In 2000, at a secret meeting in the Vatican, an Australian bishop warned a deluge would soon overwhelm the Catholic Church. 

The sex abuse crisis would become the greatest challenge to the authority and reputation of the Vatican since the Protestant Reformation almost 500 years earlier. 

But this warning went largely unheeded. It’s another revelation in the new book, Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church, by Philip Shenon. 

In part 2 of this interview, we look at how the scandal enveloped three popes (but we begin with another controversy for then Pope John Paul II). 

GUEST:

Philip Shenon – investigative reporter and author of Jesus Wept: Seven Popes and the Battle for the Soul of the Catholic Church