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Biden’s historicby Elizabeth move Kolberton the climate

CAN IMMIGRATION RECOVER FROM TRUMP? Researchers and activists have spent the past four years documenting more than a thousand hidden changes to the nation’s bureaucracy and the carnage they create. Sarah Stillman reports

THE THE YOUNG CYBERWEAPON CARTOGRAPHER ARMS RACE WITH A PLAN Jill Lepore on the global FOR THE POPE market of hackers David Owen on the environmental potential BUILDING of the Church’s land A BLACK CAPITALIST THE RUSSIAN UTOPIA VACCINE Kelefa Sanneh on the Joshua Yaffa on getting story of Soul City the shot in Moscow

PLUS Anthony Lane on Denzel Washington Alexandra Schwartz on ‘Call My Agent!’ Louis Menand on Mike Nichols

FEBRUARY 8, 2021

6 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN 13 THE TALK OF THE TOWN Elizabeth Kolbert on Biden’s environmental initiatives; public art for the pandemic; landmarking and Trump; Kim Hastreiter’s new newspaper; David Duchovny. LETTER FROM MOSCOW Joshua Yaffa 18 Five-Month Plan Russia’s race to create a COVID vaccine. SHOUTS & MURMURS Nathan Heller 25 Tips for Public Speakers AMERICAN CHRONICLES Kelefa Sanneh 26 The Color of Money The making of a Black capitalist utopia. A REPORTER AT LARGE Sarah Stillman 32 The Damage Tracking Trump’s assault on immigration. ANNALS OF GEOGRAPHY David Owen 42 Promised Land Maps to help the Catholic Church fight climate change. SKETCHBOOK Paul Rogers 49 “Paul and Audrey” FICTION Ben Okri 52 “A Wrinkle in the Realm” THE CRITICS BOOKS Jill Lepore 55 The cyberweapon arms race. Louis Menand 59 Understanding Mike Nichols’s career. Adam Gopnik 65 What Lucian Freud saw in bodies. 67 Briefly Noted Dan Chiasson 70 “Come-Hither Honeycomb,” by Erin Belieu. POP MUSIC Amanda Petrusich 72 Dusty Springfield, revisited. ON TELEVISION Alexandra Schwartz 74 “Call My Agent!,” “The Bureau.” THE CURRENT CINEMA Anthony Lane 76 “The Little Things,” “Supernova,” “Two of Us.” POEMS Charles Simic 37 “There Is Nothing Quieter” Joyce Carol Oates 44 “This Is Not a Poem” COVER Christoph Niemann “Wooster Street”

DRAWINGS Ellis Rosen, Matilda Borgström, Liza Donnelly, Michael Maslin, Elisabeth McNair, Zachary Kanin, Liana Finck, Edward Koren, Carolita Johnson, Roz Chast, Ali Solomon, Jeremy Nguyen, Drew Dernavich, Frank Cotham, Will McPhail SPOTS Marie-Helene Jeeves

TNY—2021_02_08—PAGE 1—133SC. 3C ANNALS OF GEOGRAPHY PROMISED LAND

A young climate activist is creating maps to help the Catholic Church combat global warming. BY DAVID OWEN

