Jesuitical

Zac, Olga and I have had the chance to interview some pretty incredible people over the course of 99 episodes—from Father James Martin and Sister Helen Prejean to Sarah Silverman, Audrey Assad and so many more. But this week, we’re turning the tables: To celebrate our 100th episode, former guest and CNN analyst Kirsten Powers interviews your hosts to give you a behind the scenes look at how we got...

Should you care about what’s going on at the Vatican? It seems clear that you should pray for the pope and for the people making important decisions about the church’s governance, but should you follow the updates about hirings and firings, exhortations and motu proprios?   Colleen Dulle, host of America’s podcast “Inside the Vatican,” will tell you why paying attention to the Vatican regularly co...

Matias Benitez and Matt Chen are students at Regis High School in New York City, and in February of 2018, the teenagers started HeForShe, the school’s first feminist club. Every week, a dozen or so students gather after school to discuss the treatment of women and topical, sometimes difficult topics, like the Kavanaugh hearing. We talk to Matt and Matias about HeForShe, how they define feminism an...

“Walk together, work together, love each other.” That is how Pope Francis described the journey of building Christian unity in the 21st century. Michael Rudzena is walking that path as part of the John 17 Movement, an ecumenical group dedicated to responding to the prayer of Jesus that “all who believe in me be one.” Michael was born into a Catholic family that eventually found a new spiritual hom...

Marquette University men’s basketball standout Markus Howard is having a banner year. He’s earned the Big East Conference Player of the Year award on his way to leading Marquette toward a (hopefully) deep run in the N.C.A.A. tournament. He’s also become a leading advocate for mental health care. We talk to Markus about why he decided to start going to therapy and why he started talking about it pu...

When Mireille Twayigira was two, she fled Rwanda with her family after her father was killed in the country’s genocide. At the age of eight, she entered a Jesuit Refugee Service school in Malawi. After she graduated from secondary school as one of the best students in the country, she traveled to China, where she learned Chinese and, in 2016, graduated as a doctor.   We talk to Mireille about the...

Catholics love a good nun story. A chainsaw-wielding sister cleans up after Hurricane Irma? Social media gold. Nuns playing soccer? Yes please. And who can forget Sister Jean? (Not Zac). But every day and on every continent women religious are doing life-saving, cutting-edge work in hospitals, research laboratories, refugee camps and prisons. And those are the stories Dawn Araujo-Hawkins tells as...

Vinson Cunningham doesn’t meet many people who believe in hell—but he still does. We sit down with Vinson, who is staff writer at the New Yorker, to discuss his recent essay “How the Idea of Hell Has Shaped the Way We Think.”   We talk about our first memories of hell, how it still impacts our lives and our culture, and why it might be easier to describe hell than heaven.   In Signs of the Times,...

This week, America and Spoke Studios published “Deliver Us,” a new podcast about the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. Maggi van Dorn is the host and executive producer of “Deliver Us.” Following the release of the Pennslyvania grand jury report last summer, Maggi, like so many Catholics in the United States, found herself asking: How did could happen? And what, if anything, could Cathol...

In recent years, there has been a lot of debate around the word “consent” when it comes to preventing sexual assault on campus. What can Catholic colleges and universities bring to these discussions? To find out, we talk with Brianna Maturi, who leads Loyola Marymount University's consent program, called LMU Cares. We ask Brianna about the hook-up and dating scene on campuses today, what a culture...

This week, Jesuitical is coming to you live from Australia. We’ve mastered driving on the left side of the road (sort of); we got up close and personal with a kangaroo; and even though Ashley tried to leave me to drown in the Great Barrier Reef, we managed to record this week’s episode.   On our first international trip, we headlined the Archdiocese of Adelaide’s World Youth Day celebrations. In a...

In 2004, Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa founded New Wave Feminists, a pro-life feminist organization dedicated to changing the divisive language surrounding the abortion debate. New Wave works to give women the support and resources needed to make motherhood a feasible option. Destiny was inspired to form the pro-life feminist organization by her own experience as a young mother. Destiny is one of the...

The Catholic Church, according to this week’s guest, is facing not one but two crises. The first is the sexual abuse of children and its cover-up; the second is a complete break down of trust in church leadership. Kerry Alys Robinson has been working to confront both over a decade as the founding executive director of Leadership Roundtable, a group that brings together clergy, religious and laypeo...

