French climate change skeptic Philippe de Larminat says he was denied a spot at April's summit sponsored by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, The Washington Post reports.

De Larminat had hoped to attend the meeting ahead Pope Francis' encyclical on climate change issued last week. He was told he would be allowed if space permitted, but just days before the event was set to begin he was told there wasn't an open spot.

But, according to the Post, de Larminat was actually denied space because other scientists and the Vatican bureaucrat who heads up the academy didn't want him there. De Larminat has written a book arguing that the sun, and not human activity, is the primary cause of climate change

"They did not want to hear an off note," de Larminat told the paper.

In the end, Francis wrote that Catholics, and everyone else, should move to combat global warming, and efforts by skeptics such as de Larminat came too late to influence his writing.

"This was their Waterloo," Kert Davies, executive director of the Climate Investigations Center, told the Post. "They wanted the encyclical not to happen. And it happened."

Similarly, the Chicago-based Heartland Institute held an event in a hotel right next to the Vatican at the same time as the event de Larminat had tried to attend. Their goal was "to inform Pope Francis of the truth about climate science: There is no global warming crisis!" a press release read.

But Francis appears to have made up his mind on the global warming debate, the Post said. According to Raymond Arroyo, news director at the worldwide Catholic cable channel EWTN, said that although some prominent conservatives were consulted, "many were sort of shocked that none of their contributions made it in there."

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