n the summer of 2016, Molly Bur- lion Catholics,” she told me. “If the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the hans, a twenty-six-year-old cartog- Church were a country, it would be the air, and over the cattle, and over all the rapher and environmentalist from third most populous, after China and earth, and over every creeping thing ,I spoke at a Catholic con- India.” The Church, furthermore, is that creepeth upon the earth”; in “Lau- ference in Nairobi, and she took ad- probably the world’s largest non-state dato Si’,” Francis interprets “dominion” vantage of her modest travel stipend to landowner. The assets of the Holy See, as something like moral responsibility, book her return trip through Rome. combined with those of parishes, dio- and writes that the earth “now cries out When she arrived, she got a room in ceses, and religious orders, include not to us because of the harm we have in- the cheapest youth hostel she could just cathedrals, convents, and Michel- flicted on her by our irresponsible use find, and began sending e-mails to Vat- angelo’s Pietà but also farms, forests, and abuse of the goods with which God ican officials, asking if they’d be will- and, by some estimates, nearly two hun- has endowed her.” He calls for the re- ing to meet with her. She wanted to dred million acres of land. placement of fossil fuels “without delay,” discuss a project she’d been working on Burhans concluded that the Church and demands that wealthy countries be for months: documenting the global had the means to address climate is- held accountable for their “ecological landholdings of the Catholic Church. sues directly, through better land man- debt,” which they have accumulated by To her surprise, she received an ap- agement, and that it was also capable exploiting poorer countries. Shortly after pointment in the office of the Secre- of protecting populations that were es- “Laudato Si’ ” was published, Herman tariat of State. pecially vulnerable to the consequences Daly, an environmental economist and On the day of the meeting, she of global warming. Some researchers professor emeritus at the University of couldn’t find the entrance that she’d have estimated that drought, rising sea Maryland School of Public Policy, wrote been told to use. She hadn’t bought a levels, and other climate-related disas- that Francis “will be known by the en- SIM card for her phone, so she couldn’t ters will drive two hundred million emies this encyclical makes for him,” call for help, and, in a panic, she ran al- people from their homes by 2050; many among them “the Heartland Institute, most all the way around Vatican City. of those people live in places—includ- Jeb Bush, Senator James Inhofe, Rush The day was hot, and she was sweating. ing some parts of Central Africa, the Limbaugh, Rick Santorum.” (Daly could At last, she spotted a monk, and she Amazon Basin, and Asia—where the have included the libertarian commen- asked him for directions. He gave her Church has more leverage than any tator Greg Gutfeld, who, while discuss- a funny look: the entrance was a few government. “There is no way that we ing “Laudato Si’ ” on Fox News, char- steps away. A pair of Swiss Guards, in will address the climate crisis or biodi- acterized Francis as “the most danger- their blue, red, and yellow striped uni- versity loss in any sort of timely man- ous person on the planet.”) forms, led her to an elevator. She took ner if the Catholic Church does not Burhans was in graduate school, it to the third loggia of the Apostolic engage, especially with its own lands studying landscape design, at the time. Palace, and walked down a long mar- and property,” Burhans said. “At the end She described “Laudato Si’ ” to me as ble hallway. On the wall to her right of the day, I’m more subordinate to my “one of the most important documents were windows draped with gauzy cur- ecclesiastical authority than I am to my of the century,” but she also said that, tains; to her left were enormous fresco government authority. You can see that not long after Francis presented it, she maps, commissioned in the early six- kind of sentiment even in non-­Catholics, discovered that the Church had no real teenth century, depicting the world as like Martin Luther King, Jr.—some- mechanism for achieving its goals. “The it was known then. times you have to default to a greater Catholic Church is the world’s largest Burhans has been a deeply commit- good.” What if desecration of the en- non-government provider of health ted Catholic since she was twenty-one. vironment were a mortal sin? Could care, humanitarian aid, and education,” For a year or two, when she was in col- faith accomplish what science and pol- she said, “and I assumed that it must lege, she considered becoming a nun. itics have not? have a significant environmental net- Later, though, as she grew increasingly In the spring of 2015, Pope Francis work, too.” She identified a number of concerned about climate change, her presented “Laudato Si’,” a forty-thou- ecology-focussed Catholic groups, ambitions broadened, and she began sand-word encyclical on reckless con- mostly in wealthier parishes, but no to think of ways in which the Catholic­ sumerism, ecological degradation, and central organization that she could Church could be mobilized as a global global warming. In the Book of Gen- join—no Catholic ­Sierra Club or Na- environmental force. “There are 1.2 bil- esis, God gives man “dominion over the ture Conservancy, no environmental

42 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8, 2021

TNY—2021_02_08—PAGE 42—133SC. BW The role of the cartographer, according to Molly Burhans, is not just data analytics. “It’s also storytelling,” she said. PHOTOGRAPHS BY ISABEL MAGOWAN THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8, 2021 43

TNY—2021_02_08—PAGE 43—133SC.—LIVE PHOTOGRAPH—R37850—EXTREMELY CRITICAL TO BE WATCHED THROUGHOUT ENTIRE PRESS RUN—PLEASE USE VIRTUAL PROOF. 4C equivalent of Catholic Relief Services. In September of 2015—four months after the publication of “Laudato Si’,” THIS IS NOT A POEM and a few weeks after she received her master’s degree—she founded Good- in which the poet discovers Lands, an organization whose mission, delicate white-parched bones according to its Web site, is “mobiliz- of a small creature ing the Catholic Church to use her land on a Great Lake shore for good.” Burhans’s immediate goal or the desiccated remains was to use technology that she had be- of cruder roadkill come proficient at in graduate school— beside the rushing highway. the powerful cartographic and data-­ management tools known as geographic Nor is it a poem in which information systems (G.I.S.)—to cre- a cracked mirror yields ate a land-classification plan that could a startled face, be used in evaluating and then man- or sere grasses hiss- aging the Church’s global property ing like consonants holdings. “You should put your envi- in a foreign language. ronmental programs where they mean Family photo album the most, and if you don’t understand filled with yearning the geographic context you can’t do strangers long deceased, that,” she said. closet of beautiful The first step was to document the clothes of the dead. Church’s actual possessions. She began Attic trunk, stone well, by making telephone calls to individ- or metonymic moon ual parishes in Connecticut, where she time-travelling for wisdom lived. “And what I found out was that in the Paleolithic none of them knew what they owned,” age, in the Middle Kingdom she told me. “Some of them didn’t even or Genesis have paper records.” She enlisted vol- or the time of Bashō…. unteers, including several graduate stu- dents at the Yale School of the Envi- Instead it is a slew ronment, and, by harvesting data from of words in search public land records and other sources, of a container— they began to assemble a map of the a sleek green stalk, modern Catholic realm. By June of a transparent lung, 2016, the most detailed reference they’d a single hair’s curl, found was a version of “Atlas Hierar- a cooing of vowels chicus,” published at the behest of the like doves. Vatican. The maps in it had last been updated in 1901. “The diocesan bound- —Joyce Carol Oates aries in the atlas were hand-drawn, without a standardized geographic pro- jection,” Burhans told me, and the in- asked if I could speak to someone in who had been convicted by a German formation was so outdated that most their cartography department.” The court of promoting Holocaust denial. of it was unusable. When she travelled priests said they didn’t have one. When the announcement provoked to Rome that summer, her main goal Centuries ago, monks were among outrage, Benedict explained that he was to find someone in the Vatican the world’s most assiduous geogra- hadn’t known about Williamson’s past who could give her access to the Holy phers—hence the frescoes. But, at some remarks. “People said, ‘Why didn’t you See’s records and digital databases, en- point after the publication of “Atlas just Google the guy’s name?’ ” Burhans abling her to fill in the many gaps. Hierarchicus,” the Church began to told me. “And they were, like, ‘We don’t In the Office of the Secretariat of lose track of its own possessions. “Until have Google.’ ” State that day, Burhans met with two a few years ago, the Vatican’s Central At the end of her meeting with the priests. She showed them the proto- Office of Church Statistics didn’t even priests, Burhans asked whether they type map that she had been working have Wi-Fi,” Burhans said. “They were would mind if she continued to gather on, and explained what she was look- keeping records in a text file, in Mic- information on her own, since they ing for. “I asked them where their maps rosoft Word.” In 2009, Pope Benedict didn’t have what she was looking for. were kept,” she said. The priests pointed XVI lifted the excommunication of “They spoke in Italian for five or ten to the frescoes on the walls. “Then I Richard Williamson, a British bishop minutes,” she recalled. “I was thinking,

