AMDG: A Jesuit Podcast

Last week, hundreds of students from Jesuit high schools and colleges from around the country came to Washington, DC, to speak up for the unborn at the March for Life. Before the march, they gathered at Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown for the Ignatian Mass for Life, with the Jesuit Conference president Fr. Tim Kesicki, SJ, presiding. Host Mike Jordan Laskey talked to six of the attendees about w...

How do we ensure that Jesuit higher education is accessible to everyone? The cost of college tuition has been in the news lately—and on the presidential debate stage. Guest Fr. Steve Katsouros, SJ, is the founder of the innovative Arrupe College at Loyola University Chicago, the first Jesuit community college in the world. He is preparing to expand the Arrupe College model nationwide. In this epis...

On January 20, 2020, the United States celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Dr. King is so often remembered for his dream of racial equality, so eloquently articulated in his speeches and letters. But, as my guest today, Dr. Nicholas Mitchell of the Jesuit Social Research Institute, reminds us, Dr. King’s legacy is one that calls us to continue challenging the status quo, to live as radically as...

A Jesuit vocation can mean a lot of things: there are Jesuits in medicine, astronomy, international relief and development, journalism, publishing and so much more. But perhaps the line of work most often associated with Jesuits is education. Fr. Bill Watters is passionate about education—and he’s my guest today. Fr. Watters knows the value an education can have on an individual and a community. A...

January 1 is a day of resolutions, promises, and commitments to form better habits, get back into shape, pick up an old hobby. January 17—more or less—is when all of those commitments begin to fade, and we look accusingly at that new gym membership. New Years resolutions can feel like we’re set up to fail, set up for disappointment. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Today’s guest, Vinita Wright,...

There’s a lot of movement in Scripture during this Christmas season. God comes among humanity through the Incarnation. The Holy Family travels to Bethlehem for a census and then flees to Egypt under threat of death. The shepherds and magi travel varying distances to be present to and encounter God. Scripture isn’t just a historical retelling of holy events—it’s alive and speaking to us today. And...

This is the podcast you're looking for. Full disclosure on today’s episode: it’s a deep dive into the cultural and spiritual impacts of Star Wars — just in time for the release of the latest and final installment, The Rise of Skywalker. And it’s a real opportunity to find God in all things. Fr. Jim McDermott, SJ, is a big Star Wars nerd. He’s a screenwriter and the Los Angeles correspondent for Am...

The Prophet Habakkuk writes: “For the vision is a witness for the appointed time, a testimony to the end; it will not disappoint. If it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.” Perhaps more familiar to listeners, though, are the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Waiting — particularly during this time...

A few weeks ago, the Jesuit Dan Corrou went to Mass like any other Sunday. But the setting was far from ordinary. The Mass was being held in the Church of St. Vincent de Paul in Beirut, Lebanon, which was bombed out during Lebanon’s civil war about 40 years ago. Fr. Dan was so struck by the image of a community praying together in the largely destroyed church that he snapped a picture and posted i...

Thanksgiving is the time each year when we, as a family, a community, a country, express, well, thankfulness—often, as a prerequisite to indulging in mashed potatoes, turkey and pie. But our guest today reminds us that gratitude isn’t something to confine to late November; it’s a powerful disposition that can transform our relationship—with ourselves, our neighbors, and even with God. Dr. Monica B...

Twitter is a huge social media service with over 300 million active users, including one very active user with a high profile who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. President Trump’s controversial Twitter use is a constant reminder that Twitter impacts politics, economics, and social movements around the world. In addition to being the president’s preferred mode for communicating wit...

When the documentary filmmaker Ken Burns thinks you’ve made a movie about author Flannery O’Connor worthy of a $200,000 prize awarded in his name, you’re doing pretty well. And when that movie is the first film you have ever made in your life, you’re doing REALLY well. That’s the surprising story of guest Fr. Mark Bosco, SJ, who is the vice president for mission and ministry at Georgetown Universi...

There are not many areas of the country that are discussed by more ill-informed talking heads than the US-Mexico border. But when guest Fr. Sean Carroll, SJ, talks about the region, everyone should listen. Fr. Carroll is a Jesuit priest and the executive director of the Kino Border Initiative (KBI), where he has worked for the past 11 years. KBI is a bi-national organization co-sponsored by the Je...

