Last Thursday Conservation Colorado honored Tom Steyer, the California investment billionaire and environmental political donor, at its 2015 ‘Rebel With A Cause’ dinner at the Convention Center Hyatt in Denver.

At the gala event — the state’s “green-side-up” glitterati were in full force — boasting half an inch of snow white stubble, on its way to becoming a beard, was former Gov. Bill Ritter, coiner of the “new energy economy” catch phrase that now echoes in nearly every discussion about global warming, and he had a story to tell. Or not quite tell yet, but with a wink and a grin, he confirmed what we’d been hearing for weeks.The whispers have been thick around Colorado’s Knights of Columbus halls and parish office, rumors flying fast and furious that the former governor had answered a summons from Pope Francis to assist in crafting the Catholic Church’s pending encyclical on climate change.

We couldn’t resist asking the Global Warming Guru if he had, indeed, been spending some time offering his expertise in Vatican City.

The afore-mentioned grin crossed Ritter’s face as he responded, ”No, but I did spend time in Rome meeting with the Vatican’s policy team drafting the Papal Encyclical.”

Ritter is presently directing the Center for the New Energy Economy at CSU. According to sources and our surmise, Ritter was the only American to serve on the climate change policy advisory team. A devout Catholic — he served as an African missionary with his wife, Jeannie, and weathered periodic attacks from several of the more virulent pro-choice factions within the Democratic Party — Ritter has emerged as a leading international voice in the climate debate.

An official at the U. S. Department of Energy with contacts in the White House hadn’t heard about Ritter’s involvement with the much-anticipated Vatican missive but was interested to hear the news. “No, we didn’t know, but I’m glad he was there!” was the reply from our DOE source.

Ritter would not discuss the particulars of the encyclical, due out on June 18, but he did report, “You’ll be surprised. Pope Francis is not limiting its contents to a narrow discussion of climate change. He will also touch on economics and the equitable distribution of impacts on all of God’s children.”

Following hard on the heels of last week’s sermon, in which the Pope labeled ideological, right-wing Christian fundamentalism as “an illness” that doesn’t serve Jesus Christ, the conservative Catholics who have dominated the Church for the past half-century must be reaching for their blood pressure medicines. Infallibility and the role of the Pope in the Church as the Vicar of Christ were far more congenial concepts when the Vatican’s message was one of pampering the powerful.

We badly misspelled New Era Colorado founder and state Senate District 18 candidate Steve Fenberg’s last name in a headline in last week’s Statesman and regret the errur.