World Youth Day wrapped up Sunday, Aug. 6, having gathered 1.5 million young people from around the world. On this special summer episode of “Inside the Vatican,” America editors Ricardo da Silva, S.J. and Gerard O’Connell, who reported on the ground from Lisbon, recap the event with host Colleen Dulle. Links from the show: Spanish teen says she regained her sight at World Youth Day Mass Pope Francis fields questions on abuse, his health on return flight to Rome Pope Francis at World Youth Day: ...
Aug 10, 2023•30 min
America editor Ricardo da Silva, S.J., and Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell report from Lisbon on the opening of World Youth Day in this special episode of Inside the Vatican. An energized Pope Francis arrived yesterday, Aug. 2, giving a speech to Portuguese civic leaders in which he urged them to invest in young people and work for peace, especially in Ukraine. He also celebrated vespers and met with a group of survivors of clerical sexual abuse. The pope is scheduled to participate in se...
Aug 03, 2023•19 min
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Jul 27, 2023•50 min
Two U.S. dioceses recently had visits from Vatican investigators, and one led to the resignation of a bishop. This week on “Inside the Vatican,” Colleen and Gerry unpack what these official reviews mean, then look to some of the younger bishops Pope Francis has been appointing to ensure his legacy. After that, Gerry and Colleen give a preview of what’s happening in the Vatican this summer. Please fill out our listener survey! Other links from the show Exclusive interview with Archbishop Frank Le...
Jun 29, 2023•31 min
Colleen and Gerry unpack the Synod on Synodality's working document and the clues it provides about the synod’s first global meeting in October. They explain the unique approach of “conversation in the Spirit” and explore the document’s key questions on communion, participation, and mission. Find the full show page and links for further reading here. Please support this podcast by becoming a digital subscriber to America Media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 23, 2023•28 min
We have an exciting new podcast from America Media to share with you. It’s called “Preach: The Catholic Homilies Podcast.” On each episode listeners will first hear an inspiring homily, especially delivered for the podcast, and then take a privileged peek into the heart and mind of the preacher in a conversation with the host, Jesuit priest and America’s associate editor, Ricardo da Silva, S.J. Whether you’re a preacher looking for inspiration or a Catholic in the pews, who believes like Pope Fr...
Jun 19, 2023•31 min
The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) announced today that the well-known religious artist Fr. Marko Rupnik has been dismissed from the Jesuit order after he was credibly accused of sexually, psychologically and spiritually abusing adult women between 1985 and 2018. Read more: Jesuits expel prominent artist Marko Rupnik after allegations of abuse against adult women Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 15, 2023•3 min
Pope Francis has been in the hospital since Wednesday, June 7, recovering from an operation on an abdominal hernia. In this episode, Colleen and Gerry give an update on the pope’s recovery and analyze how the Vatican has been communicating about the pope’s condition. Find the full show page and links for further reading here. Please support this podcast by becoming a digital subscriber to America Media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 15, 2023•23 min
Pope Francis is back in the hospital for surgery on a hernia that likely formed on the scar from his 2021 colon operation. Also in this episode: A nude man protests in St. Peter’s Basilica, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi visits Ukraine to begin Pope Francis’ peace mission, and Benedict XVI’s secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, is given a deadline to move out of the Vatican. Find the full show page and links for further reading here. Please support this podcast by becoming a digital subscriber to Americ...
Jun 07, 2023•32 min
The Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication issued a new document called “Towards Full Presence: A Pastoral Reflection on Engagement with Social Media.” The document lays out how Catholics should be thinking about their social media engagement—and like the pope’s encyclical Fratelli Tutti, it takes as its model the story of the Good Samaritan, urging people to reach out and listen to those who are different from them, to build community with those people, and to step beyond social media into worki...
Jun 02, 2023•33 min
Last Saturday, Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, the head of the Italian bishops conference and a consummate diplomat to visit Moscow, to lead a mission “to help ease tensions in the conflict in Ukraine.” This week on “Inside the Vatican,” veteran Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell explains why Cardinal Zuppi was chosen for this job despite not being a Vatican diplomat. In the second half of the show, Gerry and host Colleen Dulle discuss the pope’s planned trip to World Youth Day...
