Podcast

Holy Smoke

The most important and controversial topics in world religion, thoroughly dissected by a range of high profile guests. Presented by Damian Thompson.

The most important and controversial topics in world religion, thoroughly dissected by a range of high profile guests. Presented by Damian Thompson.

Holy Smoke

How the Church of England patronises African Christians

In this episode of Holy Smoke, I’m joined by The Spectator’s features editor William Moore, who asks in this week’s issue of the magazine whether the Church of England is ‘apologising for Christianity’. A report by the Oversight Group, set up by the Church Commissioners to make reparations for African slavery, not only wants to see unimaginable

Play 17 mins

Holy Smoke

How much did Pope Francis know about Fr Marko Rupnik?

At a press conference in Rome last week, an ex-nun claiming to have suffered ritual sex abuse at the hands of Fr Marko Rupnik turned the heat on Pope Francis. How much did he know about the stomach-turning charges levelled at the Slovenian mosaic artist, who was a Jesuit until he was thrown out of

Play 16 mins

Holy Smoke

How liberal bishops are squeezing the life out of the Church of England

Can the Church of England escape from the deadly grip of bishops and bureaucrats who spend their entire time genuflecting to the metropolitan Left? Why does Archbishop Justin Welby wade obsessively into secular political battles when his churches are emptying? And do worshippers realise that eye-watering sums of money are being siphoned off from their

Play 28 mins

Holy Smoke

Does Trump have evangelical Christians to thank for his second coming?

Donald Trump now seems certain to be the Republican presidential candidate in this year’s US presidential elections. That’s a prospect that horrifies liberal America and quite a few other Americans besides. The former president secured overwhelming support from evangelical Christians in Iowa and New Hampshire and some commentators are speculating that we’re seeing a resurgence

Play 23 mins

Holy Smoke

Gay blessings and theological porn: why leading cardinals are distancing themselves from Pope Francis

Just before Christmas, the Vatican’s new doctrinal chief Cardinal Victor ‘Tucho’ Fernandez unveiled a new style of blessing designed to make gay couples feel at home in church without changing the Church’s teaching on marriage. The Argentinian Tucho has for years been Pope Francis’s protégé – but for how much longer? The new gay blessings,

Play 22 mins

Holy Smoke

Raymond Arroyo on the joys of a Sinatra-style Christmas

In this festive episode of Holy Smoke, we’re taken back to the Christmasses of the 1950s and 60s by Raymond Arroyo, Fox News and EWTN presenter, whose enemies in the Vatican have been trying to silence him for years.  They’ve failed, thankfully – and now silencing him is even harder. Raymond, who trained in musical

Play 22 mins

Holy Smoke

The strange appeal of Integralism

You might imagine that a political project to place modern nation states under the supreme authority of the Catholic Church would stand zero chance of success anywhere in the world, including in traditionally Catholic countries. And you’d be right. Even so, a movement known as Integralism – whose 20th-century incarnations were closely related to fascism

Play 28 mins

Holy Smoke

How light filled the first Roman Churches: a conversation with Dr Elizabeth Lev

When I was in Rome last month, I watched the ‘synod on synodality’ fizzle out while the Marko Rupnik sex scandal took another sinister turn (and various Catholic journalists shamefully tried to suppress the story). But don’t worry: this episode of Holy Smoke is devoted to more uplifting matters. I visited the ancient little church

Play 15 mins

Holy Smoke

The Pope, gay blessings and the Rupnik scandal

Pope Francis’s much-hyped ‘synod on synodality’ began in Rome this week and to say that it has got off to a rocky start is putting it mildly. On Monday, five leading conservative cardinals bounced Francis into making a highly ambiguous statement apparently opening the door to gay blessings. Meanwhile, and this subject is being played

Play 13 mins

Holy Smoke

Genghis Khan and the Pope’s summer of madness

Earlier this week, the Rome correspondent of the Times found himself mugging up on the history of Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire, and this is what he reported:  While the empire brought stability, it was created through the large-scale massacre of anyone who refused to submit to Mongol rule, leading to the death of millions. Mongol troops triggered famine

Play 21 mins

Holy Smoke

The future of churchgoing in the West: why Protestants should worry and Catholics should panic

King Charles III is the first British monarch to inherit a post-Christian kingdom. Less than half of his subjects identify themselves as Christian, and only about one in 20 adults in the UK go to church on Sundays. Since 1980 church attendance has more than halved – and that’s broadly the situation in most of Western Europe. 

