So she returned to the United States, and went to work on a blueprint for the kind of cartography institute that she believed the Church needed. “If I’d said yes, it would have been a total failure,” she said. The offer came with no budget, other than a small stipend for herself. Still, she knew that she had to turn him down. Shortly before she flew home, though, she received an e-mail saying that Francis was interested in establishing a Vatican cartography institute, on a six-month trial basis, with her as its head.īurhans was elated: this would likely be the first female-founded department in the history of the Roman Curia. Still, their conversation was brief, and she didn’t think anything would come of it. Francis seemed interested, she told me he said that he had never seen anything like it. She gave Francis a map that showed the percentage of Catholics in every diocese in the world, and explained how that map related to the bigger projects she envisioned. When she met with the Pope, Turkson acted as her interpreter. Burhans’ organization, GoodLands - whose mission is to mobilize the Catholic Church to “ use land for good” - has also tracked sexual abuse cases involving priests, so there are other massive benefits of mapping the Church via G.I.S. Through more effective and morally responsible land management, Burhans sees an incredible opportunity for the Church to be at the forefront of climate action, putting its land to better use and protecting vulnerable populations from the effects of global warming. The Church’s properties aren’t just cathedrals and convents, but forests and farmlands (and, interestingly, 21 oil wells, some of which have made nearby residents sick from fumes). Owning an estimated two hundred million acres of land, the Catholic Church is “probably the world’s largest non-state landowner,” writes David Owen in a fascinating New Yorker profile of Burhans. software, which organizes complex data and presents it geographically so it’s easier to analyze and understand, to build a clearer picture of all the assets of the Church. Molly Burhans, known at the Vatican as the “Map Lady,” has a vision: to map the Catholic Church’s land around the world in an effort to battle climate change.
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