The Big Tent

While the world looks to Pope Leo for moral authority, he's looking to the cardinals for moral support. Br Mark O'Connor has been in Rome as the cardinals met against a backdrop of escalating conflicts and Leo's interventions on the limits of war. He tells Julie Thorpe that Leo's message to the cardinals sets a clear direction for a synodal church in continuity with Francis' papacy. Leo's first en...

In this final conversation in our mini-series on changing belief, Geraldine Doogue, Julie Thorpe, Grace Brennan and Joe Wehbe draw together some of the questions they've been left with: the evolving role of tradition, setting aside old habits and picking up new ones, the place of friendship, the language of search, and ultimately where belief goes from here. Mentioned in this episode: Iain McGilch...

Joe Wehbe sits down with his brother Mitchell to reflect on their family's Maronite background, their changing relationships to church, and finding meaning in anime. The journey of belief – from an Uber Eats God to a pirate healer – has led both brothers on a different but often surprising story arc between faith and fiction. Joe and Mitch's TV show recommendations: ONE PIECE The Light in Your Eye...

What does it mean to wrestle with belief while living remotely in rural Australia? In this episode of our mini-series on changing belief, Grace Brennan speaks with Maddie Burnheim – raising her family on a property in western New South Wales – about her relationship with Catholicism, sitting out her doubts, the rituals of a bush christening, and the times when faith turns up and steers you home. '...

In episode two of our miniseries on changing belief, Geraldine Doogue and Julie Thorpe explore why so many young men are drawn to online communities that promise seemingly a secure hold amid so much sliding from their grasp: education, jobs, relationships. With demographer Simon Kuestenmacher, they look at the pull of the manosphere, the hunger for belonging and whether older wisdom traditions can...

‘Humanity has never had so many people living beyond the working stage of life as now,' says demographer and social commentator Bernard Salt, 'and we have to work out how to fund it, how to manage it, how to house it, how to care for it and how to deliver a meaning.' Bernard joins Geraldine and Julie first up in this mini-series on changing belief to explore what's disappeared and what might endur...

‘Peace be with you all!’ Pope Leo’s first words to the world have resounded across continents — for all to hear. Fresh off the papal plane from Africa, CNN's Christopher Lamb speaks with Geraldine Doogue about what it means for the Church, and for the wider world, to have an American pope. A year into his papacy, what’s Leo like, up close? What kind of moral and diplomatic voice is he becoming on...

When Archbishop Ryan Jimenez met Pope Leo at the Vatican last year, ahead of his ordination as Agaña’s archbishop in the US territory of Guam, he brought a message from the Pacific: ‘Holy Father, we’re sinking.’ During his recent visit to Australia he spoke with Geraldine Doogue about how church leaders can model genuine participation while also managing the impact of climate emergency and global...

One year on from the death of Pope Francis, fellow Jesuit Frank Brennan joins Geraldine Doogue to reflect on a papacy that opened doors without dismantling tradition. From issues of conscience to authority, women’s leadership, global Catholicism beyond Europe, and amid escalating war, what might Francis’s disruptive vision continue to ask of the Church today? Further reading: Francis J. Moloney, ‘...

In the week of International Women's Day, co-host Grace Brennan sits down with her Mum, historian and writer Margaret A. Clark, to explore the trailblazing women who helped build Australia’s healthcare system. In Good Company tells the 140-year story of how the Little Company of Mary cared for the sick and dying with radical hospitality. Grace and Margaret reflect on the quiet courage of women who...

Vatican reporter and author Colleen Dulle joins Geraldine Doogue in this new year episode of The Big Tent to reflect on what it means to remain – and grow – as a Catholic in the face of disenchantment and polarisation in the institution. How might Pope Leo's Lenten call to disarm our language, 'refraining from words that offend and hurt our neighbour,' be heard by Catholics everywhere but especial...

