“One of the great gifts of Vatican II was that it sent us back to study what the Gospels were saying.”
Author Archives: Fred Yi
Sister Mary Joseph Heisler Extended Interview
“What is a woman religious? If we can come to some clarity as to what a woman religious is in the life of a church, then we can understand the relationships of women religious to the church.”
Listen Now
Listen to this episode now:
[powerpress]
Full Episode
Colorado Springs Evangelicals
SAUL GONZALEZ, correspondent: With Pike’s Peak as a backdrop, the citizens of Colorado Springs aren’t shy about telling visitors about what makes their community so special. There’s the U.S. Olympic training center and the United States Air Force Academy, historic neighborhoods with fine old homes, and lots of ways to enjoy a healthy, outdoor lifestyle. However, among many American Christians, Colorado Springs is also known for something else—as an epicenter of evangelical faith and activism. That’s partly because of the high-profile megachurches in the community, but mostly because of the sheer number of national evangelical Christian groups headquartered here. In fact, there are so many Christian groups in this community, Colorado Springs has earned something of a reputation and a nickname: America’s Christian Mecca.
Pastor in church: We are so glad that you came to be a part of the presence of God that is in this house today. Amen?
GONZALEZ: For some people of faith in Colorado Springs, like Kimberly Lieu, the Christian presence is so strong, they stay they felt a spiritual calling to move here. Kimberly came here from Hawaii.
KIMBERLY LIEU: We just came here sight unseen. I know now it was the Lord leading us.
GONZALEZ: The Lord brought you here?
LIEU: I believe that absolutely. I wasn’t pursuing him at the time, he was pursuing me.
GONZALEZ: But what brought the big Christian groups to Colorado Springs? Well, a major factor was an economic development program started by the city’s government more than two decades ago.
GLENN PAAUW (Director, Biblica): The economic development council at the time, this is in the late 1980s, they were looking to attract Christian ministries.
GONZALEZ: Glenn Paauw is the director of Biblica, one of America’s largest Bible publishers. It was lured to Colorado Springs from New York State in the 1980s. The city gave Biblica incentives in return for the jobs the organization brought to the community.
Employee in cubicle: The total is going to come to $16.99.
GONZALEZ: It now employs nearly 100 people in Colorado Springs.
PAAUW: They came to us and said there is already a center here in Colorado Springs of other Christian ministries, so your networking possibilities, your ability to find staff who want to work in a Christian organization and contribute to your global ministry, that’s going to be easier for you to do.
GONZALEZ: However, the biggest and most powerful Christian organization that came to Colorado Springs—in this case from California—also became the most controversial group in town. It’s the conservative public policy organization Focus on the Family, which has long been a political lightning rod because of its conservative stance on hot-button social issues, such as abortion and gay rights. Jim Daly is Focus on the Family’s president and CEO. He doesn’t apologize for his organization’s conservative positions, but he acknowledges the fear and anger they often stir.
JIM DALY (President, Focus on the Family): Well, you know, the caricature is a problem, and I think…
GONZALEZ: What’s the caricature of Focus on the Family?
DALY: Yeah. I think that caricature can be hard right, ultra right. It’s because those are labels that are used to describe the organization. I don’t care too much about what grade culture gives us. The question is are we on the right side of what the Scripture would require of Christians to live out.
GONZALEZ: That right side is on display at Focus on the Family’s Colorado Springs campus, which includes a multimillion-dollar visitor center. In it, messages about the importance of faith and conservative family values take center stage. However, even as Christian evangelicals continue to organize in this beautiful corner of Colorado to fulfill their vision of America, some within these groups are starting to reassess their activism. They wonder just how deeply they should be involved in American politics and whether they should start building bridges to people who don’t agree with them.
Pastor at church: You have been welcomed into the family of God.
GONZALEZ: And who’s leading this “rethink” in Colorado Springs’ conservative Christian community? Maybe, surprisingly, it’s Focus on the Family.
(to Daly): Do you consider yourself a culture warrior?
DALY: No. I really don’t. I don’t think the label is a healthy one. And I think oftentimes in the Christian conservative community, we are not expressing love of our fellow man.
GONZALEZ: How so?
