There’s a Pope Show on NPR and It’s Pretty Fantastic

Sep 22, 2015
8:14 AM

FULL DISCLOSURE: our founder works for the very same show we will be praising in this post, but we will assure you that his job had nothing to do with why we think “21st Century Pope” from NPR’s Latino USA is perhaps some of the best audio we have heard this year. You see, our group talks A LOT about faith and organized religion. Many of us think organized religion is a sham, while others in our group are pretty devout. In addition, it is really hard to shake off the cultural Catholicism that still permeates through Latin America and the U.S. Latino world. So a show about Pope Francis to give some of these topics some weight before the Church’s first-ever Latin American pope visits the United States is something that really interested us.

We don’t know what we liked best about this show. Was it the point when host Maria Hinojosa questioned the motives of the Vatican? Was it the devout Ecuadorian woman who was determined to meet “Panchito” in New York City? Could it have been the Pope’s past in Argentina? And what about the Church canonizing Junípero Serra and beatifying Óscar Romero? Maybe it was all of this, but no matter: Latino USA‘s “21st Century Pope” is a must-listen podcast.