WASHINGTON (CNS) – The much-anticipated encyclical by Pope Francis on the environment, expected sometime this spring or early summer, is generating a lot of buzz in Washington and elsewhere.

At the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering, a Feb. 9 panel discussion on climate change and other environmental issues had to be moved to a larger room.

“We usually get 15, 20 people,” said Dan Misleh, executive director of the Catholic Climate Covenant, prefacing his remarks. Surveying the scene in the larger room, he added, “It’s never been this full.”

In St. Paul, Minnesota, in November, there were hopes that an address by Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Institute for Justice and Peace, at Catholic Rural Life’s “Faith, Food and the Environment” symposium would give listeners an early glimpse into the mind of the pope in hopes that the cardinal and the pope were of like mind on the topic. However, Cardinal Turkson was reassigned to coordinate the Vatican’s response to the Ebola crisis and never made an address.

But in Washington, like-mindedness can be hard to come by. “Already there are people criticizing the pope” over the encyclical “and they haven’t even seen it,” Misleh said.

Franciscan Sister Ilia Delio, director of Catholic studies at Jesuit-run Georgetown University in Washington, noted one remark by Pope Francis: “This is our sin, exploiting the earth.”

“Do we really love the earth that is our home?” Sister Ilia asked, noting the pope’s reference to sin. “It’s a collective sin. We have become radically disconnected from the earth and from the poor,” she said.

Sister Ilia acknowledged “a little bit of ambiguity” in the biblical injunction of humans to have “dominion” over the earth. “Does nature exist for the sake of human life, and what does that mean for us?” she asked.