Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy met with Vatican officials that helped draft Pope Francis’ climate-related encyclical on Friday, The Associated Press reports.
An encyclical, a letter from the pope addressed to faithfuls worldwide when he feels he needs to reach them, is set to be published in June and might make environmentalism a Catholic doctrine like Pope Pius IX’s encyclical about infallibility. It might also be a simple condemnation of human destruction of the environment like Pope Pius XI’s encyclical against Italian Fascists.
The visit was aimed at showing the Holy See that the Obama administration share similar thoughts on climate change.
“I think the most important thing that we can do, working with the pope, is to try to remind ourselves that this is really about protecting natural resources that human beings rely on,” McCarthy said.
“It’s certainly not my place to dictate to the pope what he should be doing in an encyclical,” she continued.
Both the White House and Vatican City believe that the climate is changing, that humans are the cause and that we must act now.