Read a February 12, 2013, article in Left Foor Forward speculating about whether Pope Benedict XVI’s successor will embrace liberation theology.

The CIA World Factbook contains data on Roman Catholic population percentages across the globe, as well as information about Vatican City.

Read this excerpt from the preface of Introducing Liberation Theology (Orbis Books, 1987) by Leonardo and Clodovis Boff.

Read the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1984 document, “Instruction on Certain Aspects of the Theology of Liberation,” signed by Cardinal Ratzinger.

Read this article published in The New York Times on May 8, 2005, two weeks after Pope Benedict XVI’s Papal Inauguration Mass.

Jonathan Bock is president of Grace Hill Media in Studio City, Calif., a public relations firm that markets films to religious audiences on behalf of major movie studios.

Craig Detweiler is associate professor of communication at Pepperdine University in California. He is co-author of A Matrix of Meanings: Finding God in Pop Culture (Baker Academic, 2003). Contact 310-497-7204 (cell), [email protected].

Charles Tart is a professor at The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, Calif., and the author of numerous articles and books on psychology and parapsychology. He edited Body Mind Spirit: Exploring the Parapsychology of Spirituality (Hampton Roads, 1997). He says one reason belief in the supernatural and paranormal runs so high is because many people feel […]

Catherine Albanese is Professor Emerita in Comparative Religions & Research at the University of California, Santa Barbara and author of Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to New Age (University of Chicago Press, 1991) and America: Religions and Religion, 5th. ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2012).