How one woman's database can help the Catholic Church manage its lands On May 24, 2016, Molly Burhans made her way to Rome?s Palazzo San Callisto, a pale brick building outside Vatican City that houses several powerful Catholic organizations. Burhans, then 26 years old, had flown to Rome hoping to meet with Cardinal Peter Turkson, the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, as well as members of the Secretariat of State, the church?s governing bureaucracy, which operates out of the Apostolic Palace, an ornate, 15th-century building where every pope besides Francis has lived.

Burhans had recently graduated from the Conway School, a small, progressive design school in Massachusetts, and almost immediately thereafter founded GoodLands, a nonprofit organization whose ambitious mission was to create an ecological land-use plan for the Catholic Church. She knew that the Vatican could not officially endorse an outside organization, but she was hoping for its tacit approval?along with its cooperation. ?I knew that if anyone in hierarchy said, ?We don?t want this to happen,? it wasn?t going to happen,? she says of those first meetings. A devout Catholic herself, Burhans attended a Jesuit college in upstate New York and even began the discernment process for becoming a nun. (Women interested in becoming Catholic sisters go through a sometimes years-long period of prayer, introspection, spiritual retreats, and convent visits. Burhans says she is still in t...