ROME
GlobalPost
Jason Berry
Valeria Fraschetti
Jun 15, 2015
ROME — An hour before L’espresso magazine leaked an Italian-language PDF of Pope Francis’s long-awaited encyclical on ecology, Massimo Faggioli was unwinding over orange juice in a café near St. Peter’s Square after a day’s research in the Vatican Archives.
The Italian-born Faggioli, a theology professor at St. Thomas University in Minneapolis, reflected on the drumbeat of opinion over a pope weighing in on climate change.
“American Catholic conservatives have already dismissed the letter because of Cardinal [Peter] Turkson’s role in the drafting process,” said Faggioli.
“An African cardinal in charge of drafting a document for a Latin American pope is too much for some of these people.”
A few minutes later, Faggioli checked his iPhone and saw that the conservative Vatican correspondent Sandro Magister had posted the entire encyclical, Laudato Si: On the Care of Our Common Home, on L’espresso — three days before its scheduled release at noon Thursday.
“I believe this was leaked to Magister by one of the enemies to embarrass the pope and deflate the hyped launch,” Robert Mickens, Vatican correspondent for the Jesuit-edited news magazine Global Pulse, said in a tweet.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.