Welcome back to the Word on Fire show. I'm Matthew Petrusick, Senior Director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire show. Thank you for joining us.

Word on Fire is celebrating our 25th anniversary this year. That's 25 years of proclaiming the gospel,

25 years of evangelizing the culture, 25 years of working hard to bring people to or back to Christ and His Church. Having reached this

milestone by the grace of God, it's worth pausing to look back at the past quarter century

to remember, and appreciation, where it all began and how the ministry has grown along the way.

So, what is Word on Fire's origin story? When, where, and why did Bishop

Baron then Father Baron first conceive of the idea of founding Word on Fire? What were the early

years like? What have been some of the major developments along the way? What obstacles has the

ministry encountered and what have we learned from

them? How is Bishop Barron and his team kept the fire for evangelization alive? And what to the

best of our lights does the future look like for the next five, ten, and even 50 years? Here to share

his memories of word on fire's past and his vision for the ministry's future is Bishop Robert Barron.

Welcome back to the studio, Bishop. Man, always great to be with you. Today we're marking,

we're celebrating the 25th anniversary of Word on Fire and looking to the studio bishop. Man, always great to be with you. Today we're marking, we're celebrating the 25th anniversary of Word on Fire and looking to the past as we also look forward. Before we

get started though, what have you been up to recently? Well, see a lot of things in the diocese,

but one thing we do every year, the Minnesota bishops visit the Capitol. We go up to St. Paul, and the Capitol building here in St. Paul is

beautiful. Beautiful dome. It's a bit like St. Peter's Dome and Rome, and it's right next to,

practically, I think, the most beautiful religious building in America, the cathedral of St. Paul.

But we go up there once a year, and we meet with the leaders of the government. So we had a meeting

with Tim Walls, the governor of Minnesota, who just ran for vice president. And we met with the

Speaker of the House and the top leadership. And what we do is we share some of our concerns as

bishops. So each one of us takes one of the topics. I did the whole in vitro fertilization question,

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