Vatican Insider

I was a member of the Historical Commission for the Cause of Canonization of Servant of God Joseph Dutton who, as you know, worked for 44 years on Molokai with Saints Damien and Marianne caring for the victims of leprosy. When such a commission closes its work, a meeting must be held in the diocese of the cause for canonization with all members present. This is required by the dicastery for the causes of saints to which we our individual reports are sent. Thus. two other members of that commission, Pat Boland of Honolulu and Fr.. John Paul Kimes, Canon law professor at the university of Notre Dame, and I met in Honolulu this past December to present our findings and work with Msgr. Robert Sarno, an advisor on the cause. One copy of the findings remain in the diocese of Honolulu and two are sent to Rome for further work by the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints. Though now retired, when he was on the staff of the dicastery (then the Congregation for Saints) in Rome, Msgr. Sarno also helped with the causes of St. Damien (canonized in 2009) and St. Marianne Cope (canonized in 2012). The diocesan phase of the Joseph Dutton cause will close in Honolulu on January 21st, after which the Roman phase of his causes goes to work. You have heard Fr, Kimes before but he is back this weekend with more riveting stories about the life and times of Servant of God Joseph Dutton, a man we both hope and pray will one day join Damien and Marianne at the honors of the altar.

Welcome to Vatican Insider on this Christmas season weekend. Yes, we are still within the twelve days of Christmas! I have a special gift to you this weekend in the interview segment. I will read Pope St. John Paul’s beautiful and compelling 1994 Christmas Letter to Children – still a gift for the young and young at heart all these many years later!

Joan has prepared a Special this weekend for the interview segment of Vatican Insider and offer you a journey to the Vatican and the Eternal City of Rome to experience the traditions celebrated for Christmas and the New Year.

Join me this weekend on Vatican Insider for my off-the-cuff interview with Fr. John Paul Kimes, Canon law professor at the university of Notre Dame and member of the Historical Commission for the cause of canonization of Servant of God Joseph Dutton. Dutton, a layman was companion, caregiver and friend for 44 years, alongside Sts. Damien and Marianne Cope, to the victims of leprosy on Kalaupapa, a peninsula of the Hawaiian island of Molokai.

Welcome to a new edition of Vatican Insider, the last weekend before I depart for Honolulu. I am on the Historical Commission for the Cause of Canonization of Servant of God Joseph Dutton who, as you know, worked for 44 years on Molokai with Saints Damien and Marianne caring for the victims of leprosy. When such a commission closes its work, a meeting must be held in the diocese of the cause for canonization with all members present. This is required by the dicastery for the causes of saints to which we will send our report. Thus, for the next two weekends, my colleagues are preparing a ‘BEST of” Vatican Insider. The weekend of December 16, in fact, we will re-air a riveting interview done in Hawaii with another member of that commission, Fr. John Paul Kimes, a professor at Notre Dame university. Not to be missed! This weekend, on the other hand, in the interview segment I feature a talk with Craig Johring, co- founder of Hope of the Poor, an amazing organization founded in America with headquarters in Mexico City and Omaha, Nebraska, whose motto is “Alleviating the Poverty of the Unloved.” Craig founded this with Danny Leger to impact the world by showing how the poor are viewed and treated and how they can be helped. Stay tuned for that after the news segment.

My guest this week in the interview is Paulist Fr. Matt Berrios. The Paulist Fathers have been in Rome 99 years, administering to the Catholic American community and other English-language Catholic residents or visitors. We now have two Paulist priests at St. Patrick’s – Fathers Steve Petroff, the rector and Joe Ciccone, vice rector – but a third Paulist is here, Fr. Matt. Ordained at the Paulist-run church of St. Paul the Apostle, in New York City on May 20, 2017, Fr. Matt served there as associate pastor until July 2020 when he moved to Rome to pursue advanced studies at the Pontifical Oriental Institute.

My guest this week is the interview segment of “Vatican Insider” is Jesuit Fr. Dominik Markl of the Pontifical Biblical Institute at Rome’s Gregorian University, He’s also Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament studies at Innsbruck University, Austria. We met to talk about some astonishing documentation rediscovered in the archives of the Biblical Institute, documentation that basically consists of lists of refugees given shelter from the Nazi persecution by Catholic Institutions in Rome. Our focus was the collaboration over the years between Catholic and Jewish institutions in this research. So stay tuned for that conversation after the News and a Q&A!

Fr. Sirico is a prolific author, sought-after speaker and a good friend, and this week we talk about the late Cardinal George Pell and the synod on synodality as presented in Father’s just-released book “Pell Contra Mundum.” Contra Mundum is an expression that describes a person with a steadfast commitment to one’s values and the courage to go against the prevailing norms or majority consensus. An eye-opening conversation. The book is in 4 languages and eminently readable. In addition to what Fr. Sirico writes and the selected pieces by Cardinal Pell, there are contributions by Cardinal Oswald Gracias, archbishop of Mumbai, Danny Casey, who worked alongside Cardinal Pell as director of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy, and George Weigel.