May 25, 2023•27 min
President Volodymr Zelensky of Ukraine visited the Vatican on Saturday for a private meeting with Pope Francis. The Ukrainian President spent 40 minutes with the pope. Holding his hand to his heart, and speaking in French, Mr. Zelensky told the pope it was a “great honor” to meet him. The pope has repeatedly expressed his desire to visit the war torn Ukraine but only with the proviso that he can also visit Russia. Dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite the pope’s many attempts, ...
May 18, 2023•27 min
Last week, the Pontifical Council for the Protection of Minors had its first meeting since the shocking resignation of abuse expert Hans Zollner, S.J. His resignation over issues “that need to be urgently addressed” led to a public disagreement between him and the commission’s president, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, O.F.M. [Listen and subscribe to “Inside the Vatican” on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.] In this episode of “Inside the Vatican,” veteran Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell and host Colle...
May 11, 2023•27 min
Colleen is back! This week on Inside the Vatican, hosts Colleen Dulle (with baby William) and Ricardo da Silva join veteran Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell to discuss Pope Francis’ recent visit to Hungary. The pope used his public messages during the visit to highlight the plight of migrants and refugees, saying “Jesus is an open door.” Pope Francis has been at odds with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán over the prime minister’s restrictions on migration. Hungary has made exceptions ...
May 04, 2023•26 min
Pope Francis announced on Monday, April 24, that all the participants at the first assembly of Synod on Synodality will have a vote when they meet at the Vatican this October. This is the first time women will have a vote at such a major church event. “More than 20 percent of the participants will be non-bishops,” says Gerry. “This can be priests, it can be consecrated women and men, it can be lay women and men.” The announcement of the change to the synod’s voting pattern happened just days bef...
Apr 28, 2023•29 min
Pope Francis publicly denounced allegations made against Pope John Paul II on Italian television last week by Pietro Orlandi, the brother of Emanuela Orlandi. Last year, Ms. Orlandi’s mysterious disappearance from the Vatican almost 40 years ago, when she was just 15-years-old, inspired “Vatican Girl,” a documentary series on Netflix. Mr. Orlandi, speaking on an Italian TV program, said that he had learned from a source that “John Paul II sometimes went out at night with two Polish monsignors, a...
Apr 20, 2023•26 min
China has breached its long-fought-for agreement with the Vatican on the appointment of bishops. On April 4, Bishop Shen Bin was transferred from the Diocese of Haimen, where he had been an auxiliary bishop, and installed as the bishop of Shanghai, the largest Roman Catholic diocese in mainland China. Matteo Bruni, the director of the Vatican Press Office, confirmed the installation in a statement on April 6. The Holy See had been informed of the appointment only “a few days prior,” Mr. Bruni sa...
Apr 13, 2023•33 min
When most people are admitted to the hospital, they stay in bed and recover. Unless, you are Pope Francis! Not even two days after he started treatment for a respiratory infection, the pope took to visiting the sick at Gemelli General Hospital in Rome, last Friday. In the pediatric oncology wards, he played and prayed with sick children. He had a pizza party with his medical team and the hospital’s care staff, and baptized a baby. And even on his way home, he stopped to console grieving parents ...
Apr 06, 2023•37 min
The Vatican has rejected the six-centuries-old “Doctrine of Discovery” that helped justify the occupation and takeover of Indigenous Peoples’ lands throughout colonial times, and still today forms the basis of property law in many parts of the world. In the U.S. and Canada, the doctrine has also been used to defend the unjust acquisition of land in legal disputes in their Supreme Courts. The decision by the Vatican comes after Pope Francis made a historic long-awaited and promised apology for th...
Mar 30, 2023•6 min
“Balenciaga Pope!” That is what the internet is calling it. Photos of Pope Francis wearing a luxury oversized, white puffer jacket, that sells for anywhere up to $6,000, went viral this weekend. A single tweet of the pope’s updated winter wardrobe invited 25,000 retweets, and Google Trends reported a dramatic increase in pope-related searches. But, however realistic and convincing the photo might have appeared, it was a total fake, generated using an artificial intelligence platform. On “Inside ...
Mar 30, 2023•37 min
Pope Francis has been admitted to hospital where he is undergoing treatment for a respiratory infection. The pope was taken to hospital by ambulance today, Wednesday, Mar 29, after he complained that he was experiencing chest pains following the celebration of the Angelus at midday in St. Peter’s Square. According to sources at the Vatican, Massimiliano Strappetti, the pope’s personal health care assistant decided to call the ambulance, which took him to the Gemelli Hospital in Rome where he was...
