VATICAN CITY — Ban Ki-moon arrived at the Vatican with his own college of cardinals. Mr. Ban, the United Nations secretary general, had brought the leaders of all his major agencies to see Pope Francis, a show of organizational muscle and respect for a meeting between two global institutions that had sometimes shared a bumpy past but now had a mutual interest. 
 
 The agenda was poverty, and Francis inveighed against the “economy of exclusion” as he addressed Mr. Ban’s delegation at the Apostolic Palace. But in an informal meeting with Mr. Ban and his advisers, Francis shifted the discussion to the environment and how environmental degradation weighed heaviest on the poor. 
 
 “This is the pope of the poor,” said Robert Orr, who attended the May 2014 meeting as Mr. Ban’s special adviser on climate change and described the informal conversation with Francis. “The fact that he is making the link to the planet is really significant.” 
 
 On Thursday, Francis will release his first major teaching letter, known as an encyclical, on the theme of the environment and the poor. Given the pope’s widespread popularity, and his penchant for speaking out on major global issues, the encyclical is being treated as a milestone that could place the Roman Catholic Church at the forefront of a new coalition of religion and science. ||||| CLOSE Shannon Green and Gregg Zoroya discuss the encyclical from Pope Francis to be issued by the Vatican on Thursday, June 18, and the excitement it engenders among climate scientists. USA TODAY 
 
 Pope Francis encyclical on the environment is due to be released Thursday (Photo: Alessandra Tarantino, AP) 
 
 Corrections & Clarifications: A previous version of this article misstated Pope Francis' chemistry education. He studied chemistry and worked as a chemist prior to attending the seminary. 
 
 Scientists weary after years of often vicious opposition by doubters of their climate-change findings see this year as crucial to the planet's future because of a religious document expected from Pope Francis on Thursday. 
 
 The rare encyclical, or teaching letter, expected to promote climate action as a moral imperative could do more to slow global warming than international negotiations this year to limit greenhouse gas emissions, scientists say. 
 
 "The encyclical is going to go out to over 1 billion Catholics — that's a way of getting a message across to a segment of society that the scientific community could never do," said an excited Jeff Kiehl with the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "I mean it's just unbelievable." 
 
 "I'm not a religious person at all," said Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climatologist. But he sees faith-based efforts to shift thinking on climate action as very promising. 
 
 "The pope's encyclical is probably going to have a bigger impact than the Paris negotiations," he said. 
 
 The 21st United Nations conference on climate change, which is set for December in Paris with more than 190 countries, hopes to reach agreement on emissions that would keep further warming of the planet less than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, beyond global temperature at the time of the Industrial Revolution. 
 
 Catholic leaders expressed hope last week that the encyclical will transcend partisan fighting over the causes of climate change, arguments that have stymied efforts in the U.S. Congress and elsewhere to reduce greenhouse emissions. 
 
 "This encyclical is aimed at everyone," Pope Francis said Sunday. "Let us pray that everyone can receive its message and grow in responsibility toward the common home that God has entrusted to us." 
 
 He said Friday that to show unity of purpose, the document will be unveiled by three people: a Catholic cardinal, a Christian Orthodox church leader and a climate scientist the Vatican identified as an atheist. 
 
 The pope, who studied chemistry and worked as a chemist before entering the seminary, has a history of environmental concern. He said in January that science is largely settled on the causes of climate change and that greater stewardship of God's creation is necessary. 
 
 "Mostly, in great part, it is man who has slapped nature in the face," he said. 
 
 There has already been push back from conservative Catholic religious writers and figures such as Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who is Catholic, accusing the pope of being alarmist. 
 
 "The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists," Santorum recently told a radio-talk show host. "When we get involved with political and controversial scientific theories, then I think the church is probably not as forceful and credible." 
 
 Scientists, however, applaud the pope for urging moral choices in a discussion dominated by the recitation — or among deniers, the misrepresentation — of facts. 
 
 "Many people have this rosy view that there's this knowledge deficit, and that if we just provided more information or if we explain the science better or if we package it better, maybe with colored graphics, or write another scientific paper, that will be the one to convince (doubters)," said climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University. 
 
 "But the reality is it's not a scientific issue (any longer). It is an ideological issue. We have to appeal to people based on values. Not just on data and facts. And for me as a scientist to say that is very unusual," Hayhoe said. "So from that perspective the pope is a very effective messenger." 
 
 Scientists say that some predicted changes such as a warming Arctic, rising sea levels, more intense heat waves, extreme snow and rain storms and animal or plant extinctions are happening faster than anticipated. Frustration over a lack of response by the federal government has been growing. 
 
 A website created by Australian science communicator Joe Duggan called "Is this how you feel?" contains dozens of letters from climate scientists angry or stunned by a lack of forceful action by policymakers. 
 
