As bishops gathered in Rome Oct. 7 to revisit Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia ten years after its publication, a Catholic publisher once at the center of a Vatican controversy has returned with a new book on love and marriage.

In 2014, Ignatius Press published Remaining in the Truth of Christ, a defense of traditional Catholic teaching that many commentators interpreted as opposing Cardinal Walter Kasper’s proposals concerning divorced and civilly remarried Catholics. It was a book that became symbolic of the debates surrounding the Synod on the Family.

Now, representatives of Ignatius Press have presented Pope Leo XIV with YOUCAT Love Forever, a guide to love and marriage for young Catholics.

In this week’s episode, Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, founder of Ignatius Press, and its president, Mark Brumley, revisit the controversy and reflect on what has changed in the Church over the past decade.

Father Fessio offers a candid assessment of Pope Francis, whose approach he sometimes found confusing but whose orthodoxy he ultimately defends. Brumley, meanwhile, rejects the idea that the new book represents a reversal for Ignatius Press, emphasizing continuity between successive popes.

In this episode:

• The controversy surrounding Remaining in the Truth of Christ during the 2014 Synod on the Family

• Why Ignatius Press published a book perceived as challenging Cardinal Kasper’s proposals

• Whether Pope Leo XIV represents a change in direction for the Church

• How YOUCAT Love Forever builds on Amoris Laetitia to explain Catholic teaching to a new generation

Ignatius Press associate editor Thomas Jacobi also explains how the new book originated under Pope Francis and why Pope Leo agreed to write a foreword.

As bishops from around the world gather in Rome at the invitation of Pope Leo XIV to discuss marriage and the family, J.P. De Gance has been working behind the scenes.

His organization, Communio, produced a report examining the state of marriage in the United States, ten years after Pope Francis published Amoris Laetitia, his landmark document on marriage and family life.

The findings are striking. According to De Gance, the rate of Catholic sacramental marriages in the United States has fallen dramatically since 1970, measured against the baptized Catholic population. Yet he says 82% of Catholic parishes spend nothing on marriage ministry.

De Gance believes the Church has devoted considerable attention and resources to priestly vocations while neglecting the vocation from which so many priests emerge: marriage.

In this week’s episode, he explains what he has learned from conversations with bishops from around the world, and why he believes the crisis of marriage may be one of the principal causes of declining religious practice.

He also discusses whether Amoris Laetitia has made a difference at the parish level, the tension between Pope Francis’s language of accompaniment and his own emphasis on spiritual warfare, and what the bishops gathering in Rome can realistically accomplish.

In this episode:

• Why Communio prepared a report ahead of the Vatican meeting

• What the research reveals about the dramatic decline of Catholic marriage in America

• Why De Gance believes the collapse of marriage is contributing to the decline of religious faith

• Why so many Catholic parishes devote little or no resources to marriage ministry

• What bishops from other countries are telling him about the global marriage crisis

• Whether Pope Francis’s Amoris Laetitia changed how the Church approaches marriage

• What Pope Leo XIV’s gathering of bishops might achieve

De Gance’s larger argument is that the Church cannot reverse its decline without taking marriage seriously—not simply as a moral teaching to defend, but as a vocation to cultivate and support.

And despite the statistics, he remains optimistic. His experience working with churches across the United States has convinced him that strengthening marriages is possible, provided the Church is willing to make it a genuine pastoral priority.

Monsignor Karel Kasteel arrived in Rome in 1956, when Pope Pius XII was still pope and the Second Vatican Council was years away. Seventy years later, he has seen almost everything.

Monsignor Kasteel worked inside the Roman Curia, assisted the secretary general of the Second Vatican Council, helped organize the 2005 conclave that elected Benedict XVI, and knew figures including Mother Teresa.

At 92, he also has a perspective on the Vatican that very few people alive can match.

In this week’s episode, Kasteel reflects on what outsiders misunderstand about the Vatican, why he rejects the idea that it is fundamentally a place of secrets and wrongdoing, what really happens inside a conclave, and how the Church has changed across eight pontificates.

