Pope Francis’ death on April 21 marked the end of an unusual pontificate in which the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Roman Catholics played a high-profile role on environmental issues. Though not the first pope to address matters such as biodiversity loss and climate change—at least three other popes have taken on those issues in the past half-century—Francis was the most outspoken. His successor, Pope Leo XIV, an Augustinian friar from the United States who spent much of his life as a missionary in Peru, has not weighed in as forcefully on environmental issues, but people who know him expect him to follow Francis’ lead, albeit more quietly. On green issues, Francis was best known for his encyclical issued before the 2015 Paris climate talks. (See "Will ‘green encyclical’ hit home in Latin... [Log in to read more]