This edition of ReligionLink provides insight on Pope Francis’ tenure in the papal office, in-depth information about how a new pope will be chosen and leads on who the top contenders are to lead more than 1.3 billion Roman Catholics worldwide.

In this edition of ReligionLink, we try our hand at predicting some of next year’s big religion news themes and tease out the kinds of stories journalists, commentators and analysts might be working on, talking about or sharing with one another in 2023.

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.

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.

Marc Morano is executive director of ClimateDepot.com and communications director at Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a conservative think tank in Washington that is skeptical of man-made climate change. He has been critical of Pope Francis’ involvement in climate change issues and his reliance on United Nations climate change data.