Yesterday, an Italian magazine leaked a draft of a major environmental document by Pope Francis. In it, he establishes climate change as a huge problem caused "mostly" by human activity and the burning of fossil fuels. The stance is laid out in an encyclical, the most authoritative teaching document a pope can issue.
He goes on to note that climate change is harshest on the world's poorest people, who are already suffering the most from air pollution and toxic dumping. This could anger conservative Catholics in the U.S., who are sometimes climate change skeptics. The official document -- 192 pages in Italian -- will released on Thursday. World leaders are attending a major UN climate change summit later this year.