DALY: We can come across very harsh, too harsh. And I think these are lessons that we’ve already seen written about in the New Testament, when the religious leaders of the day, when Jesus was on the scene, and they had a very condescending views of sinners, people that didn’t measure up. We’ve got to be very careful now not to repeat that same mistake, because from where I sit there are two billboards that come out of the New Testament: salvation through Jesus Christ, and don’t become a Pharisee, a religious bigot.
Focus on the Family video: I can still remember where I was the first time I saw picture of fetal development.
GONZALEZ: Now, Focus on the Family is still squarely against gay marriage and legalized abortion, positions expressed in videos like this one produced by the group. However, Daly says the stern messages and moralizing of many conservative Christians over divisive social issues have turned off too many Americans, especially young people. He also believes Christians have become too involved in bare-knuckle politics, sometimes focusing more on winning elections than cultivating their faith.
DALY: If Christian leadership has become so much about winning and victory, it turns us into the predator and the world our prey.
GONZALEZ: Focus on the Family has been frequently criticized for its own political activism, particularly under its founder and former leader Dr. James Dobson, who left the group in 2010. While he was in charge, Dobson frequently attacked liberals, feminists, and gay activists. He also endorsed conservative political candidates, like George W. Bush and several members of Congress, while criticizing Barack Obama as a political and social radical.
Sean Hannity Show: And we continue now with Dr. James Dobson. He’s the founder of Focus on the Family. Dr. Dobson…
GONZALEZ: For instance, here’s Dobson in 2009 on Fox News’ Sean Hannity Show. He talked about what he believed was President Obama’s misunderstanding of America’s religious culture.
JAMES DOBSON: It does bother me, and it also bothers me that he doesn’t seem to understand those Judeo-Christian values and roots.
GONZALEZ: Although Jim Daly doesn’t criticize James Dobson directly, he does say political activism by Christian evangelical leaders has often been a mistake.
DALY: I think for Christians we should have calculated that a little differently, not to be wrapped around the axle of politics. Because the issues we are dealing with, although they are in the arena of politics, when we get to abortion and marriage and other things, I think we let the rhetoric capture our hearts, so we came across as more partisan than I think we should have.
GONZALEZ: How much has Daly changed? Just listen to how he talks about America’s growing acceptance of gay marriage. He doesn’t like it, but he accepts its reality in many states.
DALY: I think in this area of gay marriage, or recognizing gay union, the culture is going to make that decision. Here’s the bottom line, if it happens, will I shriek and run around in circles? No.
GONZALEZ: The leader of Focus on the Family says it’s also important for evangelical Christians to reach out and start talking to groups they’ve usually battled with in the public arena. That ranges from gay rights organizations to the pro-choice group Planned Parenthood.
DALY: If we are just going to build a fortress, hunker down, and try to ride it out, that is not a very good strategy, so I feel certainly one of the clarion calls for the Christian is to engage the culture, to reach out.
GONZALEZ: In Colorado Springs, we saw a small example of that reaching out by Focus on the Family.
John Weiss at table: No, you are intolerant, but you are not hateful.
GONZALEZ: Every couple of weeks Focus on the Family’s Rajeev Shaw, who does community outreach for his organization, sits down to discuss city issues with John Weiss. He’s the publisher of the town’s alternative press weekly and one of Colorado Springs’s best known liberals. Weiss says he’s seen a big change in Focus on the Family’s willingness to engage with one-time enemies in the community.
JOHN WEISS (Colorado Springs Independent): Under the prior leadership, we were distant. We did not communicate except through verbal barbs and ad campaigns. There was the gay pride parade in town and there were messages, “God Hates Fags” and stuff like that. There’s a new kinder, more listening, view at Focus.
GONZALEZ: Really, you really see the change in tone?
WEISS: It’s a total change in tone, not in ideology, but for us to come together and chat and have dialogue, and say where can we work together?
GONZALEZ: Shaw admits, though, that these conversations have been, well, a process.
RAJEEV SHAW (Focus on the Family): It’s difficult to hear the other side. It’s difficult to hear someone disagree with you. It’s difficult to hear fair-minded, reasonable people making cases against what you believe. And we all by nature, I think we like people to agree with us. But I think the question that we have answer is what is the best possible good for our community? And is the best possible good for us is to come together on an issue or series of issues? Absolutely.