 "I feel like nobody's listening," Australian research fellow Helen McGregor wrote last fall. 
 
 "There is so much noise around the issue that I often feel compelled to be outraged by our own inability as a species to respond," scientist Carlo Buontempo wrote, "But the truth is that more often than not I just feel tired." 
 
 The vast majority say they remain optimistic. Last year, a consortium of North American universities created a speakers network for climate change discussion and more than 370 scientists have since signed up to give talks at libraries, chambers of commerce, schools, colleges and community clubs. 
 
 But change still seems too slow, many say. 
 
 "As a scientist, I can say that it is possible for us to prevent truly catastrophic, potentially irreversible climate change. But I cannot say as a scientist whether or not we will find the will to do what's necessary," said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University who published a book on the role of science deniers in subverting global warming discussions. 
 
 Mann said only strong public outcry can force policy changes, and this is where the encyclical is crucial. 
 
 "There are a lot of people out there who thus far have been either skeptical or indifferent," Mann said. "I think this (encyclical) will make a difference for them." 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1Sfph3i ||||| The most anticipated papal letter for decades will be published in five languages on Thursday. It will call for an end to the ‘tyrannical’ exploitation of nature by mankind. Could it lead to a step-change in the battle against global warming? 
 
 Pope Francis will call for an ethical and economic revolution to prevent catastrophic climate change and growing inequality in a letter to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics on Thursday. 
 
 In an unprecedented encyclical on the subject of the environment, the pontiff is expected to argue that humanity’s exploitation of the planet’s resources has crossed the Earth’s natural boundaries, and that the world faces ruin without a revolution in hearts and minds. The much-anticipated message, which will be sent to the world’s 5,000 Catholic bishops, will be published online in five languages on Thursday and is expected to be the most radical statement yet from the outspoken pontiff. 
 
 However, it is certain to anger sections of Republican opinion in America by endorsing the warnings of climate scientists and admonishing rich elites, say cardinals and scientists who have advised the Vatican. 
 
 The Ghanaian cardinal, Peter Turkson, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and a close ally of the pope, will launch the encyclical. He has said it will address the root causes of poverty and the threats facing nature, or “creation”. 
 
 In a recent speech widely regarded as a curtain-raiser to the encyclical, Turkson said: “Much of the world remains in poverty, despite abundant resources, while a privileged global elite controls the bulk of the world’s wealth and consumes the bulk of its resources.” 
 
 The Argentinian pontiff is expected to repeat calls for a change in attitudes to poverty and nature. “An economic system centred on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it,” he told a meeting of social movements last year. “I think a question that we are not asking ourselves is: isn’t humanity committing suicide with this indiscriminate and tyrannical use of nature? Safeguard creation because, if we destroy it, it will destroy us. Never forget this.” 
 
 The encyclical will go much further than strictly environmental concerns, say Vatican insiders. “Pope Francis has repeatedly stated that the environment is not only an economic or political issue, but is an anthropological and ethical matter,” said another of the pope’s advisers, Archbishop Pedro Barreto Jimeno of Peru. 
 
 “It will address the issue of inequality in the distribution of resources and topics such as the wasting of food and the irresponsible exploitation of nature and the consequences for people’s life and health,” Barreto Jimeno told the Catholic News Service. 
 
 He was echoed by Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras, who coordinates the Vatican’s inner council of cardinals and is thought to reflect the pope’s political thinking . “The ideology surrounding environmental issues is too tied to a capitalism that doesn’t want to stop ruining the environment because they don’t want to give up their profits,” Rodríguez Maradiaga said. 
 
 The rare encyclical, called “Laudato Sii”, or “Praised Be”, has been timed to have maximum public impact ahead of the pope’s meeting with Barack Obama and his address to the US Congress and the UN general assembly in September. 
 
 It is also intended to improve the prospect of a strong new UN global agreement to cut climate emissions. By adding a moral dimension to the well-rehearsed scientific arguments, Francis hopes to raise the ambition of countries above their own self-interest to secure a strong deal in a crucial climate summit in Paris in November. 
 
 “Pope Francis is personally committed to this [climate] issue like no other pope before him. The encyclical will have a major impact. It will speak to the moral imperative of addressing climate change in a timely fashion in order to protect the most vulnerable,” said Christiana Figueres, the UN’s climate chief, in Bonn this week for negotiations. 
 
 Francis, the first Latin American pope, is increasingly seen as the voice of the global south and a catalyst for change in global bodies. In September, he will seek to add impetus and moral authority to UN negotiations in New York to adopt new development goals and lay out a 15-year global plan to tackle hunger, extreme poverty and health. He will address the UN general assembly on 23 September as countries finalise their commitments. 
 
