Podcast
The most important and controversial topics in world religion, thoroughly dissected by a range of high profile guests. Presented by Damian Thompson.
The most important and controversial topics in world religion, thoroughly dissected by a range of high profile guests. Presented by Damian Thompson.
Holy Smoke
At a press conference in Rome last week, an ex-nun claiming to have suffered ritual sex abuse at the hands of Fr Marko Rupnik turned the heat on Pope Francis. How much did he know about the stomach-turning charges levelled at the Slovenian mosaic artist, who was a Jesuit until he was thrown out of
Play 16 mins
Holy Smoke
Can the Church of England escape from the deadly grip of bishops and bureaucrats who spend their entire time genuflecting to the metropolitan Left? Why does Archbishop Justin Welby wade obsessively into secular political battles when his churches are emptying? And do worshippers realise that eye-watering sums of money are being siphoned off from their
Play 28 mins
Holy Smoke
Donald Trump now seems certain to be the Republican presidential candidate in this year’s US presidential elections. That’s a prospect that horrifies liberal America and quite a few other Americans besides. The former president secured overwhelming support from evangelical Christians in Iowa and New Hampshire and some commentators are speculating that we’re seeing a resurgence
Play 23 mins
Holy Smoke
Just before Christmas, the Vatican’s new doctrinal chief Cardinal Victor ‘Tucho’ Fernandez unveiled a new style of blessing designed to make gay couples feel at home in church without changing the Church’s teaching on marriage. The Argentinian Tucho has for years been Pope Francis’s protégé – but for how much longer? The new gay blessings,
Play 22 mins
Holy Smoke
In this festive episode of Holy Smoke, we’re taken back to the Christmasses of the 1950s and 60s by Raymond Arroyo, Fox News and EWTN presenter, whose enemies in the Vatican have been trying to silence him for years. They’ve failed, thankfully – and now silencing him is even harder. Raymond, who trained in musical
Play 22 mins
Holy Smoke
You might imagine that a political project to place modern nation states under the supreme authority of the Catholic Church would stand zero chance of success anywhere in the world, including in traditionally Catholic countries. And you’d be right. Even so, a movement known as Integralism – whose 20th-century incarnations were closely related to fascism
Play 28 mins
Holy Smoke
When I was in Rome last month, I watched the ‘synod on synodality’ fizzle out while the Marko Rupnik sex scandal took another sinister turn (and various Catholic journalists shamefully tried to suppress the story). But don’t worry: this episode of Holy Smoke is devoted to more uplifting matters. I visited the ancient little church
Play 15 mins
Holy Smoke
Pope Francis’s much-hyped ‘synod on synodality’ began in Rome this week and to say that it has got off to a rocky start is putting it mildly. On Monday, five leading conservative cardinals bounced Francis into making a highly ambiguous statement apparently opening the door to gay blessings. Meanwhile, and this subject is being played
Play 13 mins
Holy Smoke
Earlier this week, the Rome correspondent of the Times found himself mugging up on the history of Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire, and this is what he reported: While the empire brought stability, it was created through the large-scale massacre of anyone who refused to submit to Mongol rule, leading to the death of millions. Mongol troops triggered famine
Play 21 mins
Holy Smoke
King Charles III is the first British monarch to inherit a post-Christian kingdom. Less than half of his subjects identify themselves as Christian, and only about one in 20 adults in the UK go to church on Sundays. Since 1980 church attendance has more than halved – and that’s broadly the situation in most of Western Europe.
Play 33 mins
Holy Smoke
Conservative Catholic critics of Pope Francis are referring to 2023 as his ‘Year Zero’ – a time of revolutionary upheaval initiated by an 86-year-old pontiff who feels liberated by the death of his predecessor Benedict XVI on New Year’s Eve. Events are moving fast. This October, the world’s bishops will gather for a synod in
Play 33 mins
Holy Smoke
For 75 years, the most anti-Christian regime in modern history has thrown its citizens into prison camps if they are suspected of the slightest dissent. Ten per cent of people live in modern slavery; perhaps 200,000 are behind bars. I’m talking about North Korea, of course – a regime even more abhorrent than Stalinist Russia,
Play 15 mins
Holy Smoke
In the ancient Syro-Malabar Church of south India, clergy who try to change the liturgy do so at their peril. At St Mary’s Cathedral Basilica in Ernakulam last December, a long-standing dispute over whether the priest should face the people led to scenes in which protestors attacked clergy in the middle of the service, sending
Play 23 mins
Holy Smoke
A charming octogenarian who plays ruthless games with the people who think they’re going to succeed him: I reckon Logan Roy would have recognised a kindred spirit in Pope Francis, despite their diametrically opposed politics. Like many of you, I’m heartbroken that Succession has come to an end – but if you’re missing the back-stabbing melodrama then you could always start following the real-life struggle to shape
Play 14 mins
Holy Smoke
