The U.S. bishops approved their long-awaited and much-debated document on the Eucharist at their November meeting last week. This week on “Inside the Vatican,” America’s national correspondent Michael O’Loughlin, who covered the meeting in Baltimore, joins Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell and host Colleen Dulle for a conversation about what the bishops decided and what the Vatican hopes they will do next. Listen and subscribe to “Inside the Vatican” on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. The final...
Nov 25, 2021•26 min
Pope Francis lavished praise on several reporters this week, awarding Televisa’s Valentina Alazraki and Reuters’ Phil Pullela papal knighthoods on Saturday, and praising America’s Michael J. O’Loughlin’s research into Catholic responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in a letter published Monday. But Pope Francis’ relationship with the press wasn’t always so friendly. Before he became pope, “you could count on two hands all the interviews he'd given in his life,” veteran Vatican correspondent Gerard O...
Nov 18, 2021•28 min
Pope Francis sent a letter to America’s national correspondent, Michael J. O’Loughlin, thanking him for his research on the interactions between the Catholic Church and the gay community—and the stories of many gay Catholics—at the heights of the AIDS epidemic. O'Loughlin recently published his research in a new book called “Hidden Mercy: AIDS, Catholics, and the Untold Stories of Compassion in the Face of Fear,” which follows up on America Media's podcast: “Plague: Untold Stories of AIDS and th...
Nov 15, 2021•19 min
The U.S. bishops’ debate over whether pro-choice policians like President Joseph R. Biden should be allowed to receive communion has been raging for over a year now. After the bishops’ meeting last November, the bishops created a sub-committee aimed at addressing the challenges of working with a Catholic, pro-choice president. Archbishop Jose H. Gomez, president of the U.S. bishops conference, informed the Vatican in March that the working group had decided to draft a document on “Eucharistic co...
Nov 11, 2021•31 min
Pope Francis met with President Biden, President Moon of Korea and Prime Minister Modi from India last week, and in all of the conversations, one subject came up: Climate change. Many of the world leaders who were in Rome for the G20 summit of the world’s largest economies have now continued on to Glasgow, Scotland for the UN’s climate summit, COP26, which runs through Nov. 12. This week on “Inside the Vatican,” host Colleen Dulle and veteran Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell unpack Pope Fr...
Nov 04, 2021•27 min
Today, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. met with Pope Francis in a highly anticipated meeting at the Vatican. The two leaders spoke privately for 75 minutes, which is unusually long compared to other meetings between the pope and heads of state. Details of the private meeting were not released, but the Vatican said the two leaders discussed their joint commitment to the protection and care of the planet, healthcare and the fight against Covid, refugees and assistance to migrants, the protection of ...
Oct 29, 2021•5 min
Pope Francis is expected to meet with U.S President Joseph R. Biden, Korean President Moon Jae-in and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week while the leaders are in Rome for the G20 summit. So, what happens when a pope meets a president? On this episode of “Inside the Vatican,” veteran Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell and host Colleen Dulle explain the formal steps of an “official visit” between a head of state and the pope. Then, Colleen and Gerry dig into the specific issues that...
Oct 28, 2021•29 min
This weekend, Pope Francis gave a speech to grassroots activists that some are already calling an important contribution to Catholic Social Teaching. At America, we called it “Pope Francis’ 9 commandments for a just economy.” The pope called on everyone from tech giants to arms manufacturers to stop their destructive and extractive behaviors and instead put their energy toward activities that would build up a better post-Covid society. In the same talk, a video message sent to the “popular movem...
Oct 21, 2021•29 min
The “synod on synodality,” Pope Francis’ two-year effort to move the church toward a more collaborative and decentralized model, kicked off in Rome on Sunday with a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. In his pre-synod speech on Saturday, Pope Francis laid out his vision for the synod, outlining three challenges and three opportunities that the synod faces. The challenges, as host Colleen Dulle and Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell explain on this week’s episode of “Inside the Vatican,” aren’t lim...
Oct 14, 2021•28 min
Pope Francis welcomed 40 leaders of the world’s major religions to the Vatican this week to call for definitive action on climate change ahead of the United Nations’ COP26 conference in Glasgow. On “Inside the Vatican,” Gerard O’Connell and Colleen Dulle explain who attended the meeting and what initiatives they called for. The document the religious leaders signed was seen by many as a parallel to Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical Laudato Si (“Praised Be”), which gave a major push to world...