I’m sure that curious title got you wondering what this week’s interview is about! You will not want to miss my guest in the interview segment of Vatican Insider this weekend – Fr, Robert Sirico, co-founder and president emeritus of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. Fr. Sirico is a prolific author, sought-after speaker and a good friend, and this week we talk about the late Cardinal George Pell and the synod on synodality as presented in Father’s just-released book “Pell Contra Mundum.” Contra Mundum is an expression that describes a person with a steadfast commitment to one’s values and the courage to go against the prevailing norms or majority consensus. An eye-opening conversation. The book is in 4 languages and eminently readable. In addition to what Fr. Sirico writes and the selected pieces by Cardinal Pell, there are contributions by Cardinal Oswald Gracias, archbishop of Mumbai, Danny Casey, who worked alongside Cardinal Pell as director of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy, and George Weigel.

Welcome to a new edition of Vatican Insider on this third weekend of October. The Synod on Synodality continues but is, to the relief of probably all participants, nearing its end on October 29. I have been posting daily updates on the synod on Joan’s Rome, and the Vatican news website has been offering some of the speeches given by participants in the synod. Again this week I focus on the synod in the interview segment where my guest is Fr. Gerald Murray, pastor at Holy Family Church in NY, prolific writer and noted Canon lawyer. He was in Rome to give a talk on the synod and to cover it as well. In Part I last weekend and Part II this weekend, Father talks about the serious concerns he has about the synod process, especially from the point of view of Canon law. This week especially, he also focuses on the Instrumentum laboris, the working document that guides both the preparation of a synod and its actual work.

Welcome to a new edition of Vatican Insider as we end the first full week of work at the synod on synodality in the Vatican. I have been posting daily updates on the synod on Joan’s Rome, and the Vatican news website has been offering some of the speeches given by participants in the synod. I focus on the synod in the interview segment where my guest is Fr. Gerald Murray, pastor at Holy Family Church in NY, prolific writer and noted Canon lawyer. He was in Rome to give a talk on the synod and to cover it as well. He tells us of the serious concerns he has about the synod process, especially from the point of view of Canon law, and about the working document that guides both the preparation of a synod and its actual work. We look at what is being described as “the new synodal church”. (photo from LinkedIn) You will find our conversation both riveting and very informative. If you had questions about the synod, they very well may have been answered by Father Murray who, by the way, will be back with more next week!

Join Joan Lewis for Part 2 of her interview with Fr. Bill Petrie on Saint Mother Theresa.

This week on Vatican Insider, the interview segment is a repeat but it features a compelling storyteller and fascinating guest, Fr. Bill Petrie. At the time of our conversation, Fr. Bill, a priest of the Order of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (SSCC), was pastor of St. Damien parish on the Hawaiian island of Molokai’i. We have been friends for a number of years and usually met at Kalaupapa on Molokai’i to talk about Sts. Damien, SSCC, and Marianne Cope and their work there with victims of leprosy. For this interview, we met at the home of some mutual friends in Honolulu on the island of Oahu to talk about his 25 years of work with St. Mother Teresa! 25 years! Tons of insight and remarkable stories about this holy woman, whose feast day we celebrated recently.I cannot find my photo of our Honolulu encounter but there was a rainbow over Fr. Bill’s head as we finished our talk! Fr. Bill now lives on Oahu. I have been focusing on St. Teresa recently, as you know from last week’s interview segment when my guests were the producer and stars of the film, “Mother Teresa and Me.” The film will be released by Fathom Events in select U.S. theaters for one night only on Oct. 5. Tickets can be purchased at https://www.fathomevents.com/events/Mother-Teresa-and-Me.

My guests in the interview segment this weekend are Swiss-Indian filmmaker and producer, Kamal Musale and co-producer and actress Jacqueline Fritschi-Cornaz who portrays Mother Teresa in the film “Mother Teresa And Me.” This is Part II of our conversation in Rome (Part I aired last weekend). As the film’s website says, “This is a story about love and compassion inspired by the life of Mother Teresa, a story about Teresa and Kavita: two women’s lives – passionate and uncompromising – woven over generations by two intertwined stories. Both women achieve their vocation in spite of serious personal doubts.” It is truly a riveting story about life and death, dignity and deprivation. The film was selected as this year’s winner in the Mirabile Dictu International Catholic Film Festival, founded in 2010 by producer and filmmaker Liana Marabini, to honor producers, filmmakers, documentaries, docu-fiction, TV series, short films and programs “that promote universal moral values and positive models.” MIRABILE DICTU is a Latin phrase meaning “wonderful to relate.”

Our guest is Deacon Andrew – “Andy” – Orosco of the diocese of San Bernardino in California. He is a Native American who works in the Native American Ministry in the diocese. You will be fascinated about his reports on Native Americans as he explains where they live in the United States, what life is like for those who live on a reservation, their education, how they live the faith and the specifics of his ministry in the diocese. I’ll be away for the next two weekends so there will be no news summary on “Vatican Insider” but my radio colleagues and I are preparing the “best of” for those dates. I do, however, want to highlight the fact that my special guest in the interview segment this weekend will also be back next week! And that guest is Deacon Andrew – “Andy” – Orosco of the diocese of San Bernardino in California. He is a Native American who works in the Native American Ministry in the diocese. You will be fascinated about his reports on Native Americans as he explains where they live in the United States, what life is like for those who live on a reservation, their education, how they live the faith and the specifics of his ministry in the diocese. You will love the final story he tells in Part II about attending the weekly papal general audience and the subject of Pope Francis’ attention as he spoke of apostolic zeal! I learned a lot from Deacon Orosco and so will you!