The Sicilian Mafia is one of the most murderously amoral organisations on the planet – yet babyishly sentimental when it comes to Italian peasant Catholicism. And, like other branches of Italian organised crime, questions exist over whether they have allies in the Vatican, some of whose senior officials are as keen on money-laundering as the
Play 35 mins
Holy Smoke
The Coronation in Westminster Abbey is the only occasion at which our monarch declares himself or herself to be a Protestant, thus ensuring that no Catholic can sit on the throne of the United Kingdom. Yet, paradoxically, the Coronation is the only English Royal ceremony which is replete with Catholic symbolism – the King will
Play 30 mins
Holy Smoke
Ludwig van Beethoven had a profound faith in God. He was born and raised a Catholic and on his deathbed he asked to receive the Last Rites. He told the priest, ‘I thank you, ghostly sir – you have brought me comfort.’ One of his closest friends, Archduke Rudolf of Austria, was made a cardinal
Play 38 mins
Holy Smoke
This week we heard the unfamiliar sound of one of the Catholic Church’s most influential cardinals turning the handle of a door that has remained firmly shut for 2,000 years. It’s marked ‘Catholic women priests’, a development – such is the pace of chaotic change under this pontificate – that is now a real long-term
Play 16 mins
Holy Smoke
The Abrahamic Family House is the name for three giant concrete cubes – a church, a mosque and a synagogue – that have just officially opened their doors in Abu Dhabi. The project is the fruit of a controversial agreement signed there in 2019 by Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, that disturbed
Play 19 mins
Holy Smoke
Cardinal Arthur Roche, the Pope’s famously ambitious liturgy chief, has stepped up his campaign against the Traditional Latin Mass, which he’s been trying to suppress ever since he was Bishop of Leeds 15 years ago. This week he persuaded Francis to back his ruling that the ancient Mass can only be celebrated in parish churches with
Play 31 mins
Holy Smoke
The fallout from the death of Benedict XVI has been unexpectedly dramatic. Pope Francis’s behaviour at his predecessor’s Requiem on Thursday struck many observers as graceless. The liberal Catholic journalist Robert Mickens, a long-time opponent of many of Benedict’s policies, wrote that Francis ‘looked unpleasant throughout the liturgy and, surprisingly (shockingly, some would say), he
Play 16 mins
Holy Smoke
It’s time for the Holy Smoke Christmas episode! The studio is decorated like a Dolly Parton festive special c. 1977, and my guest is the fearless and feisty Anglican church organist Lois Letts. Our theme is the urgent need to save children from the agitprop ‘worship songs’ that crop up in nativity and carol services even in
Play 27 mins
Holy Smoke
In this episode of Holy Smoke, I interview Fr John Lovell, who is one of a growing number of American Catholic priests who claim to have been suspended from ministry simply because their conservative views offend their bishops. Fr Lovell’s Coalition for Cancelled Priests is gathering support among US traditionalists – which is hardly surprising given the Kafkaesque
Play 47 mins
Holy Smoke
Last week, out of a mixture of curiosity and boredom, I ended up watching an online Church of England Eucharist from a parish church in Hereford. The text of the liturgy was almost identical to that of the Catholic Mass I had attended the night before. We’d even sung the same hymn, and the celebrant’s vestments
Play 33 mins
Holy Smoke
Ten years ago the Catholic Church happily celebrated the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. Most people thought it was a good thing – and those who had their doubts were careful to express them diplomatically. Sixty years on, by contrast, Vatican II is the source of rancorous division in a
Play 14 mins
Holy Smoke
This headline may seem sensational, but the evidence is overwhelming. The Catholic Church is experiencing a bewildering range of crises, some of them long-term and familiar, such as demographic collapse and the continuing scandal of sex abuse. Others are being manufactured by a Pope who is allowing a faction of Catholic boomers to push an
Play 20 mins
Holy Smoke
Is western society in the grips of a progressive hysterical epidemic comparable to the Salem Witch Trials? My guest on Holy Smoke this week, Andrew Doyle, argues precisely that in his book The New Puritans. He suggests that gender ideology, and particularly the dogmas of trans activists, together with the fantasies of Critical Race Theory,
Play 34 mins
Holy Smoke
In this episode of Holy Smoke, I look at the ever-deepening mysteries surrounding Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta, who was given a job assessing Vatican finances after he was forced to resign from his diocese in Argentina following allegations of abusive behaviour and financial mismanagement. This year Zanchetta received a lengthy jail sentence for abusing seminarians. But he’s serving
Play 21 mins
Holy Smoke
The Catholic Church is half way through a two-year consultation exercise that will culminate in a ‘Synod on Synodality’ in the Vatican next year. A synod on what? Don’t worry if you’re confused. No one in Rome seems to be able to define synodality, either. What will the world’s bishops discuss? Probably not the figures
Play 25 mins
Holy Smoke
In this week’s Holy Smoke I offer some thoughts on the impressive and distinctive Christian faith of the Queen – impressive because it’s so refreshingly direct compared to that of many of her politics-obsessed bishops, and distinctive because Elizabeth II is one of a dwindling band of Low Church but not Evangelical Anglicans whose favourite
Play 12 mins