Given this week’s COP28 gathering on climate change, I posed a question on FB for my Roman Catholic friends who have voted for political candidates who deny climate science. Pope Francis recently issued an apostolic exhortation on climate change, calling the issue “one of the principal challenges facing society.” He says that climate change is “intimately related to the dignity of human life” and labels humanity’s role in the problem as a “structural sin.” He criticizes those who deny climate science and obstruct progress in addressing the issue, and demands that political leaders prioritize finding solutions. I wanted to know if the Pope’s stance on climate change and his call to action would influence their vote in future elections. My interest in this topic is that I agree with the Pope that climate change/global warming is a crisis-level issue that requires immediate action. Catholics and other religious conservatives use their political beliefs to dismiss the facts of science. Now, however, the leader of the Catholics, who they believe is Jesus’s representative on Earth, is saying that the climate crisis cannot be denied and must be addressed. So now conservative Catholics have to choose between their political beliefs and both science and their religion. I’m interested in knowing how that will affect how Catholics vote. Please contact me if you have an answer.