44 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8, 2021

TNY—2021_02_08—PAGE 44—133SC. BW Can you be excommunicated for ask- vehicle not only for food security and network of pacifist, communitarian ing a question?” As an obedient Cath- ecosystem support but also for help- groups that were dedicated to living olic, she would have felt compelled to ing people in rural poverty get out of in poverty and aiding the poor. She abandon her entire project if they had poverty,” she said. She was surprised got two tattoos: one, on her forearm, said no. “But they didn’t say no,” she by some of the friends she made. “They of a bicycle with three wheels arranged told me. “In the end, they said, ‘Yes, were Christians, but not like the Chris- in a triangle (symbolizing her inter- that would be useful for everything.’ ” tians you see on TV—none of the pros- est in both the Holy Trinity and low-­ She thanked them, and told them that perity gospel crap,” she said. “In fact, carbon transportation), and one, on she would be back. exactly the opposite. I began to think, her right shoulder, of the third line of Maybe I’m a Christian.” Whitman’s “Song of Myself ”—“for­ urhans was born in New York City Burhans’s family was nominally every atom belonging to me as good in 1989. Her mother, Debra, is a Catholic. She had attended a parochial belongs to you.” Bprofessor of computer science at Cani- school through third grade, and Mercy­ During her time at Canisius, Bur- sius College, in Buffalo. Her father, hurst and Canisius are both Catholic hans spent a week on a service retreat William, who died in 2019, of prostate institutions. But when she went to at a monastery in northwestern Penn- cancer, was a researcher in molecular church as a child, she said, “I’m pretty sylvania, and she was struck that the oncology. As a young girl, Burhans was sure I was only in it for the dough- resident Sisters were doing almost noth- passionate about drawing and about nuts.” When she was twelve, the Bos- ing with their property other than mow- her family’s Macintosh computer. At ton Globe published its “Spotlight” ar- ing its immense lawn. “There were many six, she taught herself to use Canvas, ticles about child abuse by priests. She acres of forest, but, at that time, there an early program for graphics and desk- said her feelings about the Church, was no forest plan, no erosion plan, no top publishing, and then Dreamweaver which had been “not spiritually ma- invasive-species plan,” she said. “And I and Flash. When she was in high ture,” turned angry and hostile. “Here thought, Wow, this could be done bet- school, her father and his colleagues was this institution that had perpetu- ter. They could be doing sustainable paid her to create graphs and illustra- ated colonialism, and now it was hid- forest management and earning reve- tions in Photoshop for their scientific ing a bunch of pedophiles.” nue, or they could implement a perma- papers—a nerd’s equivalent of babysit- At Canisius, though, she experi- culture farming system and actually ting money. Her main interest, how- enced a spiritual awakening. She was feed people.” ever, was always ballet. She began tak- working on a physics problem one day, In 2013, the summer before she grad- ing lessons when she was five, and by thinking about limits and infinitesi- uated, she saw an advertisement on the time she was in high school she mal values, and suddenly she felt over- Facebook for the Conway School, a was practicing several hours a day, six whelmed. “The Jesuits talk about see- ten-month master’s degree program days a week. ing God in all things, and you can see in ecologically minded landscape de- She enrolled at Mercyhurst Univer- God in all things through the infinite,” sign, in Conway, . The sity, in Pennsylvania, in 2007, intend- she said. She began meeting regularly school was founded, in 1972, by Wal- ing to major in dance, but she with- with a Jesuit spiritual di- ter Cudnohufsky, a Har­ drew in the fall of her sophomore year, rector, who introduced her vard-trained­­ landscape ar- among other reasons because she had to the Examen of St. Ig- chitect, who believed that suffered a debilitating foot injury, and natius, a demanding daily conventional graduate pro- because she had walked in on a stu- prayer exercise, which she grams in his field were too dent who was trying to kill herself. described to me as “mind- theoretical and insuffi­ She returned to her parents’ house, in fulness on steroids.” ciently collaborative. She Buffalo, and, after a period of dejec- As Burhans became in- decided that the Conway tion, became involved in the city’s arts terested in Catholicism, program might enable her community. She took advantage of a her social life changed. “I to combine her interests in policy at Canisius that allowed the no longer had people to design, conservation, and children of faculty members to study listen to John Cage or morally responsible land tuition-free. She eventually majored in Frank Zappa with,” she told me. Her use, and prepare her for her ideal oc- philosophy, but she also studied sci- new friends were “middle-class sub- cupation, which she thought might be ence, mathematics, and art. She told urban campus-ministry members who “nun farmer” or “nun park ranger.” me that in high school she’d been so liked belting Disney songs.” She had focussed on ballet that she was never no real regrets, though, because she here were seventeen students in much of a student; now she devoted had “fallen in love with God.” She Burhans’s program at Conway. The herself to academics with the same in- took classes in Greek, so that she could youngestT had just earned an undergrad- tensity that she’d once devoted to dance. read the New Testament in its origi- uate degree in architecture; the oldest She spent six months travelling, by nal language, and she read works by had worked for nearly a decade as a herself, in Guatemala, where she vol- Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, who, product designer at Tupperware and unteered with several N.G.O.s. “What during the Great Depression, founded Rubbermaid and wanted to make a ca- I learned there is that land is a critical the Catholic Worker Movement, a reer change. During the second half of

THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8, 2021 45

TNY—2021_02_08—PAGE 45—133SC.—LIVE SPOT—R37837H—PLEASE USE VIRTUAL PROOF 3C formation in tables or graphs, it would be overwhelming. But the second you get it into a spatial relationship you can see what you have to do.” Burhans said that the day she opened ArcMap was one of the best days of her life. “Most of my class- mates were swearing at their comput- ers, because the program is really hard,” she said. “But I just knew how it worked. It was like someone had put my brain in a piece of software.” At Canisius, she had supplemented the course materials in a science class by diagramming biological systems, in stackable layers, on an outline of the human body—cell types, germ layers, the endocrine system, the cardiovas- cular system. G.I.S., she said, com- bined categories of information in a similar way, but with digital geospa- tial data rather than with body parts. Conway students worked exclu- sively with real clients. Burhans was part of a team assigned to an environ- mental group in Portland, Maine, which wanted to plant pollinator-­ friendly vegetation on undeveloped land in the city. She told me, “My re- action was that a project like that, how- ever well intentioned, might simply be creating ecological sinks—where you plant just enough to lure pollinator species into the city but not enough to support their full life cycle. So I found all these meta-analyses­ of hab- Burhans realized that the Church had lost track of its vast landholdings. itat conditions—for insects and for some birds. Like, how far can they go the program, each member of the class of it not obviously geographical. Im- to the next forage patch—is it four was given a student license for ArcMap, mense data sets can be analyzed indi- feet, four metres, forty metres?” She a G.I.S. program created by a company vidually, or they can be merged to re- incorporated data about topography, called Esri. The purpose of G.I.S. is to veal ways in which they interact. G.I.S. solar radiation, drainage, and shade make complex information easier to has been behind the news for much of cast by buildings, as well as the names understand and analyze, by organizing the past year, because the digital sys- and addresses of the owners of every it geographically and in multiple lay- tems that health officials and medical undeveloped parcel in Portland. “I cre- ers. In 1854, during a cholera epidemic personnel around the world are using ated a rudimentary but useful pro- in London, the English physician John to track the novel coronavirus are al- gram,” she continued. “And what I saw, Snow created a simple forerunner of most all built on G.I.S. platforms. The all of a sudden, was that there were G.I.S. by marking the locations of in- software makes it possible to plot these potentially robust habitat corri- dividual cases on a street map, thereby COVID-19 cases in relation to factors dors that went all the way through the tracing the source of one neighbor- such as income levels, school-district city, and that if you followed them you hood’s outbreak to a particular public boundaries, and the locations of health- actually could support pollinators with- well, around which the dots clustered. care facilities. “You can see where the out creating sinks.” For the final ver- Snow’s map was easy to understand, medical supplies are and who has co- sion she drew illustrations. and it identified not just the problem morbidities and who has health insur- Paul Hellmund, Conway’s director but also the solution. ance, and you can see that in areas where at the time, described Burhans’s polli- Modern G.I.S. software can pro- people don’t own cars you need test- nator work to me as “mind-blowing.” vide the same kind of clarity, but for ing sites within walking distance,” Bur- Her ArcMap instructor was Dana Tom- vastly larger quantities of data, much hans told me. “If you put all that in- lin, a visiting lecturer, who teaches