GONZALEZ: In the case of Weiss and Shaw, those issues include finding ways to help foster children in the community. Focus on the Family’s Jim Daly acknowledges that these kinds of overtures to ideological and religious adversaries haven’t endeared him to some on his side of the cultural divide.
DALY: That’s one thing that is occasionally mentioned from people on my side of the debate, that I’ve raised that white flag of surrender simply because I’m saying I can’t control what the world does. And I think that is one of the problems today, that we’ve become so partisan that we don’t spend time with one another, and I think it’s a great weakness.
GONZALEZ: So a question is will Colorado Springs, the community that’s sometimes synonymous with conservative Christianity, also become the place where people with conflicting views can set aside their differences and find a little bit of common ground?
For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Saul Gonzalez in Colorado Springs.
Listen Now
Listen to this episode now:
[powerpress]
Pope’s Resignation
KIM LAWTON, correspondent: Benedict said he is resigning “for the good of the church.”
REV. MARK MOROZOWICH (Dean of Theology, Catholic Univ. of America): Isn’t that a profound sign of his own humility in that he was able to recognize when, you know, it just was more than he could handle? And instead of letting just others do the job, he viewed very strongly that we needed somebody in that position that would really be able to take the helm.
MAUREEN FERGUSON (The Catholic Association): I think this decision was made out of love for the church and her needs.
LAWTON: But it was an almost unprecedented decision.
SISTER MAUREEN FIEDLER (Host, “Interfaith Voices”): In my lifetime, popes have died in office. One has never resigned. And then I all of a sudden discovered that, well no wonder, it’s been almost 600 years since the last pope resigned in 1415.
LAWTON: Experts say Benedict’s decision highlights how the nature of the papacy has changed.
PROF. CHRISTOPHER RUDDY (Catholic Univ. of America): It’s become much more demanding and much more public. You’re in print, you’re on video. Sixty years ago, Pope Pius XII would not have had the same demands on him in any way.
MOROZOWICH: Maybe it’s not so much that their job has changed, but the expectations have changed. The immediacy. There’s so many things that we as a society have developed into this instantaneous culture and that no longer are we waiting for a letter to arrive from Rome. When we get an instantaneous mass delivered message, I mean that’s a whole shift.
LAWTON: As the news of Benedict’s impending departure took hold, people inside–and outside–of the church began offering assessments of his legacy.
MOROZOWICH: I think that Pope Benedict brought a refreshing wonderful attention to theology.
FERGUSON: Pope Benedict has been, has had great clarity in his teaching on issues with respect to the sanctity of life, with respect to marriage, with respect to religious liberty.
FIEDLER: He certainly was in tune with modern technology, even joining Twitter just a few weeks ago and he was an environmental pope. He was often dubbed the Green Pope and he took climate change seriously and he talked about that so I think those are positive things.
LAWTON: But Sister Maureen Fielder, host of the public radio program “Interfaith Voices,” says Benedict’s papacy will be largely viewed by how he dealt with the clergy sex abuse crisis.
FIEDLER: I think probably the biggest disappointment with Benedict was his inability to adequately handle the sex abuse scandal and to specifically deal with the prelates, the bishops who covered up those crimes, a lot was done with priests, almost nothing has been done with bishops and I think that remains a scandal for a lot of Catholics.
LAWTON: Other Catholics praise his efforts on that front.
FERGUSON: He took that scandal head on and implemented all kinds of new protocols to address that issue once and for all. So I see great hope on that issue going forward.
LAWTON: Speculation about Benedict’s possible successor continues as people put forward the qualifications the College of Cardinals should consider.
RUDDY: Certainly they’ll want somebody who is a good communicator and particularly has linguistic competence. You’ll need to know Italian, that’s the daily language of the Vatican. English and Spanish would be, would be extremely helpful.
MOROZOWICH: I think of center, center importance is a deeply spiritual and prayerful person. This is why people look to the Church for their spiritual nourishment. So that’s central. But the Pope has to be a man of the world in a certain sense. He has to have a knowledge of different cultures. We keep raising the bar in so many ways.
FIEDLER: I personally would like to see a pope who would take seriously the message of the second Vatican Council, develop greater collegiality in the church, perhaps even democratization in the church. A pope who respects the human equality of all persons, man and women, and begins to make suitable changes in the church in that direction.
LAWTON: But Father Morozowich says whoever is chosen is not likely to make sweeping changes.
