Read a 2012 Huffington Post article about the Vatican’s decision to create a checklist of conditions to discern the authentic Virgin Mary Sightings from the fake.

Shawn Daggett is director of the Center for World Missions at Harding University in Searcy, Ark. Shawn served as a missionary to Bergamo, Italy, for ten years before teaching at Harding University. His focus is on missions history, anthropology and the New Testament.

The Rev. John Wauck is a priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei. He lives in Rome, where he teaches literature and the Christian faith at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. Wauck has blogged about The Da Vinci Code.

Read a Feb. 7, 2006, New York Times article about the Catholic organization Opus Dei, portrayed as villainous in the novel, mounting a public awareness campaign to counter any potential negative portrayal in the film.

Read about the decline of Hispanic-Catholic community that was once booming in this Feb. 26, 2013 Public Religion Research Institute article.

Read a March 30, 2013 Huffington Post article about how Pope Francis washed the feet of two female inmates at a local juvenile detention center.

The Union of Islamic Communities in Italy/ Unione delle Comunità ed Organizzazioni Islamiche in Italia – UCOII is an organization that holds conferences on the relationship between Italian Muslims and the government, and has issued statements in response to major events in Muslim-European relations.

Danny Fingeroth is a former editor and writer at Marvel Comics and author of Superman on the Couch: What Superheroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves and Our Society and The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels. Fingeroth has taught comics writing in New York and Italy.