46 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 8, 2021

TNY—2021_02_08—PAGE 46—133SC.—LIVE PHOTOGRAPH—R37869—EXTREMELY CRITICAL TO BE WATCHED THROUGHOUT ENTIRE PRESS RUN—PLEASE USE VIRTUAL PROOF. 4C G.I.S. at both Yale and the University tained a desk, a bank of file cabinets, Almost all of the work she did, includ- of Pennsylvania, and who was the orig- and a couch, on which Burhans some- ing a few projects for the Vatican, was inator of a field in cartography known times spent the night when she had pro bono, and, although she had re- as map algebra. He told me, “With worked late and didn’t feel like riding ceived small grants from Catholic-­ Molly, it was like the child who finds her motor scooter back to her apart- friendly organizations, she could sel- the musical instrument that’s right for ment, on the other side of the river. A dom afford even part-time help. It them, and thereby becomes a master brown paper grocery bag on the floor wasn’t until 2016 that she hired her at it.” Burhans said that, as she worked next to the couch contained her paja- first paid intern: Sasha Trubetskoy, a on the project, she felt several of her mas. Hanging on the wall above the statistics major at the University of interests come together, like layers in desk was a copy, printed on a large sheet Chicago, whom she had discovered on G.I.S.: computer science, conservation, of plastic, of the first complete map that Wikipedia. Trubetskoy, for fun, had art—even dance, since managing data GoodLands made of the Church’s ju- created a simple map of ecclesiastical sets in ArcMap felt like choreography. risdictional elements. (The Church is provinces, using the open-source It was while she was at Conway that primarily divided into episcopal con- image-­editing program GIMP. He told Burhans decided her original career ferences, provinces, dioceses, and par- me, “Ecclesiastical provinces seemed goal had been too narrow. Instead of ishes.) “Nobody had mapped this be- like the last vestiges of the adminis- reforming the land-use practices of fore,” she said. “And one of the things trative structure of the Roman Em- a single convent or monastery, she you can see is that ecclesiastical bound- pire, and I was surprised that the Cath- thought, why not use G.I.S. to analyze aries don’t always conform to modern olic Church hadn’t really mapped all Catholic property holdings, and geopolitical boundaries. The Seoul Di- them.” Many of Trubetskoy’s bound- then help the Church put them to bet- ocese, for example, spans the border be- aries were approximate, but he had ter use? She met the historian Jill Ker tween North and South Korea.” collected information that Burhans Conway, who owned a house nearby Early on, Burhans got a huge break had seen nowhere else. (Trubetskoy is (but who, despite her name, had no when someone familiar with her work now a freelance data scientist. His re- connection to the school). Conway was at Conway described her pollinator cent hobby projects have included map- the president of Smith College be- project to Jack and Laura Danger- ping the road systems of Gaul and me- tween 1975 and 1985, and in 2013 she mond, the founders and owners of dieval Japan.) received a National Humanities Medal Esri, the publishers of ArcMap. Jack Burhans unexpectedly acquired a from President Obama. She invited Dangermond first began exploring significant missing piece in late 2016, Burhans to tea one afternoon, and computer-mapping­ software in 1968, while she was working without pay to “pulled the entire idea for GoodLands in a research lab at Harvard. He and map the property holdings and sub- out of me,” Burhans said. Laura started Esri three years later, sidiary branches of a global commu- Conway, who died in 2018, intro- with a small loan from Jack’s mother. nity of Catholic organizations. During duced Burhans to a mentee of hers, Today, their company employs forty-­ a visit to one of its sites, she told some Rosanne Haggerty, who had worked five hundred people worldwide and priests about her long-term plans— with Catholic Charities in has annual revenues estimated at more after dinner, over cognac—and one of the nineteen-eighties and won a MacAr- than a billion dollars. them excused himself, returned to his thur Fellowship in 2001 for creating The Dangermonds invited Burhans room, and came back with a stack of housing for the homeless in New York to Esri’s headquarters, in Redlands, printed materials that documented the City. When Burhans graduated, in 2015, California, to explain the work she’d diocesan boundaries in China, where she had very little money, and Haggerty been doing with their program. At the he had served as a missionary. One of invited her to live, rent-free, in a house end of that meeting, they gave her the her most useful early resources was that she and her husband owned, in enterprise version of their most sophis- David Cheney, an I.T. specialist for the Hartford, Connecticut. Burhans stayed, ticated software—a huge relief to Bur- Internal Revenue Service, who had on and off, for two years—without ever hans, because her student license had spent more than twenty years collect- unpacking, because she worried that expired a few days before. They also ing, cataloguing, and digitizing all the she was imposing. She created much of offered her the equivalent of an open- information he could find about the GoodLands, on her laptop, in Hag- ended fellowship, including unlimited worldwide Catholic Church. His da- gerty’s son’s former bedroom. access to the company’s facilities and tabase included statistics about indi- staff, and housing in a nearby apart- vidual dioceses as well as the names, oodLands’ first real office was a ment building that they owned. Bur- postings, and birth dates of bishops, small room on the second floor of hans later worked for four months in cardinals, and other Church person- Ga two-story building in New Haven, Esri’s Prototype Lab. The company’s nel. Burhans incorporated it all. overlooking the Quinnipiac River. I engineers helped her customize her met Burhans there a little over a year software, expand her database, and cre- few weeks after Burhans and I ago. She was wearing a knee-length ate a detailed infrastructure plan. met at the GoodLands office, I brown skirt, a blouse buttoned at the Even so, Burhans told me, she spent visitedA her in her apartment, a base- throat, and a gray cardigan sweater, all the first three years after founding ment studio in an old building on a bought at thrift stores. The office con- GoodLands “eating beans and crying.” residential block dominated by a ­Polish

