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 many Christians with its statement that the existence of separate religions i...

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 his permission – thus taking the decision out of the hands of the...

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 did not at...

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 Church of England primary schools, all of which make even Miss Parton's ch...

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 experiences of some priests at t...

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 were indistinguishable from those of a Roman Catholic priest. But the person wearing th...

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 collapsing Church. Liberals, describing themselves as 'The People of God', are i...

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 incoherent 'New Age' agenda. Whether Francis truly supports...

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, are dragging society into an alternative reality that re...

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 his time in a comf...

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 revealing how many Catholics have taken part in this exercise, because they're...

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 Sunday service is old-fashioned Matins. Questions of chur...

My guest on Holy Smoke this week is, many people believe, a victim of the intolerant progressive ideology currently gripping the Church of England. He's Calvin Robinson, a name possibly familiar to you from the row over the Diocese of London's decision not to ordain him.  Calvin is a young TV presenter with conservative Christian views that conflict with the liberal opinions of the hierarchy. He's...

So Roe vs. Wade is as good as dead. Americans are about to lose their constitutional right to an abortion. Five out of the nine Supreme Court justices have drafted an opinion in their forthcoming ruling on a Mississippi abortion case which strikes down the 1973 Roe ruling as 'egregiously wrong from the start'. As we all know it’s been leaked – but it’s expected to be issued pretty much unchanged i...

Few things are more depressing than the art, architecture and furnishings of the average modern church. The glorious aesthetic of light and colour of the Middle Ages and Renaissance has been replaced with an infantile modernist decor more suited to a primary school than a place of worship.  In the Catholic Church, especially, bishops who may privately have reasonably good taste happily commission...

My guest on this episode of Holy Smoke was an Anglican bishop for 37 years – one of the Church of England's foremost scholars and its leading witness for persecuted Christians. He was also an evangelical who, as bishop of the ancient see of Rochester, ordained women priests. But, as of this month, his title is Monsignor. I am, of course, talking about the Pakistani-born Michael Nazir-Ali, whose de...

Did you know that in the last year more Christians have been killed for their faith in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world combined? In 2021, at least 6,000 Christians died for their faith, and 80 per cent of those were Nigerians. Their murderers were – you may not be too shocked to learn – almost to a man Islamists. But, this being Nigeria, a supposedly secular state where northern provinces...

Cardinal George Pell has given a wide-ranging interview to The Spectator 's Holy Smoke podcast in which he criticises the Vatican's 2018 deal with Beijing and especially the secrecy surrounding it.  The unpublished pact allows the Chinese Communist Party to choose Catholic bishops, whose appointments are then rubber-stamped by Pope Francis. 'I know high-up people in the Vatican are very dissatisfi...

Four million Christians in western Ukraine belong to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which since the end of the 16th century has adhered to a Byzantine rite while recognising the authority of the Pope. For this reason these Ukrainian Catholics are despised by the Russian Orthodox and its political masters: Stalin tried to force them to become Orthodox again and threw their leader, Cardinal Sl...

Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine is fundamentally inspired by his determination to preserve the Orthodox identity of Holy Mother Russia, according to the Rev Giles Fraser, writing for UnHerd today. That's not as preposterous a suggestion as you might think, given that the first mass baptisms in the ancient homeland of 'Rus' took place in Kiev – and that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church recently r...

In the latest Holy Smoke, I ask the Rev Marcus Walker, Rector of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London, about the Church of England's plans to create a new breed of bureaucrat-bishop who will pontificate about climate change, Brexit, Covid or whatever without having to bother looking after a diocese. He also discusses a related proposal to put ordinary bishops on fixed-term contracts that...

My dear sister Carmel died aged 57 on November 23, after a three-year cancer ordeal during which she displayed the most astonishing courage. I interviewed her twice on this podcast about her faith, her illness and her unquenchable optimism. I knew at the time that one day I'd have to record an episode paying tribute to her after she died, and here it is. Become a Spectator subscriber today to acce...

In this episode of Holy Smoke, Archbishop Nikitas of Thyateira and Great Britain, leader of Britain’s Greek Orthodox, defends sacred Christian tradition with a robustness I’ve never heard from a native British bishop.  The Florida-born Nikitas has exhilarating and controversial things to say on all sorts of topics: the Western Churches’ cosy relationship with secularism, the devastating civil war...

Pope Francis renewed his campaign against the Latin Mass this month, permitting his liturgy chief Archbishop Arthur Roche to issue all manner of threats to clergy celebrating the ancient liturgy. This 'clarification' has been greeted with horror by bishops around the world, including many who aren't keen on the old rite.  This episode of Holy Smoke puts this outrage in the context of what one dist...

In this episode of Holy Smoke, I interview Julia Meloni, author of The St Gallen Mafia: Exposing the Secret Reformist Group Within the Church . It's the first detailed study of the self-described 'mafia' of liberal cardinals who worked tirelessly to prevent and then undermine the pontificate of Benedict XVI.  The book contains many disconcerting revelations, and also well-sourced speculation that...