Duffy Presentation on BBC

Fr Nicholas Schofield reports the following @ Roman Miscellany: Professor Eamon Duffy (author of Stripping of the Altars and Professor of the History of Christianity at Cambridge) has started an interesting series for BBC Radio 4 called Ten Popes Who Shook the World - and he starts with St Peter. Listen to it here.

He'll be looking at St Leo the Great, St Gregory the Great, St Gregory VII, Innocent III, Paul III (an interesting choice), Bl Pius IX, Pius XII, Bl John XXIII and John Paul II. It will be particularly interesting to hear his analysis of more recent pontiffs. The write-up on Pius XII poses the promising question: 'struggling to remain impartial, Pius failed, in the eyes of many, to speak out strongly enough against the Holocaust. But has history judged him fairly?' However, the description of the John Paul II programme mentions the usual criticism of 'inflexible theological and moral positions,' which Duffy mentioned in his Saints and Sinners book.