  Sister Helen Prejean has been the face of the anti-death penalty movement for decades. A member of the Congregation of St. Joseph, Sister Helen has been accompanying inmates on death row and lobbying against capital punishment in the United States (and in the church) for decades. She blew up on the national scene for her book Dead Man Walking, which was adapted into an Oscar-winning film, and sh...

“Reflecting on death is not a morbid affair,” believes Sister Theresa Aletheia, “it is a healthy and often healing practice that helps us accept the inevitable with hope.” Sister Theresa is a self-proclaimed #MediaNun with the Daughters of Saint Paul and the founder of the Memento Mori Project, an online revival in which she offers daily reflections about death.   This week, we talk to Sister Ther...

Juan Carlos Cruz was abused by the notorious predator Fernando Karadima, a Chilean Catholic priest. For years, the Catholic Church in Chile disregarded the abuse allegations against the powerful cleric. One cardinal even told Juan Carlos it was hard to believe he was a victim because he is gay and “might have liked it.” When Pope Francis visited Chile earlier this year, he initially dismissed as “...

The Catholic Church is failing to engage Catholic women. A groundbreaking survey of Catholic women published by America earlier this year found that 26 percent rarely or never attend Mass; 27 percent only attend a few times a year; and 67 percent of Catholic women have never served in a parish in any ministry. The GIVEN Institute is trying to fix that. This week we chat with Elise Italiano, the gr...

Stephen P. Millies is the author of Good Intentions: A History of Catholic Voters’ Road from Roe to Trump. In his book, Stephen analyzes the history of the Catholic vote, from the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade to the presidential elections of 2016.   We talk to Stephen about the role of Catholics in U.S. politics and why so many Catholics feel politically homeless and the 2018 midterm el...

Family separations, the caravan, birthright citizenship—immigration stories have dominated the headlines in the lead-up to the 2018 midterms. But for Sister Norma Pimentel, who has worked on the U.S.-Mexico border for decades, migration is not a political issue; it is a human issue. As the executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, Sister Norma accompanies migrants who cros...

The nuns are back (on the bus). Headed by Sister Simone Campbell, the executive director of NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, the almost-annual campaign (they’ve traveled six of the last seven years), is traveling across the country to raise awareness about the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act and its impact on social services and local communities.   The nuns stopped at the Church of the Redeem...

Kevin Clarke is the chief correspondent at America. Recently, he traveled to Iraq for 12 days where he met with Iraqi Christians and other religious minorities. We talk to Kevin about why he decided to take this trip and the future of Christianity in that region. (You can check out Kevin’s reporting here.) In Signs of the Times, we discuss the canonization of Saint Óscar Romero, the resignation of...

I’m sure I am not the only city dweller who sometimes fantasizes about putting in my two-weeks notice and escaping to a dude ranch in Wyoming or an organic pumpkin farm in Nebraska (or wherever they grow pumpkins). The ever-increasing rent, the dirty, dysfunctional subway, the nonstop noise and pressure to not just keep up but get ahead—it all makes me question why I moved to New York. Well this w...

“My hope is that we can learn that we can be indigenous and all these other things: Catholic, worldly, a diplomat, a scientist, etc. My hope is that being indigenous is not limited,” said Maka Clifford in the pages of America last year. Maka is the director of curriculum and assessment at the Red Cloud Indian School, a Catholic school led by the Jesuits and the Lakota people. Maka was born on the...

“[The sex abuse crisis is] not something that I think can be fixed by our priests alone,” Amanda Zamora told us this week. “The pain and the harm has been caused by the church and the solution will need to come from the church—and that includes all of us.” Amanda is the chief audience officer at the Texas Tribune, which she joined in 2016. Previously, she spent 13 years on the East Coast working f...

He was a French novice living in a desert monastery in Syria. She was a journalist from Texas who wanted to become a nun. Then, they fell in love. I know, it sounds like a rom-com. But that is, in fact, how this week’s guest, Stephanie Saldaña, met her husband—and it’s not even the most fascinating part of her story. Today, Stephanie lives with her family in Jerusalem where she writes and teaches....