Oct 07, 2021•30 min
Women are rising to new heights in the Vatican, but there is still a long way to go before women’s voices and leadership are satisfactorily integrated in the Vatican. In this deep dive episode based on Colleen Dulle’s cover story in America Magazine’s October issue, Colleen and producer Maggi Van Dorn take a look inside the corporate culture of the Vatican to examine how things have been changing for women—and why it’s difficult to have conversations about women’s empowerment there. You’ll also ...
Sep 30, 2021•36 min
Last week, Pope Francis visited Hungary and Slovakia—two countries with about 1,000 years of Christian history. But today, that history is being re-interpreted for political ends, as nationalist or populist leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban use Christian identity as an argument for keeping new migrants out. On this bonus episode of “Inside the Vatican,” Slovakian religion historian Agata Sustova Drelova joins host Colleen Dulle for a closer look at Pope Francis’ interpretation o...
Sep 25, 2021•26 min
In a Q&A session with Jesuits in Slovakia, Pope Francis revealed that after his colon surgery this summer, some prelates wanted him to die. He also issued a thinly-veiled criticism of EWTN, saying the Catholic network’s attacks on him are “the work of the devil.” America’s Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell wrote about the pope’s comments and reported that Pope Francis had previously confronted an EWTN reporter about the network’s attacks on him. On this episode, Gerry joins host Colleen...
Sep 22, 2021•14 min
Fresh off the papal plane, Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell joins host Colleen Dulle to discuss Pope Francis’ response to his question about the U.S. bishops’ debate over denying communion to pro-choice politicians. “Every time the bishops have not dealt with a problem as pastors they have taken sides politically,” the pope told Gerry. “What must a pastor do? Be a pastor. Don’t go condemning.” He added that he had never denied anyone communion. In the second half of the show, Gerry and Col...
Sep 16, 2021•26 min
Pope Francis is visiting Hungary and Slovakia next week, and America’s Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell will be traveling with him. On this week’s show, Gerry and host Colleen Dulle lay out the basics of the trip and examine some of the political and spiritual issues the pope will be looking to address in these two former Soviet Bloc nations. After that, the hosts look at the health questions surrounding this trip: Pope Francis is still recovering from colon surgery, and new variants of Co...
Sep 09, 2021•27 min
This summer, Pope Francis made the controversial decision to place significant restrictions on the celebration of the Tridentine Latin Mass. He said that a survey of the world’s bishops showed that John Paul II and Benedict XVI’s generosity in allowing the pre-Vatican II Mass to be celebrated had been “exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the church...and expose her to the peril of division.” In this special deep dive episode of “Inside ...
Sep 02, 2021•38 min
Pope Francis has issued a motu proprio–an authoritative declaration made on the Pope’s personal initiative–to restrict the celebration of the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass in the Catholic Church. The decision overrides and reverses a previous decree of Pope Benedict XVI, who allowed priests to celebrate the pre-Vatican II Mass without limitation. Francis has become increasingly concerned that the celebration of the pre-Vatican II Mass, sometimes called the "extraordinary form," has created division ...
Jul 16, 2021•4 min
Pope Francis is in the hospital recovering from a scheduled intestinal surgery he had on Sunday afternoon, July 4. According to Vatican statements based on the pope’s doctors’ reports, his recovery is going well and he can expect to be in the hospital for about a week. The pope underwent surgery for symptomatic stenotic diverticulitis, which is a colon condition that causes part of the intestine to become too narrow for food waste to pass through, causing abdominal pain. The surgery involves rem...
Jul 07, 2021•3 min
No, it’s not a schism. On this special deep dive episode of “Inside the Vatican,” host Colleen Dulle looks at the German synodal way: What is it, why is it happening, and why do some critics think it could lead to a schism in the Catholic Church? This episode features interviews with: Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck of Essen, Germany, a participant in the synodal path and a leader of the path’s subgroup on power in the church Dr. Juliane Eckstein, a researcher at the Sankt Georgen Graduate School of...
Jun 24, 2021•37 min
Take Inside the Vatican’s Listener Survey! On May 21, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the archbishop of Munich and Freising and a top advisor to Pope Francis, submitted his resignation to the pope, saying he wanted to take “institutional responsibility” for the sexual abuse crisis. “It is important to me to share the responsibility for the catastrophe of the sexual abuse by Church officials over the past decades,” the cardinal wrote in a letter to the pope. Cardinal Marx has never been accused of sexual...
