Stephen Colbert on meeting the pope, being Catholic and the spirituality of humor

The Spiritual Life with Fr. James Martin, S.J.

America Media

Christianity, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 650 Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2025

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Stephen Colbert joins host Jim Martin, S.J., on “The Spiritual Life”! Colbert is well-known for his satirical comedy on The Colbert Report and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The conversation dives into: - The personal tragedy that marked Colbert’s boyhood- losing his father and two brothers in a plane crash – and how his mother’s faith helped shape his spiritual perspective. - The atheism that plagued his college years and what brought Colbert back to his Catholic faith. - The interplay between Colbert’s Catholicism and his comedy Read Fr. Jim’s spiritual advice article on this episode, or visit this link: https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2025/07/08/stephen-colbert-james-martin-spiritual-life-251084 Do you have a spiritual question for Fr. Jim? You can write to us at: [email protected] Become a subscriber today at Americamagazine.org/subscribe

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, Father Jim Martin here. Before we jump into this episode of The Spiritual Life, I want to share an important piece of context. We recorded this episode just before the death of Pope Francis and the election of Pope Leo the 14th.
0:17.7	Welcome to the spiritual life. I'm Father Jim Martin. On this podcast, we reflect on how people
0:23.5	experience God in their prayer and in their daily lives. And I'm joined by my producer, Maggie Van Dorn.
0:30.6	Maggie, good to be with you. Good to be with you, Jim. And it's so exciting to be here to be
0:35.5	able to reflect deeply on the spiritual life,
0:38.4	and to have a front seat to these amazing conversations with our guests.
0:45.1	Not least of which is...
0:47.1	Stephen Colbert. We're very excited.
0:49.8	How do you know Stephen Colbert?
0:51.8	I was first invited on his show in 2007.
0:55.2	The Colbert Report.
0:56.3	The old one, right, the Colbert Report.
0:58.6	And I was on a couple times, and they made me the official chaplain to the Colbert Nation, which I still get introduced as sometimes when I'm giving talks.
1:08.7	He's just a great guy.
1:09.7	He's a very faithful Catholic. He's a
1:12.1	very deep person. You will find out he is extremely articulate and knows his stuff. And he's also
1:17.1	very funny, obviously. So in addition to being incredibly well read and fantastically funny and
1:23.6	sharp, Stephen Colbert currently hosts the late show with Stephen Colbert on CBS. And as we mentioned,
1:30.9	before that, the Colbert rapport, which we do talk about a little bit in this conversation.
1:36.9	And not only is Colbert a household name and, you know, the recipient of multiple Emmys,
1:48.0	he is happy to talk about his Catholic faith and to do so quite openly. So it's an amazing conversation that we'll get to in just a
1:54.9	minute, but first, let's get to our audience question. This question comes from Karen, and she asks, how should one act with people in one's
	...

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