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TNY—2021_02_08—PAGE 47—133SC. BW Catholic church. She called the apart- lot of new families that don’t have other ware in creating the plan that halted ment her hobbit hole. I entered through options.” The foundation became a re- the spread of the Ebola virus in West the kitchen, a narrow galley with scaled- peat client, and for a while, she said, Africa in 2016, and W.H.O. represen- down appliances on one side and coat “I could eat organic beans.” tatives told the Dangermonds after- hooks and a pair of cross-country skis In 2017, GoodLands mapped abuse ward that G.I.S. had been crucial to on the other. There was a fireplace on cases involving Catholic priests, using their success. “What Molly is trying to the far side of the main room, and, data collected by an organization called do is to digitally transform the Church, against another wall, a single bed with Bishop Accountability. Historically, through spatial thinking,” Jack Danger- a brightly painted folk-art crucifix accused abusers have been allowed by mond told me. “The issues the Church hang­ing above it. Church officials to disappear into new is facing are not unlike those faced by On a laptop, she showed me a high-­ assignments, including teaching po- large corporations or the U.N.” resolution “green infrastructure” map sitions in elementary schools. “It still The volunteer projects that Bur- of the that Esri engi- happens that a priest is accused and hans undertook for the Vatican and neers had created. The map incorpo- then, instead of turning him over to various Catholic groups, including one rates vast quantities of data: ­topography, the authorities, his diocese ships in which she mapped all the Catholic wetlands, forests, agriculture, human him to a different diocese—and often radio stations in Africa, didn’t improve development—all of which can be ex- the new diocese is in a mission terri- her finances, but they earned her a rep- plored, in detail, by zooming and click- tory,” Burhans said. Such transfers, utation within the Church. In the fall ing. Burhans had added her own data, like viral pandemics, can be fought of 2017, she was invited to take part in about Catholic landholdings, and, by partly through contact tracing—an two Vatican conferences, one of which bringing those boundaries to the fore- obvious use for G.I.S. GoodLands related to the mission of “Laudato Si’.” ground and narrowing the focus, she tracked roughly four hundred and She was pleased to go but worried about was able to show me specific Church- fifty accused priests and bishops, and finding an affordable place to stay. owned parcels not far from where we showed how, with the help of the “I explained my problem to a mem- were sitting which would be partic- Church, they had avoided prosecu- ber of the Vatican staff, and they said, ularly valuable in any effort to pre- tion for years. On the maps and graphs ‘Oh, just stay in the Domus”—a guest- serve watersheds, habitats, migratory that GoodLands created, you can fol- house next to St. Peter’s Basilica—­ corridors, or other environmental as- low an individual abuser from assign- “cardinals do it all the time,’ ” she told sets. If Church leaders understood ment to assignment, and you can click me. “My room was on the floor below what they controlled, she said, they down through accusations, indict- the Pope’s apartment, and I’d see him could collaborate with municipalities, ments, convictions, sentences, and at meals, in the dining room. There government agencies, environmental press ­coverage. Burhans was also able were cardinals from all over the world N.G.O.s, and others, in addition to to demonstrate that the number of there, too, and I had my maps with any efforts they might undertake on cases dropped dramatically in dioceses me, on the table. The cardinals were their own. “The role of the cartogra- in which formal policies to protect mi- all, like, ‘We want copies of these.’ ” pher isn’t just data analytics,” she said. nors had been put in place, including She had printed those maps on paper “It’s also storytelling.” requirements for notifying non-Church and canvas, partly because she as- Burhans has used G.I.S. in Cath- authorities about accusations. While sumed that printed maps would be olic projects unrelated to the environ- working on a related project in 2019, easier than digital maps to demon- ment, as well. GoodLands’ first paid she concluded that the Church could strate, especially to the Church’s el- job was a “school-suitability analysis” take a major step toward containing derly prelates. Those maps would not for the Foundation for Catholic Ed- child abuse by clergy if it imposed such have seemed remarkable to anyone ucation. That project, Burhans said, protective policies in just five critical outside the leadership of the Church. “had nothing to do with ecology, but episcopal conferences. (Some of them were smaller versions the mission is a good one, and they “The Vatican needs a room where of the big map I’d seen hanging over were willing to pay us.” The fee en- they can have all this stuff on dash- her desk.) But the cardinals were abled her to hire contractors, who boards, so that they can actually check amazed. “They’d never seen the global helped her use Esri software to map on it,” she said. For-profit companies, Church before,” Burhans said. She and analyze income levels, public-­ N.G.O.s, government agencies, and became known at the Vatican as the school quality, changing demograph- defense departments all over the world Map Lady. ics, and other factors affecting the depend on similar capabilities, for a viability of independent Catholic huge variety of purposes. U.P.S. uses n the summer of 2018, Burhans went schools in particular locations. “We Esri software to design efficient routes to Rome again, for another confer- were able to show them things like, If for its drivers; Starbucks uses it to se- Ience, and had a chance to describe you close this Catholic school, you’re lect sites for new stores (“Why do you her project directly to the Pope. Two going to abandon a lot of kids in an think that whenever you need a coffee years earlier, when visiting the Vati- area that has a totally dysfunctional there just happens to be a Starbucks can on her way home from Nairobi, public-school­ system, and if you start there?” Burhans asked me); the World she had met not just with the two a school here you’re going to serve a Health Organization used Esri soft- priests in the Secretariat of State’s