He also speaks candidly about tensions between Pope Francis and the Roman Curia, the unfinished legacy of Vatican II, Pope Leo XIV’s priorities and some of the Vatican’s most persistent legends.

In this episode:

• What outsiders misunderstand about the Vatican

• What Rome was like when he arrived in 1956

• What it was like to witness the announcement and unfolding of Vatican II

• How he helped organize the 2005 conclave that elected Benedict XVI

• Why tensions emerged between Pope Francis and the Roman Curia

• What he believes Pope Leo XIV is trying to accomplish

• Whether Pope John Paul I died of natural causes

• Why, after 70 years, Kasteel believes continuity matters more than change

His larger conclusion is one of continuity: popes come and go, controversies flare and fade, and the Church changes with the world around it. But the institution, he argues, endures — and much of what sustains it remains invisible to those looking in from the outside.

Episode note: Archival images from the Filmoteca Vaticana. For more archival footage from the Second Vatican Council, watch our full-length documentary, Voices of Vatican II:

When Pope Leo XIV visits Lourdes Sept. 26-27, one of the world’s most important Catholic shrines, he will find the mosaics on the facade of its basilica covered from view.

The artwork was designed by Father Marko Rupnik, a former Jesuit accused by numerous women of sexual, spiritual and psychological abuse. For years, his mosaics have decorated some of the most prominent churches and shrines in the Catholic world. Now, as he faces a Vatican trial, the Church is confronting difficult questions about what to do with his art.

In this week’s episode, CNS speaks with Italian investigative journalist Federica Tourn, one of the first reporters to bring the allegations against Father Rupnik to public attention. She has spent four years speaking with survivors, Church officials and confidential sources inside the Vatican, reconstructing the history of the case and the institutional response.

Tourn explains why the bishop of Lourdes decided to cover Father Rupnik’s mosaics, what survivors hope to hear from Pope Leo during his visit, and why the decision in France contrasts so sharply with events in Brazil, where another major Catholic shrine has just celebrated the completion of Father Rupnik’s artwork.

In this episode:

• Why Lourdes covered Father Rupnik’s mosaics ahead of Pope Leo’s visit

• What survivors hope the pope will say — and whether covering the artwork goes far enough

• Why Father Rupnik’s mosaics are being concealed in France but celebrated at a major shrine in Brazil

• How Father Rupnik became one of the Catholic Church’s most prominent artists, with powerful connections in Rome

• What Tourn discovered about 22 previously unreported letters describing alleged abuse

• Why Father Rupnik’s Vatican trial remains shrouded in secrecy, even for the women who have accused him

• How Tourn earned the trust of survivors and why she waited months before publishing their stories

• Why Tourn is uncertain about how the trial will end

• The unanswered question of where the millions earned from Father Rupnik’s artwork went

The controversy at Lourdes is only one part of a much larger story.

This episode features an AI-generated English dub of Federica Tourn’s voice. The transcript and translation were reviewed and edited by CNS staff. Original music was created using AI.

For centuries, pilgrims have climbed the Holy Stairs in Rome on their knees, venerating them as the steps Jesus ascended before being judged by Pontius Pilate.

But the sanctuary around them had another story hidden in plain sight.

For decades, Mary Angela Schroth helped lead an effort to restore the vast cycle of Renaissance frescoes surrounding the stairs, working with the Vatican Museums, the Getty Foundation and benefactors from around the world. What had become dark, dirty and difficult to read slowly emerged again in vivid color.

In this week’s episode, Schroth tells the inside story of that restoration — and why the Holy Stairs remain one of the most unusual and powerful places in Christian Rome.

In this episode:

• Why the Holy Stairs are traditionally believed to be the steps Jesus climbed before Pilate

• How the stairs came to Rome

• Why the sanctuary’s frescoes became almost impossible to see

• How Schroth helped get the Vatican and Getty Foundation behind the restoration

• What conservators discovered as the paintings emerged again

• How millions of dollars were raised to complete the work

• The moment the project deepened Schroth’s own Catholic faith

• The extraordinary spiritual experience one pilgrim reported on the stairs

• Whether beauty itself can lead people to faith

• Why Schroth believes the Holy Stairs still speak to the problem of human suffering

What emerged from the restoration was more than decoration.