Mar 29, 2023•3 min
On July 27, 2021, a trial began inside the Vatican Museums before a bench of three judges of the Vatican City State’s court. Now, more than 600 days since arguments began in the specially remodeled Vatican rooms, the trial continues. At the center of the trial is Cardinal Angelo Becciu, the substitute for General Affairs at the Vatican’s Secretariat of State from 2011-18, the equivalent of the Vatican’s chief of staff. He is being tried for embezzlement and abuse of his office. The cardinal is a...
Mar 23, 2023•31 min
President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua suspended diplomatic ties with the Vatican over the weekend in what appears to be retaliation for the pope’s strong public criticisms on March 10 of his “rude dictatorship,” likening it to “a communist dictatorship in 1917, or a Hitlerian one in 1935.” These comments were made by the pope in an interview with Infobae, an Argentine news outlet. “I have no other choice,” the pope said, “but to think that the person in power is mentally unbalanced.” On “Inside t...
Mar 17, 2023•46 min
In 2013, Pope Francis hit the ground running. He wanted a poor church for the poor; a church that gave a voice to those living on the margins, especially migrants and refugees. He put ecology and care for creation at the center of the church’s work. Inside the church, attitudes had to change. Authority had to be exercised as service. Everything had to be geared toward the mission of the church to evangelize. He denounced clericalism, called for a synodal church that listens first, and encourages...
Mar 07, 2023•42 min
In this news update, America Media’s Executive Producer Sebastian Gomes shares the biggest headlines to emerge from the Vatican this week: Pope Francis announces his visit to Hungary in April 2023 Pope Francis says he does not ‘condemn capitalism’ in new book Pope Francis calls for greater dialogue, fraternity and peace between Pasletinians and Israelis, and prays for the migrants who perished in a shipwreck off the coast of Italy. Please consider supporting this podcast by becoming a digital su...
Mar 02, 2023•8 min
This week, Pope Francis again confirmed restrictions on the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass, making it clear that permission to celebrate the pre-Vatican II liturgy is reserved to the Vatican and that bishops do not have the freedom to interpret the Pope's previous instruction at whim. On his recent visit to Africa, Pope Francis told Jesuits in the Democratic Republic of Congo that he has no intention to resign early from the papacy, and that the decision for any pope to resign should ...
Feb 24, 2023•35 min
Catholics love their saints. But it's not easy to become one. On this special Deep Dive episode of “Inside the Vatican,” we take you inside the grueling process of saint-making, which starts at a local diocese and involves dozens of people, a long paper trail with the Vatican, travel for miracle verification and a lot of money. We’ll hear from Vatican historians and journalists about how the process evolved from folks being devoted to holy people in their cities to a codified Vatican process. We...
Feb 16, 2023•50 min
Pope Francis has returned to the Vatican after his six-day visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, which he called a pilgrimage of peace. America Media’s associate editor, Ricardo da Silva, S.J. and veteran Vatican reporter, Gerard O’Connell discuss the pope’s visit to these two conflict-ridden, yet faith-filled, African countries. Gerry was aboard the plane, traveled with Pope Francis from place to place, and was there to witness the Pope's meetings with the millions of peopl...
Feb 09, 2023•33 min
Pope Francis has begun his visit to the peoples of the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan. He will be on the African continent from Jan. 31 through Feb. 5 for his 40th apostolic visit abroad. The Democratic Republic of Congo is the first stop on his visit to the African continent, where he will remain until Friday, Feb. 3. Pope Francis has said he is on a “mission of peace” to these African nations. The D.R.C. is rich in mineral wealth, and though it won independence in 1960, it has co...
Feb 02, 2023•47 min
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former German head of the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and an open critic of many of Pope Francis’ initiatives has released a new book, In Good Faith: Religion in the 21st Century, in which he blasts, among others, the Synod on Synodality and papal resignations, and criticizes the pope’s relationship with U.S. President Joe Biden. The day after Ricardo and Gerry recorded this episode, Pope Francis gave a wide-ranging interview to Nicole Winfield, ...
Jan 26, 2023•32 min