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TNY—2021_02_08—PAGE 49—133SC. —LIVE ART—R37864_RD—PLEASE USE VIRTUAL PROOF 4C office but also with Cardinal Peter maps and graphs) of how G.I.S. could the names and political boundaries Kodwo Appiah Turkson, of , be used to support and coör­dinate shown on the map have changed since who was one of the principal contrib- other ecclesiastical activities, among the eighteen-hundreds, but the exis- utors to “Laudato Si’.” Burhans told them evangelization, real-estate man- tence of the atlas, Burhans said, demon- me, “I showed him my prototype, and agement, papal security, diplomacy, strated that the Church was once we talked for an hour. He said that and ongoing efforts to end sexual abuse deeply committed to ­documenting the an early encounter with using maps by priests. She submitted her prospec- scope of its dominion—a precedent for change was when he was a kid in tus to the Pope’s office, and booked a for GoodLands. Ghana and mining companies came return to Rome for April, so that she Burhans gave her talk at Esri on into his village with their maps and could attend a conference and, she March 3rd. Six days later, Italy an- took everyone’s land.” hoped, negotiate a final configuration nounced a national quarantine, and When she met with the Pope, for the cartography institute with Vat- Burhans cancelled her trip to Rome. Turkson acted as her interpreter. She ican officials. She flew back to Connecticut on gave Francis a map that showed the March 16th. The plane was nearly percentage of Catholics in every di- month before her planned trip empty, but a man sitting near her was ocese in the world, and explained how back, Burhans travelled to Cali- perspiring heavily and coughing. On that map related to the bigger proj- forniaA to give a talk in a lecture series March 22nd, she noticed the first ects she envisioned. Francis seemed at Esri and, among other things, to COVID-19 symptoms in herself. interested, she told me; he said that meet with officials of the Archdiocese She was sick for three months. he had never seen anything like it. of Los Angeles, with whom she was Characteristically, she mapped her Still, their conversation was brief, and discussing several projects, including condition, in an interactive graphic she didn’t think anything would come one related to homelessness. (That containing more than six hundred and of it. Shortly before she flew home, archdiocese is a good example of the fifty points of medical data, organized though, she received an e-mail saying complexity of the relationship between in a dozen overlapping layers. Her that Francis was interested in estab- Church property and the environ- COVID map documents her symptoms: lishing a Vatican cartography insti- ment; its assets include twenty-one a temperature that rose above a hun- tute, on a six-month trial basis, with oil wells, which have produced fumes dred degrees for weeks; a heart rate her as its head. and pollutants over the years that have that spiked at more than two hundred Burhans was elated: this would allegedly caused area residents to be- beats per minute; a blood-oxygen level likely be the first female-founded de- come ill.) I met Burhans in San Fran- that occasionally fell below eighty per partment in the history of the Roman cisco, and we went to see David Rum- cent after physical exertion; more than Curia. Still, she knew that she had to sey, who made a fortune in real estate a week without eating; the loss and turn him down. The offer came with thirty years ago, then mostly retired restoration, twice, of her senses of taste no budget, other than a small stipend and became one of the world’s lead- and smell. The map contains a photo for herself. “If I’d said yes, it would ing collectors of historical maps. Many log of dermatological changes, the re- have been a total failure,” she said. So of those maps are now stored at the sults of all her medical tests, and a she returned to the United States, and David Rumsey Map Center, at Stan- day-by-day chronicle of her mental went to work on a blueprint for the ford University. In a private gallery in state. There are also screenshots of her kind of cartography insti- the basement of his house, Google search history: her memory tute that she believed the he showed Burhans a re- was so impaired that she kept forget- Church needed. When I cent purchase: an enor- ting what she’d been thinking about. first spoke with her, in late mous three-volume atlas She was never admitted to the hospi- 2019, the of Catholic dioceses, com- tal or given supplemental oxygen, but had recently named her its missioned by the Vatican doctors monitored her remotely. “At Young Champion of the and printed in 1858. “This one point, a doctor sent an ambulance Earth for North America, came to me from Amster- for me, to take me to the emergency a prize for environmental- dam in a big box,” he said. room,” she said. “I didn’t think I was ists between the ages of “Wow,” Burhans said. that sick, but when the E.M.T. saw eighteen and thirty. She She opened a volume— me he looked like he was having a was also working on a pro- bare-handed, because, Rum­ panic attack, and I thought I must be posal for the Vatican which ­included ­sey said, people who handle old books dying.” Her COVID map is, in effect, a seventy-­nine-page prospectus for a are clumsier when they wear gloves—­ a physiological information system. ten-month trial project, the cost of and turned, at random, to a page show- “If you did this for multiple patients which she estimated at a little more ing the region that includes modern-day and combined them,” she said, “you than a million dollars. The prospec- Israel and Palestine. The text was in might see that so-called ‘long-haul’ tus included her outline for the envi- Italian (Giudea, Arabia Petrea, Idu- COVID is actually an underlying con- ronmental mission she believed the mea Orientale), and the fourteen de- dition, or maybe it’s some other fes- Church should undertake, as well as picted dioceses were hand-colored, in tering infection, totally unrelated. It explanations (illustrated by interactive half a dozen pastel shades. Most of would be useful for differential diag-

