#12288 Why Doesn’t the Pope Settle More Issues? Papal Elections and Pius XII - Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Catholic Answers Live
Catholic Answers
4.8 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 18 July 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“Why doesn’t the pope make more infallible statements and settle more issues?” This episode explores the complexities of papal authority and decision-making, while also addressing what factors are considered in electing a new pope, the reasons behind Pius XII’s suppression of liturgical octaves, and the intriguing question of why there has never been a Pope Peter II.
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Questions Covered:
- 21:47 – Why doesn’t the pope make more infallibile statements and settle more issues?
- 31:23 – What do they consider when electing a new pope?
- 35:40 – What was the reason for Pius XII to suppress so many liturgical octaves?
- 43:34 – Can you comment on Pope Pius XII’s position during WWII and why he wasn’t more vocal?
- 51:30 – Why has there never been a Pope Peter II?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Buying or selling your home, real estate for life can connect you with a pro-life real estate agent. |
| 0:05.2 | When Real Estate for Life receives a referral fee, they donate 65% to Catholic Answers. |
| 0:11.5 | Learn more at realestateforlife.org. Welcome back. Catholic Answers live. I am Cy Killett, your host. I have to be honest with you. Some days my job is really easy. I just get to |
| 0:37.7 | hang out with great people, and it's always great when Dr. Italy is here. Theologian, teacher, |
| 0:44.0 | media personality, musician, father. Maybe we'll talk a little bit about that. Dr. Marcholino |
| 0:51.0 | Dambrosio is our guest, and I always feel proud that I can pronounce his name so well. |
| 0:56.5 | Dr. Dambrosio, thank you for being here. And, Cy, I am proud of you. Thank you. Really? You do such a |
| 1:02.9 | great job. That's a tough, intimidating thing to try to have a guest on with my name. And you know what? |
| 1:09.1 | The reason Dr. Italy evolved is because it was a website |
| 1:12.5 | URL, but a host like you chickened out for trying to say my name and started just calling me |
| 1:18.4 | that. So that's kind of how that I put the work in, you know. I do the hours of pronunciation |
| 1:22.3 | work before the show. Yeah. There's no taking shortcuts here. All right, but Dr. Italy, where were you when we got a new Pope? Because we're going to talk about the gift of the papacy today. I was in Italy. You know, I lead pilgrimages. I love to bring people to holy places. Right. So it's a Jubilee year. You've got to lead a pilgrimage to Italy, right? So we went to Italy, |
| 1:45.2 | and the grand finale was Rome, and the grand family was supposed to be, you know, visiting St. Peter's on May 8. |
| 1:53.2 | So that was our last day in Rome at St. Peter's. And there was black smoke at noon. And so we had an afternoon plan. We said, okay, |
| 2:03.4 | let's do the plan. There won't be any more smoke till this evening. And we finished. A few of us |
| 2:09.3 | made our way back to the square just in case there might be some smoke. And lo and behold, |
| 2:13.8 | I got there five minutes before the white smoke began to billow out of the roof out of the chimney of the |
| 2:21.4 | Sistine Chapel. |
| 2:22.8 | And everyone went bananas. |
| 2:25.1 | It was electric. |
| 2:26.2 | It was absolutely fantastic. |
| 2:27.8 | And do people like, do you start to feel people kind of rushing into the, is that what |
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