 However, Francis’s radicalism is attracting resistance from Vatican conservatives and in rightwing church circles, particularly in the US – where Catholic climate sceptics also include John Boehner, Republican leader of the House of Representatives, and Rick Santorum, a Republican presidential candidate. 
 
 Earlier this year Stephen Moore, a Catholic economist, called the pope a “complete disaster”, saying he was part of “a radical green movement that is at its core anti-Christian, anti-people and anti-progress”. 
 
 Moore was backed this month by scientists and engineers from the powerful evangelical Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, who have written an open letter to Francis. “Today many prominent voices call humanity a scourge on our planet, saying that man is the problem, not the solution. Such attitudes too often contaminate their assessment of man’s effects on nature,” it says. 
 
 But the encyclical will be well received in developing countries, where most Catholics live. “Francis has always put the poor at the centre of everything he has said. The developing countries will hear their voice in the encyclical,” said Neil Thorns, director of advocacy at the Catholic development agency, Cafod. “I expect it to challenge the way we think. The message that we cannot just treat the Earth as a tool for exploitation will be a message that many will not want to hear.” 
 
 The pope is “aiming at a change of heart. What will save us is not technology or science. What will save us is the ethical transformation of our society,” said Carmelite Father Eduardo Agosta Scarel, a climate scientist who teaches at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina in Buenos Aires. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Video: Suzanne Goldenberg visits the Heartland Institute’s conference in Washington, an annual gathering of climate sceptics, to hear what delegates – including US senator James Inhofe and blogger Marc Morano – think about the Pope’s upcoming encyclical on the environment and climate change . 
 
 Earlier popes, including Benedict XVI and John Paul II, addressed environmental issues and “creation”, but neither mentioned climate change or devoted an entire encyclical to the links between poverty, economics and ecological destruction. Francis’s only previous encyclical concerned the nature of religious faith. 
 
 The pontiff, who is playing an increasing role on the world stage, will visit Cuba ahead of travelling to the US. He was cited by Obama as having helped to thaw relations between the two countries, and last week met the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to discuss the crisis in Ukraine and the threat to minority Christians in the Middle East. 
 
 The pope chose Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals, as his namesake at the start of his papacy in 2011, saying the saint’s values reflected his own. 
 
 
 
 ||||| VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis is looking for a global audience for his upcoming encyclical on the environment, saying Sunday it's meant for everyone, not just Catholics. 
 
 Pope Francis is cheered by the crowd as he arrives for an audience with Italian AGESCI boy scouts association's members in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Saturday, June 13, 2015. (AP Photo/Alessandra... (Associated Press) 
 
 Francis engaged in some self-promotion during his weekly blessing, alerting the thousands of people in St. Peter's Square that his first solo encyclical is coming out on Thursday and inviting them to pay attention to environmental degradation around them. 
 
 "This encyclical is aimed at everyone: Let us pray that everyone can receive its message and grow in responsibility toward the common home that God has given us," he said. 
 
 The eagerly awaited document will be launched at a Vatican news conference Thursday that underscores Francis' insistence that it's not just for Catholics: The three speakers are a Vatican cardinal, a Greek Orthodox theologian and an atheist scientist. 
 
 In the encyclical, Francis is expected to lay out the moral imperative to fight global warming, since the poor are the most affected by it. 
 
 Francis has said he wanted to get the encyclical out in plenty of time before negotiators meet in Paris at the end of the year to hammer out a deal to reduce greenhouse gases to a level that keeps global warming below 2 degrees C (3.6 F), compared with pre-industrial times.
– Pope Francis is days away from releasing what the Guardian predicts will be "his most radical statement" yet, and he says it isn't just for Catholics. Francis will be accompanied by an atheist climate scientist and a Greek Orthodox theologian, as well as a Vatican cardinal, when he releases his long-anticipated letter on the environment on Thursday, the AP reports. The encyclical, a rare papal "teaching letter," is expected to focus on climate change, humanity's role in causing it, and its devastating and disproportionate effects on the world's poor, reports the New York Times, which notes that Francis has long been outspoken on environmental issues and told reporters earlier this year that "man has slapped nature in the face." In a recent speech seen as a preview to the encyclical, Francis made it clear that he believes climate change and the suffering of the poor is the result of capitalism and overconsumption, the Guardian reports. "Much of the world remains in poverty, despite abundant resources, while a privileged global elite controls the bulk of the world's wealth and consumes the bulk of its resources," he said. Climate scientists say since the issue has become an ideological and partisan one as much as it is a scientific one, the papal letter could do more than international negotiations this year to reduce emissions, USA Today reports. (A US conservative group claims Francis has been "misled" on the issue, and staunch Catholic Rick Santorum says he finds the church leader hard to listen to.)