Christiana Peppard is an assistant professor of theology, science and ethics at Fordham University in New York City. Her focus is on clean water and ideas of nature and man. She is the author of Just Water: Theology, Ethics and the Global Water Crisis and teaches classes on human nature and Darwin, theology and science, American religiosity, […]

M. Shawn Copeland is a professor of theology at Boston College. She researches theological and philosophical anthropology and political theology, as well as African and African-derived religious and cultural experience and African-American intellectual history. She teaches courses on theology and the body, political theology and black theology.

Neil Ormerod is a professor of theology at Australian Catholic University in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He is director of its Centre for Catholic Thought and Practice. Anticipating Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical, he called it “a landmark in Catholic social teaching.”

Cardinal Peter Turkson is a Catholic cardinal from Ghana and president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. He worked with Pope Francis on the writing of the encyclical and delivered several speeches in advance of its publication that are believed to give a glimpse into its contents.

Bill Patenaude is a special lecturer of theology at Providence College in Rhode Island. He is the chief author of Catholic Ecology, where he has speculated about what Pope Francis’ encyclical might contain. Contact via Chrissy Centazzo.

Michael Peppard is an assistant professor at Fordham University in New York City.

Austen Ivereigh is a U.K.-based writer, journalist and commentator best known for his books on and with Pope Francis, and for his role in the media explaining the convictions of the Catholic Church. He is Fellow in Contemporary Church History at Campion Hall, Oxford, and a regular contributor to The Tablet, America magazine and Commonweal, […]

Veerabhadran Ramanathan is a distinguished professor of atmospheric and climate sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and an “ordinary academician” at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome. His work is expected to have contributed to Pope Francis’ encyclical.

Riccardo Cascioli is the author of Lies of the Environmentalists and has criticized Pope Francis’ involvement in climate change, which Cascioli sees as a wedge into changing Catholic doctrine about the sanctity of life. He is also the editor of La nuova Bussola Quotidiana, an Italian Catholic news and opinion site.