The frescoes were designed to tell a story: the suffering of the Hebrew people, the Passion of Christ, and the Christian understanding of salvation. Once the images could be seen again, Schroth says, the meaning of the sanctuary itself became clearer.

For her, that may be why the Holy Stairs continue to matter. The place is built around a question that has not become any less urgent with time: why human beings suffer, and what suffering can mean with eyes of faith.

Race remains one of the hardest subjects for American Catholics to discuss. Bishop Robert Boxie thinks avoiding it has come at a cost.

In this week’s Vatican Access, America’s youngest bishop speaks candidly about the history of racism in the Church, his own experience as a Black Catholic, and why he believes Catholics need to become more willing to have difficult conversations about race.

In this episode:

• Why there are so few Black bishops in America

• The Confederate flag he encountered in seminary

• What white Catholics often misunderstand about the Black Catholic experience

• Whether his appointment can be seen as tokenism

• Why he says DEI has been “hijacked”

• What Black Catholics bring to the wider Church

• Why Pope Leo XIV’s words on slavery matter

For Boxie, the answer is not simply another political program. He points instead to ideas already central to Catholicism: the dignity of the human person, reconciliation, encounter and the willingness to listen seriously to another person’s experience.

The question is whether the Church is willing to talk about the things that make it uncomfortable.

Artificial intelligence can give us answers faster than ever. But what happens when getting the answer replaces the work of thinking?

In this week’s Vatican Access, Steve Metzger of the Vatican Apostolic Library argues that reading does something AI cannot: it puts us in contact with another human mind and forces us to wrestle with ideas for ourselves.

In this episode:

• Why AI risks “short-circuiting” the intellectual work of reading and learning

• What we lose when we stop reading books seriously

• Why physical libraries still matter in a digital world

• How scholars can help identify AI-generated falsehoods

• What Pope Leo XIV is saying about AI and Catholic education

• Why Metzger calls the Vatican Library an “anti-Babel”

• What it is actually like to work with manuscripts by Thomas Aquinas and other treasures of the Vatican Library

Metzger’s central concern is not that AI will suddenly take control of humanity, but that we may gradually surrender some of our own intellectual agency to machines designed to make everything easier.

And that gives his image of the Vatican Library particular force: where Babel represents fragmentation, the Library gathers the languages and intellectual traditions of humanity together in what Metzger calls a “service of unity.”

For many Western Christians, Eastern Christianity remains unfamiliar—a world of Byzantine liturgy, ancient traditions, and churches that often seem distant from the life of the modern Catholic Church. Yet in recent years, interest in the Christian East has grown dramatically, even as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has fundamentally reshaped the relationship between Eastern Christians themselves.

Father Daniel Galadza is a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest, liturgical scholar, and professor at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome. A member of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Eastern Churches, he argues that the Christian East has far more to offer the universal Church than beautiful liturgy or ancient customs. The deeper challenge, he says, is a way of living the Christian life that is rooted in communion, asceticism, and a tradition that continually calls believers to deeper conversion.

Drawing on his experience as both a scholar and a priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Galadza reflects on how the war in Ukraine has transformed relations between Ukrainian and Russian Christianity, why Pope Leo XIV’s early emphasis on the Eastern Churches was so significant, and what explains the growing number of Western Christians exploring Byzantine Christianity. He also discusses the vocation of the Eastern Catholic Churches, the place of fasting and liturgical life, the tradition of married priests, and why authentic Eastern Christianity demands much more than an appreciation for its beauty.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• How Russia’s invasion changed Eastern Christianity

• What the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church offers the wider Church

• Why Pope Leo XIV’s message to the Eastern Churches matters

• Why more Western Christians are discovering Byzantine Christianity

• Fasting, liturgy, and the challenge of authentic spiritual life

• Married priests, communion with Rome, and the future of the Christian East

This conversation offers an illuminating introduction to Eastern Christianity through one of its leading contemporary scholars, exploring not only the traditions of the Christian East but also why they matter for the future of the Catholic Church.

