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Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectator's Religion podcast. I'm Damien Thompson.

Today, we're taking a look back at what has been an extremely surprising, even transformative year for religion in the West, especially Christianity.

I'm joined by Father Alexander Lucy Smith, Catholic parish priest, moral theologian,

author of very dark crime novels set in Sicily, Fleur Meston, journalist, and evangelical Christian, and the Reverend Fergus, butler

Galley, best-selling author, and Anglican priest.

So we're religiously diverse up to a point.

I think we can perhaps agree that the biggest event was that on the day after Easter Sunday,

Pope Francis died. It wasn't unexpected, indeed. It had been anticipated with varying degrees of

apprehension for several months. And his successor was a surprise, even though he had been on a short list of frontrunners

by virtue of holding a very senior position in the Vatican, and also he enjoyed massive support

among Latin Americans.

But Robert Francis Prevost, a cardinal for only two years, was a North American, a white-sox fan

who only a few months earlier had been photographed

in a Chicago pizza restaurant dressed in civilian clothes. So it's hard to sum up, hopefully,

in a few words. He has the reputation of being theoretically moderately moderate, politically,

much more left-wing than his MAGA supporting older brother,

which wouldn't be difficult, I gather.

...