Opinion and Analysis

In addition to my scholarly research, I sometimes write for a more popular audience. This page serves as a home for that work.

A backgrounder on Laudate Deum and what it means for COP28

On October 4, 2023, just two months before UNFCCC COP28, Pope Francis released a new pastoral document addressing the climate crisis. This document, Laudate Deum, is…

Bryan P. Galligan, S.J.

War, drought, flood: The many challenges facing South Sudan

Before a leg injury forced him to postpone travel, Pope Francis was scheduled to make an ecumenical “pilgrimage of peace” to South Sudan. He would have been joined by…

Bryan P. Galligan, S.J.

Providing access or taking sides? Blue growth, small-scale fisheries, and the case of Lamu, Kenya

Promotio Iustitiae

People will stand fishing beside the sea…it will be a place for the spreading of nets; its fish will be of a great many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea (Ezek. 47:10).

Bryan P. Galligan, S.J. and Sasha Kinney

Troubled waters

Coral reefs are special places. They can enchant, inspiring tourists and scientists to travel hundreds, even thousands of miles for just a few moments of underwater bliss.…

Bryan P. Galligan, S.J.

Fact-checking Netflix’s ‘Seaspiracy’

The Jesuit Post

Seaspiracy, the new documentary about global fisheries, has performed remarkably well on review aggregating websites and Netflix’s Top 10 list. Its reception among ocean…

Bryan P. Galligan, S.J.

Ecological genocide in the Amazon: Raphael Lemkin and the destruction of human groups

Ethics & International Affairs

For most people, the word “genocide” likely evokes mental images of concentration camps, killing fields, and mass graves. Deforestation, no matter how severe, would seem to…

Bryan P. Galligan, S.J.

Teetering on the edge: The crisis in Amazonia

The Amazon Synod’s final document and Pope Francis’s post-synodal exhortation Querida Amazonia both describe a social and environmental crisis of historic proportions, a…

Bryan P. Galligan, S.J.