You might think of this penultimate week in October as the time to buy Halloween candy before the good stuff is gone, but here at the Jesuit Conference we are celebrating the first-ever #ExamenWeek: We’re taking a few days to feature the daily examen prayer practice, a signature element of Ignatian spirituality that Jesuits have been praying since the days of St. Ignatius himself. The daily examen...

Fr. Scott Santarosa, SJ, is the provincial superior of the Jesuits West Province of the United States. In English, that means he leads the Jesuits in the territory encompassing the ten westernmost states of the union. Even more importantly, at least for our purposes on this episode, Fr. Santarosa is a die-hard Los Angeles Dodgers fan and a borderline baseball obsessive. When Fr. Santarosa talked w...

The United States is sadly unique among developed Western countries in that we still regularly execute people. And capital punishment has been in the political headlines lately, if perhaps overshadowed by other hot-button topics. In July, the Trump Administration announced it would be reinstating federal executions, which have been on hold since 2003. Just a few months earlier, California governor...

Fr. John O’Malley joined the Jesuits in 1946, right after World War II and more than a decade before the second Vatican council was announced. You could say he’s seen a lot of change in his 92 years, but that would be a massive understatement. Fr. O’Malley looks at this era of upheaval with a historian’s eye, and he was quick to point out in his recent conversation with host Mike Jordan Laskey tha...

Jesuit priests Fr. Paddy Gilger and Fr. Eric Sundrup are the hosts of a wonderful new YouTube show called "Jesuit Autocomplete" from America Media. In each episode, Paddy and Eric answer a different set of Google’s most popular questions about Jesuits, the Bible, Pope Francis, and more. After talking about the series, host Mike Jordan Laskey and Paddy and Eric draft teams of five saints each in an...

This is our second of two episodes with a university president as we celebrate the beginning of the academic year. Be sure to check out our last conversation with President Tania Tetlow from Loyola University New Orleans. Today, we welcome Dr. Mike Lovell, the president of Marquette University in Milwaukee. Like President Tetlow at Loyola, Dr. Lovell is the first-ever layperson to serve as preside...

Tania Tetlow is a trailblazer. She is the first female president in the history of Loyola University New Orleans. She is the first layperson to serve in that role. And her first job was working for Representative Lindy Boggs, who was the first woman to represent the state of Louisiana in Congress. As President Tetlow’s second academic year in leadership gets underway this month, host Mike Jordan L...

Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, BVM, took the world by storm as the chaplain for the 2018 Loyola Chicago Final Four men's basketball team. She turns 100 on Wednesday, August 21! In this conversation with host Mike Jordan Laskey and guest host Deanna Howes Spiro of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, Sr. Jean reflects on turning 100, her instant rise to fame last year, and what advice...

Last month, Matt Wooters, a Jesuit brother from the Midwest Province, decided he was going to try and swim six miles for a birthday fundraiser benefiting the immigration legal aid group RAICES. The only problem was he only had a few weeks to train and it’s not like he was doing long-distance swims all the time. But as Brother Matt is wont to do, he just went for it. His effort struck a cord, and t...

If you’ve been to Catholic Mass in the United States at some point over the past few decades, you’ve probably sung at least one piece of music by a group of five composers called the St. Louis Jesuits. Here, I’ll quiz you. How many of these song titles do you recognize? Be Not Afraid. Here I Am, Lord. Come to the Water. City of God. One Bread, One Body. Lift Up Your Hearts. Though the Mountains Ma...

When best-selling author and public intellectual Malcolm Gladwell announced he was doing a three-part podcast on thinking like a Jesuit, we had to learn more. Host Mike Jordan Laskey chats with Malcolm about the origins of the series, what surprised him in his deep dive into Jesuit moral reasoning, and why most every modern political problem could use a dose of St. Ignatius. This is the first offi...

The Women’s World Cup is in full swing in France, with more elite teams vying for the championship than ever before. One of the biggest soccer fans around is Pope Francis, who recently said that sports “can foster a culture of dialogue and respectful encounters.” We wanted to use the occasion of the World Cup to dig into the spiritual and character-building dimensions of sports, so our guests are...