By Randy Hall | April 28, 2015 | 5:57 PM EDT

During a press conference in Vatican City on Tuesday, people described as “papal heavies” interrupted “an awkward question” being asked by Marc Morano -- publisher of the skeptical Climate Depot website -- who wanted to know what Ban Ki-Moon, secretary-general of the United Nations, thinks about climate change deniers.

According to an article written by James Dellingpole for the Breitbart.com site, Morano was asking the U.N. official if he had a message for the delegation of scientists who had flown to Rome to urge Pope Francis to “reconsider his ill-advised position climate change” as part of an exchange that has recently been described as “nasty” and “almost like denying gravity.”

By Tom Johnson | November 16, 2014 | 2:41 PM EST

Michael Specter comments that Francis “believes that science, rational thought, and data all play powerful and positive roles in human life,” but that the two GOP senators “seem as if they do not.”

By Kyle Drennen | March 8, 2013 | 1:01 PM EST

On Friday's NBC Today, fill-in co-host Lester Holt hyped unfounded speculation surrounding the abdication of Pope Benedict XVI: "More than a week after his resignation became official, there are still a lot of controversial theories about why Pope Benedict XVI stepped down. NBC's chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel is looking into them at the Vatican." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Previewing a report for Rock Center, Engel proclaimed: "What we still don't know, not definitively anyway, is why Pope Benedict decided to retire....[Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi] exposed some of the Vatican's most guarded secrets. A scoop seen in Italy as big as Watergate. Italians call it 'Vatileaks.'"