For generations, the idea of an American pope seemed almost unthinkable. The United States already possessed unparalleled geopolitical influence, and many feared that electing a pope from the world’s dominant superpower would politicize the papacy and compromise the Holy See’s global independence.

Yet in 2025, the cardinals did exactly that.

Michael Driessen is one of the world’s leading scholars of religion and international politics. Earlier this year, Pope Leo XIV appointed him as a consultor to the Vatican’s Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, where he advises the Holy See on the role of religion in international affairs and peacebuilding.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why the cardinals chose the first American pope

• Whether Pope Leo was elected because of Donald Trump

• Why Pope Leo has already clashed with the Trump administration

• What Pope Leo means by an “unarmed and disarming peace”

• Whether interreligious dialogue has failed after Ukraine and Gaza

• How the Vatican works behind the scenes to prevent wars

• Why religion is becoming more—not less—important in global politics

• Whether Christian nationalism and Pope Leo’s vision are fundamentally different

• Why Pope Leo believes lasting peace requires shared moral foundations

At a time when wars, nationalism, and great-power rivalry are reshaping the international order, this conversation explores a deeper question: can religion still help prevent conflict—or is the world entering an era where power alone determines the future?

The United States stands almost alone among Western democracies in retaining the death penalty. While executions are increasing again in several states—and methods such as nitrogen gas and firing squads have returned—the Catholic Church has moved decisively in the opposite direction, declaring capital punishment inadmissible in every case.

Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy has spent nearly a decade leading the Catholic Mobilizing Network, the national organization at the forefront of the Church’s campaign to end the death penalty in the United States. During a recent visit to Rome, she met Pope Leo XIV to brief him on the situation in America, including the possibility of commuting every prisoner currently on Ohio’s death row.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why Pope Leo is speaking forcefully against the death penalty

• What Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy told Pope Leo about Ohio’s death row

• Why the Catholic Church’s teaching on capital punishment developed over time

• The return of firing squads and nitrogen gas executions

• Whether murderers can truly change and seek redemption

• Why executions also harm prison staff and executioners

• Whether life without parole should also be reconsidered

• How restorative justice offers an alternative to vengeance

Whether or not you agree with the Church’s position, this conversation explores one of the most challenging questions in Catholic moral theology: what justice looks like when punishment, mercy, and the possibility of redemption all collide.

The Society of St. Pius X has spent decades defining itself as the Catholic Church’s most prominent traditionalist movement. But after the Vatican declared its recent episcopal consecrations a schismatic act, an important question emerges: is the Society growing stronger—or has it already reached the limits of its appeal?

Massimo Introvigne has spent decades studying religious movements around the world. An Italian sociologist of religion and one of the foremost scholars of Catholic traditionalism, he argues that many journalists misunderstand what the SSPX is really about. Contrary to popular belief, he says, the central issue has never been the Latin Mass but the Society’s rejection of key teachings on religious liberty and the Church’s relationship with the modern world.

Drawing on the sociology of religion and the work of the late Rodney Stark, Introvigne explains why stricter religious groups often grow—but also why movements can reach a point where their very rigidity limits their future. He argues that Pope Leo XIV has fundamentally changed the environment that once helped the Society attract new followers and explains why he believes the SSPX now faces an uncertain future.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why the Latin Mass isn’t the SSPX’s real issue

• Whether the Society has reached the limits of its growth

• How Pope Leo has changed the religious landscape

• The sociology of religious movements and why some thrive

• Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, and the politics of the traditional Mass

• What the SSPX’s future may mean for the Catholic Church

This conversation challenges some of the most common assumptions about the SSPX and offers a rare sociological perspective on where the movement has come from, where it stands today, and where it may be heading next.

