carbon emissions.
"People are really putting a lot of weight on this," said Nancy Tuchman, director of the Institute of Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University Chicago.
The institute, which has been working to unite 28 U.S. Jesuit colleges and universities as a common voice on climate change, plans to collect papers from students, faculty and staff members with their reflections on the document, Tuchman said. A school colloquium on the papers is planned for Sept. 9.
Carolan was among about 40 Catholic leaders who gathered in Rome this month for a strategy meeting organized by the Global Catholic Climate Movement, a network he co-founded, which includes organizations representing religious orders, church aid agencies, Catholic social justice advocates and others. The movement started a petition that urges political leaders to take action to curb global warming and plans a prayer vigil in Washington the night before Francis' Sept. 24 address to Congress, at which he is likely to touch on environmental protection.
His audience at the Capitol will include skeptics on climate change, and like-minded groups are preparing a response to the encyclical.
The Heartland Institute, a conservative Chicago-based think tank that sent a team to Rome last month to warn the pope against the U.N.'s climate-change agenda, says it is building relationships with Catholic leaders and planning to distribute reports on sustainable development and challenges to climate science to a Catholic audience.
Jim Lakely, a Heartland spokesman, said since the Rome event, the institute has heard from Catholic groups, bloggers and others "who share our concern that the pope is being misadvised by the United Nations on this complicated scientific issue."
At the same time, however, other Catholics worldwide are mobilizing to echo the pope's words among the faithful.
In the Philippines, the Archdiocese of Manila's decade-old ecology ministry is asking bishops to encourage all parishes to ring their church bells when the encyclical is released, among other efforts to highlight the pope's statement, ministry director Lou Arsenio said. Each September, the Manila ecology ministry holds a month of liturgies and church activities on environmental protection called a "Season of Creation."
In the U.S., Dan Misleh, director of the Catholic Climate Covenant, an education and advocacy network that works with the U.S. bishops, is preparing model sermons on the expected themes of the encyclical.
A Section on 05/25/2015