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TNY—2021_02_08—PAGE 50—133SC.—LIVE SPOT—R37837B—PLEASE USE VIRTUAL PROOF 3C nosis, because there’s so much going on with this disease and so much that we don’t know.” For the time being, the pandemic has almost certainly removed Burhans’s cartographic institute from the agenda of anyone in the Holy See. One rea- son is that the Vatican’s budget nor- mally includes substantial revenues from its museums, which have been at least partly closed for almost a year. Another reason is that the pandemic has stressed Church operations at every level, from individual parishes on up. Many Catholic health-care facilities have been overwhelmed by virus cases, including some in the parts of the world where Catholic clergy and laypeople are principal dispensers of aid of all kinds. Burhans told me that, neverthe- less, the pandemic has made the tech- nological revolution that she envisages more important. “Data infrastructure is so unsexy that it’s not a major issue for the Catholic Church or its donors, but it’s absolutely critical,” she said. She added that, if the Church mapped all the Catholic hospitals in the world, it could share the information with groups that could use it to make bet- ter decisions about health care. Good- Lands is primarily an environmental organization, but Burhans’s ultimate •• goal is to reform the Church’s entire mode of operation: “They could save hugely exacerbated economic stresses cable across rooms, along hallways, and billions if they embraced this, as well that were already being endured by down staircases. (Since then, the as- as improving the world in every sin- people all over the world. “This may sociation has added Wi-Fi.) gle ministry they do.” be the time to consider a universal Burhans is still in contact with offi- One of the Church’s weaknesses in basic wage,” he wrote—advice that the cials at the Vatican, and she has faith that regard has historically been one Church has yet to apply to itself. that the Pope will eventually return of its strengths: the fact that it has ac- to her proposal. “If the Vatican sud- cess to an immense pool of deeply com- last visited Burhans in August, after denly says yes, I’ll drop everything and mitted but extremely inexpensive labor. she’d recovered from COVID. She go,” she told me. In the meantime, This is why the Church has often Iwas living and working at a three-hun- though, GoodLands plans to expand seemed to be handicapped by a lack dred-acre Catholic “educational and its mission to include lay clients, both of expertise; its operations tend to be environmental association,” about thir- for-profit and nonprofit: real-estate managed by Sisters and clergy, who ty-five miles northwest of New Haven. companies, asset-management firms, are cheap and plentiful, rather than by She had moved there temporarily, universities, land trusts, and similar people with lay experience and ad- mostly so that she wouldn’t have to organizations. She has turned away vanced degrees. “The Church’s entire spend any more time cooped up in her such clients in the past, but will do so financial model does not work with hobbit hole, where she had lived while no longer. “The same approach that people who need to feed children and she was sick. She had been given a we’ve used for Catholic properties can send them to school and own a car,” large apartment on the second floor be used for other landholders,” she Burhans said. “This is a moral issue, of the association’s main house, and said. “What we do has value for any too, because we see lay teachers at she had set up an office in what ap- large property owner who cares about Catholic schools who can’t afford to peared to be an old sleeping porch. the environment, and in order to scale send their own kids to the same school.” She had connected her computers to this work we need to serve everyone.” In his Easter letter last year, Pope Fran- the association’s Internet hub by run- She isn’t certain, yet, how to make all cis observed that the pandemic had ning three hundred feet of Ethernet that happen. But she has ideas. 

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