MOROZOWICH: So a new Pope will bring new vigor, will bring his personality, his personal gifts. He will continue, though, the tradition of the Church.
LAWTON: People of other faiths say the selection of a new pope matters to them too.
RABBI DAVID SAPERSTEIN (Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism): The quality of Catholic Jewish relations has been a kind of litmus test for us in terms of the openness of peoples of different religions to the Jewish community and to cooperative understanding and endeavor, and therefore it feels of vital concern to us.
HARIS TARIN (Muslim Public Affairs Council): What he says matters in a lot of communities and so the stature of the pope is extremely important in that sense. But also the fact that we live in a very small world when it comes to interaction.
BISHOP MARIANN EDGAR BUDDE (Episcopal Diocese of Washington): The heart and soul of humanity is lived out among people of faith in every tradition and so I will be joining the world in praying for the next pope.
LAWTON: And for the world’s more than one billion Catholics, the selection will have a personal dimension as well.
RUDDY: What makes the pope the pope is that he is held by Catholics to be the successor of St. Peter and in that sense he carries on Peter’s role of uniting the church, of being the point of unity for all of the world’s bishops and all the world’s Catholics. In some senses he belongs to everybody in the church.
FERGUSON: As Catholics, of course, we have great affection for our holy father, we look to him as a father and it’s, it’ll be exciting to meet our new pope.
LAWTON: I’m Kim Lawton reporting.
Analysis of Papal Resignation
BOB ABERNETHY, host: Pope Benedict XVI stunned this world this week with the surprise announcement that he has decided to resign—the first pope to step down in 600 years. Our coverage today includes analysis from two experts on the church, and it begins with reaction from Catholics and non-Catholics alike, gathered by our managing editor, Kim Lawton.
Kim and I are joined now by Father Tom Reese of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, and David Gibson of Religion News Service, author of The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World. David is in New York. Welcome to you both. David, let me begin with you. What do you think the cardinals will be looking for most eagerly when they meet to choose a successor?
DAVID GIBSON (Religion News Service): Well, Bob, I think they’re going to take for granted that whoever they choose is going to be an orthodox cardinal and follower of pretty much the line of Benedict XVI and the previous popes in terms of doctrine and all the hot-button issues that we often like to talk about. I think they are also looking at someone who might be a bit younger. Some of the cardinals have said they don’t want to elect anyone who’s over 70. Benedict XVI was 78 when he was elected eight years ago. But I think the big choice really facing them is whether they are going to go outside of Europe really for the first time in the modern era, the first time almost ever, and pick someone from the southern hemisphere, from Latin America, Asia, or Africa, really where the Catholic Church is booming, which is the real future of the church there, and are they going to pick a pope who reflects that growth?
ABERNETHY: Tom?
REV. THOMAS REESE, S.J. (Woodstock Theological Center, Georgetown University): Well, I think the cardinals are going to be looking for three things. One, somebody who they think will make a good pope, which means somebody who agrees with them on their values and what they think of the vision of the church. The second is someone that they can have a personal relationship with. I mean they’d really like to have a friend in the pope, and third, I think they want someone who will be accepted and liked in their own country. I mean you think, for example, of the cardinals that live in countries with lots of Muslims. You don’t want the pope saying something that upsets Muslims because that would not be good for the people in their country.
ABERNETHY: And, whoever it is, Tom, is there any possibility at all that some of the things that Americans, especially American liberals, want most, which are things like permission for there to be married priests?
REESE: No.
ABERNETHY: No possibility at all?
REESE: I don’t think so. You have to remember that more than half of the cardinals who are going to choose the next pope were appointed by Benedict, and the rest of them were all appointed by John Paul II, and they did what you or I would do if we were pope. They appointed people who basically agree with them on the issues facing the church, so anyone who was in favor of women’s ordination, or changing birth control, or married priests would never have made it into the College of Cardinals.
KIM LAWTON, managing editor: One of the things I’ve found really interesting as I was talking with people this week was how the questions of who we are going to pick also lead to questions about the nature of the papacy and it’s just become so big. The pope has to be a diplomat, he has to be a spiritual leader, he has to know how to tweet. Can you find one person that can do all of that? And, David, is the situation today also affecting how we look at the papacy?