Geraldine Doogue, Julie Thorpe, Grace Brennan and Joe Wehbe offer their 2025 Christmas stocking recommendations for summer reading, watching and listening. Join us in 2026 for more conversations in The Big Tent! The End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck Reasons for Hope: Helder Camara, Global Catholicism and the Australian Church by Julie Thorpe Donkey Roads and Camel Treks:...

In this special episode of The Big Tent, Geraldine Doogue speaks with Sydney journalist Michael Visontay in the wake of the Bondi Beach terror attack at a Hanukkah festival about its impact on Jewish Australians and the broader Australian community. Drawing on research and his personal experience as the son and grandson of Holocaust survivors from Hungary, Michael’s article on how antisemitism edu...

As Pope Leo wrapped up his first international visit, Geraldine Doogue spoke to Pope Francis’ biographer Austen Ivereigh about the continuities and priorities of the two papacies. While Leo’s twin messages of peace and unity to Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim believers in Türkiye and Lebanon put interfaith and ecumenical relations at the heart of the new pontificate, Leo is also continuing his prede...

What does it mean to be Catholic in 2025? Does faith need a label? Geraldine Doogue and Julie Thorpe welcome Grace Brennan and Joe Wehbe to explore their search in The Big Tent. For Grace, growing up in a Catholic home before moving to the bush and founding a business while raising four children, her connection to a faith community feels like being a guest in her own home. While for Joe, a communi...

This month marks 60 years since Nostra Aetate , the landmark Vatican II document that transformed Catholic relations with Judaism and other world religions. Geraldine Doogue speaks with Mary Reaburn, a Sister of Our Lady of Sion whose order was instrumental in the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, to reflect on the document’s origins and its enduring relevance amid current global divisions. 'Re...

How can churches help to solve the housing crisis? According to Rob Stokes, former NSW Liberal minister and now chair of Faith Housing Australia, tens of thousands of social and affordable homes could be built on church-owned land. He joins Graham West, former NSW Labor minister and now CEO of St Vincent de Paul Society Housing Australia, in The Big Tent with Geraldine Doogue to share how faith co...

Following threats of legal action, and restrictions on his freedom of movement and expression, the Italian-born, US-resident scholar of church history and politics Massimo Faggioli has landed in Ireland to take up his new post at Trinity College Dublin's Loyola Institute. So how will a US-born pope respond to what Massimo describes in American Catholicism as 'an army of zombie ideas that we though...

How does the Church stay mission-centred in a machine-centred world? That question preoccupies Kim Daniels, Director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, who is also the coordinator of the Synod study group tasked by Pope Francis to report on how the Church is meeting people online. 'It's about more than just using tools,' Kim tells Geraldine, 'it'...

Lana Turvey-Collins joins Geraldine Doogue in The Big Tent to share her story from facilitating Australia's Plenary Council to launching formation.org.au – a new national platform to support and connect leaders in formation across Catholic ministries. 'The more time we take to sit, be still and slowly listen to one another's story and share of your own story, the more connected we are and the more...

'The Amazon is bleeding, ecologically, culturally and spiritually. And still from within this pain, hope emerges.' Mauricio López Oropeza, a prominent lay leader from Latin America, joined Geraldine Doogue for this year's 40th anniversary of the Hélder Câmara lecture series to reflect on how the Amazonian experience is reshaping global Catholicism. Bringing the voices from the peripheries to the c...

In this first episode of The Big Tent, Geraldine Doogue speaks with outgoing Brisbane archbishop Mark Coleridge, about the surprise election of Pope Leo, the legacy of Pope Francis, and how the Church can offer a countercultural narrative amid polarisation and hopelessness in today's world. 'The only thing the God of the Bible is good at doing,' he tells Geraldine, 'is what seems impossible.' Epis...

We have a new Pope. Does a new era beckon for the Catholic Church in Australia and the world? Join Geraldine Doogue and an inter-generational cast in The Big Tent, hosting an honest, contemporary search that aims, in the prophet Isaiah's words, to 'enlarge the space of your tent'. Welcome!