Joseph Chinnici is a Franciscan friar and professor of history at the Franciscan School of Theology, which is affiliated with the University of San Diego. He is the author of When Values Collide: The Catholic Church, Sexual Abuse and the Challenges of Leadership.

Tom Smith is a senior fellow and director of the General Social Survey at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. He is at work on a study of religious change, including how people think about God. He served as a consultant to the Religious Landscape study and is an expert on Catholics and Protestants.

Lawrence Cunningham is a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame. He wrote the entry on angels in the Harper Collins Dictionary of Religion. He can also discuss the Catholic data in the study.

Mark Massa is a professor of theology and co-director of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University in New York City. He is also a Jesuit priest and can address Catholic concepts of God.

Catholic News Service writes about the Vatican delegation to the conference in this article.

Gregory R. Erlandson is president of Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, which is based in Indiana and produced a number of Pope Benedict XVI’s works. Erlandson is co-author of the 2010 book Pope Benedict XVI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis: Working for Reform and Renewal. He also worked in Rome covering the Vatican for Catholic News Service.

Robert Mickens is editor-in-chief at Global Pulse, a Catholic magazine. He has been the Vatican correspondent for The Tablet, a Catholic weekly published in London. He is based in Rome.

The BBC maintains a profile on Pope Benedict XVI.

The New York Times has a Times Topics page on Benedict.