Welcome back to the Word on Fire show. I'm Brandon Vaat, the host and the content director

here at Word on Fire. Bishop Aaron has just landed in Rome. He's there, of course, for

the 2018 Synod on Young People, The Faith and Vocational Discernment. He'll be there throughout

the entire month of October for a pretty grueling series of all-day meetings. I think they're

meeting six days a week for roughly the next month. Of course, Bishop's going to be sharing

all sorts of fun and creative content, including interviews and behind-the-scenes videos and

commentaries. You can find all of that at the website WordFromRome.com. That's the home

base where we'll be sharing all of this content. So again, WordFromRome.com is the site

that you're going to want to be checking pretty regularly during the next month. Today,

however, we're going to be sharing the audio from a listening session that Bishop Aaron

recently hosted in his Santa Barbara region before he left for the Synod. His goal was to gather

a bunch of young people from around his region and invite them to share what's on their

mind about God, the church, and the faith, so that he could bring all of their insights

with him to the Synod discussions in Rome. So we invite you to sit back and enjoy this

lively listening session and Q&A with Bishop Aaron.

Thanks.

Listen, thank you, everybody, for coming. I'm delighted to see you. It always lifts me

up, especially young people coming together to understand the faith, to celebrate the

faith. I really wanted this day because as you heard, I'm going to the Synod. Every three

years, they have a Synod, which is a gathering of bishops from around the world, to consider

some important topic in the life of the church. So over the years, we had many different

topics. The Pope decided this year to talk about young people. A lot of us were just delighted

...