Archbishop James Golka became Archbishop of Denver just months before traveling to Rome to receive the pallium from Pope Leo XIV—a simple band of lamb’s wool symbolizing the responsibility of a metropolitan archbishop to shepherd Christ’s flock.

Denver occupies a remarkable place in American Catholicism. Colorado is among the country’s most secular states, yet the Archdiocese of Denver has become one of its most vibrant centers of Catholic life, with growing vocations, flourishing lay apostolates and increasing numbers of adults entering the Church.

In this conversation, Archbishop Golka explains why he believes these two realities are connected rather than contradictory. Far from seeing secular culture as merely a threat, he argues that many people—especially young people—are discovering that modern life cannot answer their deepest questions, making the Church’s message more compelling than ever.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why Catholicism is growing in secular Colorado

• Pope Leo’s vision for bishops and evangelization

• The symbolism and spiritual meaning of the pallium

• Abortion, social justice, and the Church’s public witness

• Immigration and Hispanic ministry in the United States

• The hardest decisions facing a new archbishop

This is a conversation about leadership, mission, and why one of America’s newest archbishops believes the Church’s greatest opportunities may come precisely in the places where faith seems most out of step with the culture.

Katie Prejean McGrady is one of the most recognizable voices in American Catholic media. A host on the Catholic Channel on Sirius XM, podcast creator, author, and speaker who has addressed tens of thousands of young Catholics, she occupies an unusual position in the Church — a layperson with a platform, access to cardinals, and an eight-year-old who hates Mass.

In this conversation, recorded in Rome, McGrady reflects on what it means to represent the Church in public, and what gets lost when faith becomes content.

The discussion spans the strange new world of Catholic influence, where a radio host can be recognized at St. Peter’s Basilica and a pope can go viral for picking up a toddler. McGrady argues that the best Catholic witness isn’t the polished, Instagram-ready version of the faith, but the integrated, messy, gelato-eating, Taylor-Swift-listening version — one that lets the strangeness of Catholicism speak for itself.

We also discuss Pope Leo at length. McGrady, who has interacted with him three times, pushes back on the “boring pope” narrative and explains why his preparation, canon law background, and quiet charisma may be exactly what the moment requires.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Whether Catholic influencers are the new missionaries

• The performance anxiety of living faith in public

• How McGrady went from youth minister to Sirius XM

• What she wishes she had known before raising Catholic children online

• Why her family treats Rome as home

• Pope Leo’s management style, warmth, and rock star appeal

• The difference between papal celebrity and papal authority

• What it looks like when a five-year-old just wants the snack

This is a conversation about faith, fame, and what it costs to invite people into a Church you love imperfectly.

Father Thomas Joseph White is one of the most influential Catholic intellectuals in the world today. A Dominican priest, theologian, convert to Catholicism, and rector of the Angelicum in Rome, he stands at the center of the Church’s efforts to form a new generation of priests, scholars, and leaders.

In this conversation, White addresses some of the most difficult questions facing Christianity in the modern world. Why should anyone believe that the Catholic Church possesses the truth? How can Catholics speak confidently about God in an age that doubts the possibility of certainty itself? And what becomes of the Church’s claims after the scandals and failures that have shaken confidence in its moral authority?

The discussion ranges from philosophy and revelation to papal authority, freedom of conscience, and the search for truth. White argues that many of the deepest crises facing modern society stem from a growing skepticism about our ability to know reality at all. Against that backdrop, he presents Catholicism not as an escape from reason but as an invitation to pursue it more deeply.

We also discuss the recent reports of increasing interest in Christianity among younger generations. While acknowledging that the data remains mixed, White suggests that many young people are searching for something more substantial than the ideological, political, and technological narratives that have dominated recent decades.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why Catholicism claims to offer a coherent vision of reality

• The relationship between faith, reason, and certainty

• Freedom of conscience and the search for truth

• The role of the papacy and the authority of the Church

• Whether the abuse crisis undermines the Church’s credibility

• Why some young people are turning toward Christianity and Catholicism

• The difference between intellectual difficulties and genuine doubt

• How a convert to Catholicism became one of its leading theologians

This is a conversation about truth, authority, skepticism, and whether Christianity still offers a compelling account of reality in an age of uncertainty.

Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família is often treated as a masterpiece of architecture. But according to Father Tony Lusvardi, the basilica is something far more ambitious: a theological vision encoded in stone.

In this conversation, Lusvardi explains how Gaudí used nature, light, symbolism, and sacred architecture to tell the story of salvation. The basilica’s facades lead visitors through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, while its interior evokes not simply heaven but the “new earth” described in the Book of Revelation.

The discussion also explores why Gaudí’s vision feels surprisingly relevant in the age of artificial intelligence. Long before the digital revolution, Gaudí worried about technologies that failed to serve human beings. His architecture was designed around the human person, insisting that tools, buildings, and institutions should be measured by how well they serve human flourishing rather than efficiency alone.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why Gaudí believed architecture should reveal the order of creation

• How the Christian story is encoded throughout the Sagrada Família

• Why the basilica points toward the “new earth” more than the heavens

• The relationship between beauty, liturgy, and evangelization

• What Gaudí can teach us about technology and human flourishing

• The remarkable story of Gaudí’s death and growing cause for sainthood

This is a conversation about Gaudí's vision for the Sagrada Família, the relationship between beauty and faith, and what Christianity can learn from a church built for an age of secularism.

Why do some efforts to help the poor fail while others transform lives? Can charitable giving be trusted in an age of growing skepticism toward institutions? And does donating to a relief organization fulfill Christ’s command to love our neighbor—or merely outsource it?

Michele Sagarino is well-qualified to answer these questions. As President of Cross Catholic Outreach, one of the largest Catholic relief organizations in the United States, she has traveled extensively through some of the world’s poorest communities, working alongside missionaries, bishops, religious sisters, and local Church leaders to address both material and spiritual poverty.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• The experience in Jamaica that transformed Michele Sagarino’s understanding of aid

• The role of subsidiarity and solidarity in addressing poverty

• How faith-based organizations differ from secular approaches to development

• The relationship between charity, human dignity, and spiritual flourishing

This is a conversation about charitable giving, Catholic social teaching, institutional trust and the practical meaning of loving one’s neighbor in the modern world.

Why are so many Westerners drawn to Buddhism? What has modern Christianity lost that contemplative traditions once cultivated? And what can Buddhist meditation teach Christians about attention, recollection, and the nature of consciousness?

Father Francis Tiso has spent decades exploring these questions. A Catholic priest, scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, and former advisor on interreligious dialogue for both the Vatican and the U.S. bishops, Tiso has studied in monasteries and retreat centers throughout Asia and met privately with the Dalai Lama.

In this conversation, he reflects on the growing attraction of Buddhism in the modern West, the decline of religious consciousness in secular culture, and the surprising similarities between Buddhist meditation and Christian contemplative prayer.

The discussion also explores one of the most controversial subjects in Tibetan spirituality: the phenomenon known as the “rainbow body,” reports of advanced practitioners whose physical remains appear to transform at death. Tiso explains why he believes the phenomenon deserves serious study and how it relates to broader questions surrounding mysticism, resurrection, and human consciousness.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why Buddhism has become so attractive to many Western seekers

• What the Dalai Lama told Father Tiso about Christian meditation

• The similarities and differences between Buddhist and Christian spiritual practice

• The phenomenon of the rainbow body and why it remains controversial

• Whether mystical experiences point toward deeper dimensions of human consciousness

• How interreligious dialogue can deepen rather than weaken Christian faith

This is a conversation about Buddhism, Christianity, contemplation, consciousness, mysticism, mindfulness, secularism, the Dalai Lama, religious experience, and the enduring search for transcendence.

As artificial intelligence rapidly transforms education, work, communication, and culture, Pope Leo has chosen the subject of AI for his first encyclical—a move that has surprised many observers expecting the Church to focus on more traditionally religious themes.

