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 predecessor’s agenda through an eco-village that will open to the public on the grounds of Castel Gandolfo. And in his first address to the cardinals who elected him, Leo signalled his commitment to the implementation of Vatican II through synodality, which Austen sees as Leo’s roadmap for the Church in our times. Plus Austen’s reading tips to help us distil the times we’re living in.

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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 community builder with Maronite roots and Jesuit schooling, faith is tied to purpose: 'it feels very authored.'

Join Geraldine, Julie, Grace, and Joe in a candid conversation for anyone questioning, searching, or simply curious.

Catch up with Grace and Joe earlier on Plenary Matters.

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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. 'Real dialogue is the salvation of our world,' Mary tells Geraldine.

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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 communities are repurposing their property to build essential housing. It's a model of Australia's multicultural, multi-faith communities in action, in partnership with government and industry, providing homes to some of the nation's most vulnerable members.

Find out more about Faith Housing Australia: https://fha.org.au/

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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 thought were dead'?

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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's about being present and building relationships in the digital environment.'

It's a message she's taking back to the new pope, Leo XIV, as he drafts his first social encyclical amid an AI revolution.

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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 opportunity we have to experience what I dream about is God,' she tells Geraldine.

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'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 centre isn't easy, as the Amazon synod showed, but can catholicity become the 'vaccine' against divisions in the Church and the world?

Thanks to Br Mark O'Connor FMS, the Diocese of Parramatta and Newman College, where this conversation was recorded.

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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.'

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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!