AMDG: A Jesuit Podcast

The Jesuit Border Podcast has just launched its ninth season, and to commemorate the event, we're featuring the first episode of season nine here on AMDG. You'll hear stories, reflections and an interview from hosts Fr. Brian Strassburger, SJ, and Joe Nolla, SJ, of Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries. Bishop Michael Pham of the Diocese of San Diego is today's guest. Bishop Pham was the first U.S....

Fr. George Drance, SJ, is a great example of the fact that Jesuits can do and be anything. Fr. George is a theatre artist, which, in his case, encompasses acting on the stage, directing, teaching acting classes at Fordham University in New York, and writing and adapting his own shows. He’s also the artistic director for the Magis Theatre Company, which he founded. His work takes him all over the w...

On October 4 and 5, the Catholic Church will observe the 111th World Day of Migrants and Refugees. Today’s guest, who recently stopped by our studio in Washington, DC, is a perfect guest for the occasion. His name is Michael Petro, SJ, and he’s a Jesuit of the American East Coast province who is currently in the regency stage of his formation. Michael’s regency has been quite far from the norm, th...

St. Kevin is a 6th century Irish saint, best known, perhaps, for the monastery he founded at Glendalough, tucked deep into County Wicklow. Beyond the monastic community, Kevin has been immortalized by Irish poet Seamus Heaney in a poem called “St. Kevin and the Blackbird.” It’s a poem that speaks of a legend, a peculiar moment of prayer and stillness. Our own communications team member, Eric Clayt...

The screenwriters Brian Gunn and Mark Gunn are cousins, and they grew up in the 1970s and ’80s in a big Catholic extended family in St. Louis. The Gunns are an incredibly creative clan that has produced all sorts of actors and writers and directors, including Brian’s brother James, who you might know as the director of the most recent “Superman” movie and the “Guardians of the Galaxy” franchise. B...

It’s hard to believe, but Pope Leo XIV just passed the four-month mark of his papacy. That’s more than a full season. After the incredible amount of press coverage here in North America reacting in shock to the election of a pope originally from Chicago, the media frenzy quieted quickly and starkly. It’s fair to say Pope Leo doesn’t have a big, splashy personality, and add to that all the wild pol...

As Catholics, we’re familiar with the seasons of the Church year. We know to mark the days of Advent and Lent. We know that Easter lasts fifty days and that Christmas, too, is more than just a 24-hour period of time. We know that we spend most of our time in days called ordinary — and of course, we’re reminded of all of these seasons by the colors the priests wears at Mass. But here’s a season you...

What does it mean to flourish? What does it mean for you to flourish? Have you ever really thought about it? Too often, we’re forced to focus on mere survival. We limit our gaze to that which will get us through this moment and into the next. Too often, we obsess on all the things we’ve done wrong; we’re haunted by mistakes, fearful we’ll repeat past errors. Too often, we embody a disposition of s...

The Jesuit Media Lab was founded to help people navigate the intersection of creativity and spirituality. We know there are so many people out there who are creative—who want to make art and write poems and sing new songs—and who also draw their creativity from their faith lives, their own spiritual journeys. We know, too—from our own lived experience as well as from conversations with people all...

Father Jack Bentz, SJ, is a Jesuit priest who works in campus ministry at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. He also has a new podcast called “Catholics in Ordinary Time,” which is just an awesome title. The podcast was inspired in large part by his work during the Synod on Synodality at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Hollywood, where he served before moving to Spokane. The parish conducted a...

The Saturday after Pope Leo XIV was elected, he gave an address to cardinals in which he described his reasoning for selecting the name Leo. He said there were different reasons for his choice, “but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution,” Pope Leo XIV said. “In our own day, the Chu...

In honor of the Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola on July 31, we're taking a green look at his Spiritual Exercises. When today's host, Eric Clayton, was in college, he stumbled upon a book entitled “The Eucharist and Social Justice.” It’s a small volume and was easily tucked into his bag when he went to Nicaragua on a service immersion trip. He remembers paging through that book with an excitement t...

