The Washington Post reports on a leaked version of the Pope’s Thursday speech: See Pope Francis blasts global warming deniers in leaked draft of encyclical

A draft of a major environmental document by Pope Francis says “the bulk of global warming” is caused by human activity and calls on people — especially the world’s rich — to take steps to mitigate the damage by reducing consumption and reliance on fossil fuels.

In words likely to anger some of his conservative critics, the pope backs the science of climate change, saying “plenty of scientific studies point out that the last decades of global warming have been mostly caused by the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxide and others) especially generated by human action.”

Update: article about scientists hoping the Pope’s words will help the cause: http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/06/17/us-pope-environment-usa-scientists-idINKBN0OX17W20150617