Play 33 mins

Holy Smoke

Is 2023 Pope Francis’s ‘Year Zero’?

Conservative Catholic critics of Pope Francis are referring to 2023 as his ‘Year Zero’ – a time of revolutionary upheaval initiated by an 86-year-old pontiff who feels liberated by the death of his predecessor Benedict XVI on New Year’s Eve.  Events are moving fast. This October, the world’s bishops will gather for a synod in

Play 33 mins

Holy Smoke

Escaping the atheist hell of North Korea

For 75 years, the most anti-Christian regime in modern history has thrown its citizens into prison camps if they are suspected of the slightest dissent. Ten per cent of people live in modern slavery; perhaps 200,000 are behind bars. I’m talking about North Korea, of course – a regime even more abhorrent than Stalinist Russia,

Play 15 mins

Holy Smoke

Inside the world’s most vicious liturgy wars

In the ancient Syro-Malabar Church of south India, clergy who try to change the liturgy do so at their peril. At St Mary’s Cathedral Basilica in Ernakulam last December, a long-standing dispute over whether the priest should face the people led to scenes in which protestors attacked clergy in the middle of the service, sending

Play 23 mins

Holy Smoke

Succession: five nightmares for the next pope

A charming octogenarian who plays ruthless games with the people who think they’re going to succeed him: I reckon Logan Roy would have recognised a kindred spirit in Pope Francis, despite their diametrically opposed politics. Like many of you, I’m heartbroken that Succession has come to an end – but if you’re missing the back-stabbing melodrama then you could always start following the real-life struggle to shape

Play 14 mins

Holy Smoke

The Vatican and the Mafia – why Italy can’t seem to shake off organised crime

The Sicilian Mafia is one of the most murderously amoral organisations on the planet – yet babyishly sentimental when it comes to Italian peasant Catholicism. And, like other branches of Italian organised crime, questions exist over whether they have allies in the Vatican, some of whose senior officials are as keen on money-laundering as the

Play 35 mins

Holy Smoke

How Protestant is the Coronation?

The Coronation in Westminster Abbey is the only occasion at which our monarch declares himself or herself to be a Protestant, thus ensuring that no Catholic can sit on the throne of the United Kingdom. Yet, paradoxically, the Coronation is the only English Royal ceremony which is replete with Catholic symbolism – the King will

Play 30 mins

Holy Smoke

Why didn’t Beethoven go to Mass?

Ludwig van Beethoven had a profound faith in God. He was born and raised a Catholic and on his deathbed he asked to receive the Last Rites. He told the priest, ‘I thank you, ghostly sir – you have brought me comfort.’ One of his closest friends, Archduke Rudolf of Austria, was made a cardinal

Play 38 mins

Holy Smoke

The battle over female Catholic priests has just begun

This week we heard the unfamiliar sound of one of the Catholic Church’s most influential cardinals turning the handle of a door that has remained firmly shut for 2,000 years. It’s marked ‘Catholic women priests’, a development – such is the pace of chaotic change under this pontificate – that is now a real long-term

Play 16 mins

Holy Smoke

Is Abu Dhabi’s multi-faith ‘Abrahamic Family House’ a beacon of hope or a creepy PR exercise?

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

Play 19 mins

Holy Smoke

The war over the Latin Mass escalates as the Vatican slides into chaos

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

Play 31 mins

Holy Smoke

Why Catholics are torn between the Church of Benedict and the Church of Francis

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

Play 16 mins

Holy Smoke

Why children need proper Christmas carols, not hideous agitprop

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

Play 27 mins

Holy Smoke

How ‘cancelled’ conservative Catholic priests are fighting to clear their names

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

Play 47 mins

Holy Smoke

What are Church of England services really like?

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

Play 33 mins

Holy Smoke

Sixty years on, Vatican II turns nasty

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

Play 14 mins

Holy Smoke

The Catholic Church is falling apart at the seams

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

Play 20 mins

Holy Smoke

Why has the West caved in to the progressive witch-finders?

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,

Play 34 mins

Holy Smoke

Is Pope Francis protecting a convicted sex abuser?

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

Play 21 mins

Holy Smoke

Why the Pope’s ‘Synod on Synodality’ has become a joke

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

Play 25 mins