When Chris Lowney started his career as an investment banker at JP Morgan in 1983, his background leading up to that job marked an unusual path to the corporation. He had spent the past few years as a Jesuit in formation, after entering the Society of Jesus as a novice straight out of high school. Chris went on to work 18 years at JP Morgan, and during his tenure there, he started realizing that a...

Father Scott Santarosa, SJ, is the pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe in San Diego, just a few miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. Founded in 1921 as the Mexican national parish of San Diego – meaning it could offer pastoral care to any Catholic in the city born in Mexico – the community has a long history of welcoming immigrants to the United States and their descendants. Under Fr. Scott’s leadership...

This past spring, host Mike Jordan Laskey traveled to New York for a Jesuit Media Lab theatre event. He was coordinating the outing with our JML contributor Renee Roden, who lives at a Catholic Worker house in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The Catholic Worker, of course, is the movement founded in 1933 by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, which grew from a newspaper dedicated to Catholic social teaching a...

From June 23 through June 27, 2025, on the campus of Loyola University New Orleans, student affairs professionals from across our network of Jesuit colleges and universities gathered to be formed and fueled by our shared Jesuit mission. One of the keynotes from the conference featured four university presidents: Tania Tetlow of Fordham University, Vincent Rougeau of the College of the Holy Cross,...

Nestled in the Horn of Africa on the easternmost part of the African continent is a small country called Djibouti. It’s bordered by three other countries: Eritrea to the north, Ethiopia to the west, and Somalia to the south. Djibouti’s eastern border abuts the busy shipping lanes of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. These bodies of water are connected by the Bab al-Mandab Strait which serves as an ess...

Host Mike Jordan Laskey is joined by Jesuit Media Lab fellow, Michael O'Connell, on this special episode of "AMDG: A Jesuit Podcast" to kickstart the summer.

Today we’re talking about joy. It can be a hard thing to hold onto in this moment: The headlines are scary; our lives are full of stress and worry; and, everywhere we turn there seems to be some new reason to be afraid. But none of that is of God. And indeed, even in such moments, joy is waiting to be found. It’s worth remembering that Jesus tells us he has come so that we might have life and have...

Welcome to “Pathway to Priesthood”—a special podcast series from the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States. In these conversations, we’ve been talking with Jesuits who are in the final days of preparing for ordination to the priesthood. We’ve reflected back on their vocation stories and experience of Jesuit formation, and we’ve wrestled with some of the biggest questions surrounding pr...

If you stop and think about it, it’s amazing that the work of William Shakespeare, more than 400 years old, is still read by pretty much every student in the English-speaking world starting in high school or before. Our guest today, Luke Taylor, SJ, has recently co-written and edited a volume that brings together two of his passions: the Bard’s work and Catholic education. The book is called “Expl...

Welcome to “Pathway to Priesthood”—a special podcast series from the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States. In these conversations, host Eric Clayton talks with Jesuits who are in the final days of preparing for ordination to the priesthood. They reflect back on their vocation stories and experience of Jesuit formation, and wrestle with some of the biggest questions surrounding priestl...

The Easter season is about new life. Jesus rises from the dead and in so doing resets the horizon on what is possible for each and every one of us. We see in the risen Lord God’s own invitation, an invitation that calls us beyond ourselves, beyond what even dreamed was possible. Ignatian spirituality offers us time-tested tools to embark on this journey. Ignatius himself was not only a soldier-tur...

Welcome to “Pathway to Priesthood”—a special podcast series from the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States. In these conversations, host Eric Clayton talks with Jesuits who are in the final days of preparing for ordination to the priesthood. They reflect back on their vocation stories and experience of Jesuit formation, and wrestle with some of the biggest questions surrounding priestl...

After the white smoke poured out of the Sistine Chapel chimney on May 8, we turned on the TV here at the Jesuit Conference HQ in Washington and landed randomly on ABC News. We immediately heard a familiar voice: It was Fr. James Martin, the Jesuit author who certainly needs no introduction to AMDG listeners. In addition to writing bestselling books like Come Forth about the biblical character of L...