GIBSON: I think very much. You have to understand, I think this resignation by Benedict XVI really is a groundbreaking move in the history of the papacy, in the modern history of the papacy. It hasn’t happened in 600 years. But it really goes to demystify the pope in many ways and restore the idea that this is about the office, the successor of Saint Peter, not just this cult about a certain person who has kind of been elevated to almost a demigod in the eyes of so many. So it really refocuses the church’s attention on what the job of the pope is. And, as you say, it’s a really big job. It’s a 24-7 job now in a way that it never was before. I think the question is, can you find a pope who knows how to delegate, who knows how to pick really able administrators who can do a lot of these things for him, and a pope who knows how to consult in a way that Benedict did not perhaps.
REESE: I think Kim and David have made excellent points, and in the last two conclaves what they’ve done is they’ve elected the smartest man in the room, and the question today is should they do that again or should they elect someone who will listen to all the other smart people in the church? Should they look for someone, for example, who has more diplomatic experience? They’ve tended to stress the role of the pope as teacher as opposed to the role of the pope as someone who brings people together, who develops and works to create consensus, who’s really strongly pushing dialogue.
ABERNETHY: The pope needs to have a pretty keen sense of public relations, too, and there’s some evidence that’s been missing lately. Is that high on the list?
REESE: I think it needs to be. I mean, the papacy, whether you like it or not, you’re under constant view by the whole world. You’re on a world stage 24-7, and if you say things that don’t make sense to people or that come across badly to people, it causes great problems for the church.
ABERNETHY: David, there’s kind of a buzz word around called “new evangelization.” I gather than means evangelizing and going in, preaching the Gospel more vigorously, perhaps. What does that imply, and what does that imply particularly for the United States?
GIBSON: Well, the church, the Vatican, and the cardinals and bishops in the United States know that the Catholic Church in the modern world has to do a better job at preaching and evangelizing. It’s a marketplace out there in a way that it never was before. You know, people can be born Catholic and raised Catholic, but that’s not exactly the choice they’re going to make as adults. So they have to be out there competing. But again, it’s that word, preaching. Is it just about words? As Tom said, they elected the smartest man in the room the last two times out. Is it just about the words you use? Or is preaching and evangelizing also about actions? Do they need really a pastor, someone who can communicate through actions and gestures as much as through words?
REESE: I think Pope Benedict expressed it very well. He said that Christianity should not be presented as a series of “nos”, but as a “yes,” a yes to love, a yes to life, a yes to justice and peace. You know, the principal job of the pope and of the whole church is to figure out how to preach the Gospel in a way that is understandable and attractive to people in the twenty-first century, especially to young people who are just turned off by religion.
ABERNETHY: Does that imply a kind of, what we think of as evangelical Protestantism, very vigorous, loud music, plenty of excitement? Can we look for that in South America, at least, from the church?
REESE: We’re seeing it in South America. We’re seeing it in Africa, with music and dance. We have to adapt Christianity—well, better put we have to express Christianity in different cultures in different ways. Remember Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas. What they did in their time was take the best intellectual thought, for Augustine it was Neoplatonism, for Aquinas it was Aristotle, and express Christianity to their generations using those philosophers. Thomas Aquinas’s books were burnt by the bishop of Paris. We shouldn’t just quote Augustine and Aquinas. We should imitate them and figure out how to express Christianity in the best way that we can in this century.
LAWTON: I have a question that I wanted to get in. Also, just this very curious situation that we’re finding ourselves in, we will find ourselves in, where we’re going to have two popes or the pope emeritus and the new pope. That could create some tensions, that could in some ways, undermine the new pope, if the other pope is still around. Benedict says he’s going to be hidden from public life, but David, what—how do you see that working out? What pitfalls do you see?
GIBSON: I see it as becoming a real problem down the road. Initially, look, this was such a surprise to everyone. It shouldn’t have been a shock, really. Benedict sent a lot of signals that this was going to happen. If anyone could do it, it was this kind of very orthodox pope resigning, this kind of Nixon-to-China move almost, but—and it was natural that there was no real plan for what you would do with a pope emeritus. So, for security reasons and a lot of other reasons, I think it made sense that he should live inside the Vatican, at least at first, but I think it is going to become a problem down the road, especially if he continues to write and to publish some of his writings.