But according to four Catholic scholars who have spent years studying technology, media, and human formation, the Pope’s concern is not primarily about machines. It is about what happens to human beings when technological systems begin to reshape how we think, relate, work, pray and understand ourselves.

Bo Bonner, Brett Robinson, Luigi Russi, and Michael Murphy argue that Pope Leo’s message is ultimately about defending the human person in an age increasingly defined by algorithms, automation, and artificial intelligence.

Far from being anti-technology, they contend that the Church is calling for a deeper examination of how AI influences human freedom, attention, relationships, labor, and spiritual life—and whether society is allowing technological progress to eclipse the deeper questions of meaning, vocation, and human flourishing.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why Pope Leo believes AI is fundamentally an anthropological and spiritual challenge rather than merely a technological one

• How artificial intelligence and social media can fragment attention, identity, and community

• The rise of transhumanist ideas and competing visions of human destiny

• Why many young people are becoming skeptical of technological utopianism

• How Catholic social teaching can help address concerns about labor, automation, surveillance, and human dignity

• The role of liturgy, sacramental imagination, and Catholic tradition in responding to the challenges of the AI age

• Their new book, Catholic Cosmotechnics for the AI Age, and why they believe the Church has unique resources for understanding the technological moment

This is a conversation about artificial intelligence, Catholicism, technology, social media, work, education, transhumanism, media ecology, human dignity, and what it means to remain fully human in an increasingly digital world.

As artificial intelligence and algorithmic technologies increasingly shape modern life, Catholic psychologist Sean Tobin believes the deepest crisis may not be technological at all — but spiritual.

Speaking in Rome during one of the Catholic Church’s largest annual gatherings focused on exorcism and spiritual warfare, Tobin reflected on the growing overlap between mental illness, loneliness, compulsive technology use, and what many believers increasingly interpret as spiritual oppression.

A practicing psychologist who works closely with exorcists and individuals reporting demonic phenomena, Tobin argues that modern society’s obsession with self, stimulation, and digital affirmation mirrors ancient spiritual patterns described in Christian theology for centuries.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why Tobin believes modern technology can condition people in ways that resemble “a form of possession”

• The Vatican-linked conference on exorcism and why AI became a major topic this year

• How social media, algorithms, and smartphones may contribute to anxiety, isolation, and spiritual fragmentation

• Why Tobin thinks modern culture increasingly searches for supernatural meaning through demons, exorcism, and the occult

• The relationship between psychology, trauma, mental illness, and alleged demonic activity

This is a conversation about AI, demons, exorcism, mental illness, spiritual trauma, loneliness, modern technology, and the search for meaning in an increasingly fragmented world.

Days after the U.S. government released a new trove of documents and images related to UFOs — or UAPs, “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” — Vatican astronomer Br. Guy Consolmagno sat down with Catholic News Service for a wide-ranging conversation about aliens, theology, science, and the modern search for meaning.

Consolmagno, a Jesuit brother, planetary scientist, and former director of the Vatican Observatory, argues that the public fascination with extraterrestrials is not fundamentally about physics or government secrecy, but about something deeper: humanity’s fear of being alone in the universe and the growing collapse of trust in institutions, religion, and truth itself.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Why Br. Guy remains deeply skeptical of modern UFO claims and government disclosures

• Whether belief in aliens has become a substitute religion in modern secular culture

• The Catholic theological implications of discovering extraterrestrial life

• Why the Church does not see intelligent alien life as a threat to Christianity

• Elon Musk, SpaceX, and the modern myth of the technological savior

• How conspiracy culture, Gnosticism, and distrust of institutions shape the UFO phenomenon

• Pope Leo XIV’s message to the Vatican Observatory about truth, science, and despair

• Why young scientists and STEM students are increasingly returning to faith

• The relationship between astronomy, climate change, AI, and the spiritual crisis of modernity

• Why Consolmagno believes science and religion ultimately share the same goal: the pursuit of truth

This is a conversation about UFOs, faith, technology, the future of humanity and what the search for life in the cosmos reveals about ourselves.