Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), one of the Senate’s most vocal climate change deniers, on Thursday dismissed Pope Francis’ decision to address climate change in an upcoming encyclical.
“Everyone is going to ride the pope now. Isn’t that wonderful,” Inhofe said when asked about the pontiff’s views at the Heartland Institute’s climate conference, according to The Guardian. “The pope ought to stay with his job, and let us stay with ours.”
“I am not going to talk about the pope. Let him run his shop, and we’ll run ours,” Inhofe later said, according to The Guardian.
The Vatican will release later in June an encyclical that “will convey to the world that protecting our environment is an urgent moral imperative and a sacred duty for all people of faith and people of conscience,” according to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), who has launched a bid for president, also knocked the pope’s take on climate change recently. Earlier this month, he told the pope to stay away from the issue of climate change and “leave science to the scientists.”