ABERNETHY: David, one of those that is mentioned from time to time as a possible pope is the Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan. Is there anything to that, you think?
GIBSON: I think it’s a great story. Don’t think it’s going to happen.
ABERNETHY: Okay. Our thanks to Father Tom Reese of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University and David Gibson of Religion News Service.
We want to revisit now a story we ran some years ago, on the process the cardinals follow when they choose a new pope. Again, Kim Lawton reports.
Papal Selection
After Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement that he is resigning February 28, 2013, the Roman Catholic Church is preparing for a conclave, where cardinals under the age of 80 will gather to elect his successor. Managing editor Kim Lawton looked at the centuries-old process of selecting the pope.
KIM LAWTON, correspondent: In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says his disciple Peter is the rock upon which the church will be built. He tells Peter, “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.” The Roman Catholic Church teaches that its leader, the pope, is part of an unbroken succession from Peter. Selecting Peter’s successor is a momentous occasion.
JOHN L. ALLEN, JR. (National Catholic Reporter): What you have in a conclave is you have a moment of change on a world scale that the change in no other office, the change of no other leader, comes close to replicating. The transition in American presidents does not have the gravity, does not have the global significance that a change in the papacy does.
LAWTON: The details of the process have evolved greatly over the centuries. Under current rules, after the death or resignation of a pope, cardinals under the age of 80 have between 15 and 20 days to gather in Rome for the conclave. Until a new pope is elected, the College of Cardinals governs the church, but with limited powers.
REV. THOMAS REESE, S.J. (Woodstock Theological Center, Georgetown Univ.): When the cardinals meet to elect a pope, first of all they’re locked up so that they cannot be influenced by anything from the outside, and also so they can maintain secrecy. There will be no cell phones, no radios, no newspapers, no telephones, no communication with the outside world.
LAWTON: Every day, the cardinals assemble in the nearby Sistine Chapel, under the watchful eyes of Michelangelo’s restored frescoes. One of the first orders of business is swearing an oath of absolute secrecy. Under modern church rules, the conclave area is swept for bugs and other surveillance devices.
ALLEN: The cardinals are not supposed to be casting votes based on their image or based on political considerations, but based on who they really think is best for the church. And the notion is that doing that behind closed doors makes that somehow easier, makes that more possible.
LAWTON: Sequestered inside the Sistine Chapel, the cardinals vote by paper ballot, guided, the church says, by the Holy Spirit.
REESE: They have a small piece of paper, and on it they write the name of the person that they are voting for. Then they fold that piece of paper in two and hold it in their hand and march up one by one, holding it in the air so that everyone can see that there’s only one ballot here.
LAWTON: Selected “cardinal-scrutineers” count the number of ballots, making sure they correspond with the number of cardinals in the room. They then tally the ballots aloud. The pope is chosen by a two-thirds vote. There can be four votes a day. After three days, the voting can be suspended for a day of further prayer and discussion. Technically, any baptized male can be elected pope, although since the fourteenth century he has come from the College of Cardinals. After each round of voting, the ballots are burned in a special stove that has been used since the beginning of the twentieth century.
REESE: If the ballot had not elected a pope, they would put chemicals in to make the smoke black. If a pope is elected, they put certain chemicals into the stove with the ballots, so that the smoke comes out white.
LAWTON: Outside, people gather in St. Peter’s Square to pray and to await the word from the conclave. Modern popes have made their own changes that could have a huge impact on the future. In 1975, Paul VI instituted the age limit of 80 and expanded the number of voting cardinals. John Paul II and Benedict XVI further expanded and internationalized the college of cardinals.
ALLEN: The odds of a pope who is not European and not Italian are much more than they ever have been, simply because numerically the blocs from those non-European places are much larger and therefore have the political capacity to put forward their candidates.
LAWTON: Another factor for the conclave is the proliferation of the media, which challenges the vow of secrecy, and perhaps also shapes the choices.
REESE: It’s going to have to be someone who is at ease being the center of attention with the media. That’s just part of the reality of being pope today, whether the church likes it or not.
LAWTON: Inevitably, observers are making up their short lists of candidates, lists that have already been revised many times. And beyond the politics and the process and the pageantry, for the world’s Catholics the conclave is ultimately a holy endeavor.
I’m Kim Lawton reporting.
Listen Now
Listen to this episode now:
[powerpress]