Jun 17, 2021•24 min
After 17 years of preparation, a new edition of volume VI of the Code of Canon Law—the Vatican’s penal code—has been published, the first new edition since 1983. About two-thirds of the canons, or laws, in the volume have been updated, and a number of new canons have been added, most significantly in the areas of sexual abuse and requiring penalties for violations of the law. On this episode of “Inside the Vatican,” host Colleen Dulle and veteran Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell walk throu...
Jun 10, 2021•32 min
The upcoming “synod on synodality” will look different from past synods, the Vatican announced last month: Instead of an event in Rome in 2022, the synod will be a process beginning on the diocesan level this fall, continuing on a continental level in 2022 and ending in Rome in 2023, discussing “communion, participation, and mission” within the church. This week on “Inside the Vatican,” host Colleen Dulle and Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell discuss what we know about the new process: who ...
Jun 03, 2021•25 min
With summer just around the corner, Inside the Vatican is bringing you a special episode: our Pope Francis summer reading list. Papal biographer Austen Ivereigh joins Colleen Dulle for a discussion on three books that have shaped Pope Francis (and that he loves to quote): The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni, Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson, and the short story “The Garden of Forking Paths” by Pope Francis’ fellow Argentine, Jorge Luis Borges. Colleen and Austen discuss each work and Pope...
May 27, 2021•51 min
On Sunday, Pope Francis called for an immediate ceasefire to the violence that has escalated between Israeli and Palestinian forces, killing more than 200 people in Gaza and 10 in Israel, according to the most recent statistics. The Vatican has long supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but Pope Francis’ goals also include limiting the sale of arms by countries outside the conflict and improving the situation of the Palestinians living in occupied territory. To that...
May 20, 2021•24 min
It’s been 500 years since St. Ignatius suffered the cannonball injury that would pave the way to his conversion—from an ambitious young soldier rumored to be dating a princess, to leaving it all to found the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. To commemorate that 500th anniversary, the Jesuits have declared an Ignatian Year, remembering their roots and announcing new initiatives for their future. So this week, “Inside the Vatican” host Colleen Dulle teamed up with Ashley McKinless from America Media’...
May 17, 2021•32 min
The Vatican stepped into the U.S. bishops’ ongoing debate over giving Communion to pro-choice Catholic politicians last week, issuing a letter May 7 to every bishop in America urging them to undertake a two-part dialogue process before drafting any national guidelines on the issue. Up to now, the decision over whether to give a pro-choice politician Communion has been up to the local bishop, with varying results: President Joseph R. Biden’s previous local bishop in Wilmington, Delaware, along wi...
May 13, 2021•27 min
Last week, Pope Francis signed two big changes to Vatican law: First, he implemented a sweeping anti-corruption decree that limits the gifts Vatican employees can receive to $50; then, he updated a previous legal reform to remove bishops’ and cardinals’ special rights in Vatican courts. For most of the church’s history, bishops and cardinals could only be judged by the pope. Pope Francis changed that in 2019 as part of a slate of legal reforms aimed at combatting the sexual abuse crisis. In orde...
May 06, 2021•22 min
Almost two months after his first papal trip since spring 2020, Pope Francis has set his sights on a few more international visits before the end of the year: To Hungary and Slovakia, Cyprus and Greece, Lebanon and Glasgow. On this week’s episode of “Inside the Vatican,” America’s veteran Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell and host Colleen Dulle dig into what we know about each trip and what is motivating the pope to go. “There’s a spiritual dimension; there’s also a political. You can’t get...
Apr 29, 2021•36 min
When Father John Wester received a call just before 8 a.m. Mass, he had no idea it would be the nuncio, the pope’s ambassador, phoning to tell him he would be the next auxiliary bishop of San Francisco. Archbishop Wester’s story is not unusual. Most bishops are appointed without ever knowing they were being considered for the job and are caught by surprise when chosen. The bishop selection process is perhaps the most secretive hiring process in the world, shielded from both the candidate and the...
Apr 22, 2021•35 min
Ten years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine the pope having the kind of strong relationship with a top Muslim leader that Pope Francis has with the Grand Imam Ahmed Al-Tayeb. Back in 2019, the two signed the groundbreaking document on Human Fraternity together in Abu Dhabi, but a new book by the Muslim judge, Mohamed Abdel Salam, who was intimately involved in the process of putting that document together, explains that the road to signing that document was not always easy. Judge Moh...
Apr 15, 2021•27 min
