Papal History, Wild Pope Facts & Inside Intel on Pope Leo XIV with Matt from The Popecast

🇻🇦He named all four of his sons after Popes — Leo, Gregory, Nicholas, and John Paul — and he's a contractor who fixes toilets by day. Matt from The Popecast joins Liv in The LIVing Room for one of the most surprisingly moving conversations about papal history, faith, and what it actually feels like to "meet God on the way down." Matt opens up about his first marriage, a quick annulment, and how sitting in a Starbucks writing six and a half single-spaced pages finally gave him peace beyond understanding.
They also dig into the Pope who accidentally kicked off the Reformation with a pet elephant, why Pope Leo XIV's Lutheran best friends still call him "Bob," and what the loneliness epidemic looks like from the front seat of a contractor's truck. This one's for you if you've ever loved the Church but felt like the mess of your life didn't quite fit the story.
Guest Bio:

Matt is the creator of The Popecast, a podcast and Instagram account dedicated to papal history with a mission to remind people that the chaos of today is nothing new in the life of the Church. He launched the podcast in 2018 after writing a daily email series on the full history of the papacy, and his Instagram following has grown larger than his podcast audience — a fact he finds equal parts ironic and delightful. By day, Matt runs a small remodeling company in the Diocese of Spokane; by night, he digs into 2,000 years of Church history. He and his wife are expecting their fourth child, whose name — John Paul — was never really in question.

In This Episode:
00:00 Mystery Face Reveal: Matt Finally Shows Up on the Internet 
01:20 What Is The Popecast? Papal History, Instagram, and One Man's Anxiety Cure 
03:30 The Hiatus, Pope Francis Dying, and Getting Back in the Game 
04:00 Father Rich from Duluth and the World's Largest Private Papal Collection  
05:00 How Marilys and the Conclave Put Matt on Liv's Radar 
06:00 "Aggressively Normal Catholicism" — Matt's Approach to Faith Online 
07:30 Faith Journey: Growing Up Catholic in Montana, Carroll College, and FOCUS 
09:00 The 2013 SEEK Conference That Changed Everything 
09:45 "I Met God on the Way Up, Got to Know Him on the Way Down" 
10:30 The First Marriage, the Divorce, and What Nobody Talks About at Mass 
12:00 Pope Francis, the Annulment Process, and Why Matt Defends It 
15:30 Starbucks, Six and a Half Pages, and Peace Beyond All Understanding 
18:00 Contractor by Day, Pope Nerd by Night — What Self-Employment Actually Looks Like 
20:00 Digital Life vs. Real Life: What the Loneliness Epidemic Looks Like from a Truck
22:00 The Widow with the Alzheimer's Husband and the Cup of Coffee That Matters 
24:30 Historian of Real Life — Teaching Kids to Reverence Old People and Old Things 
25:30 Meet the Kids: Leo, Gregory, Nicholas, and Baby John Paul 
27:30 Pope Leo XIV, "Bob," and His Lutheran Best Friends Who Called It 46 Years Ago 
31:30 The Wildest Pope Facts: A Pet Elephant and Death by Eel 
35:00 The Pope Who Founded Western Civilization: Gregory the Great Explained
40:00 Five Popes at the Mac and Cheese Dinner Table 
46:30 How Can We Pray for You? Matt's Request and Closing Prayer

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I relate to Dave Ramsey because he always says, I met God on the way up and got to know him on the way down when his life was crashing down around him. So I did all the right quote-unquote Catholic things and then ended up getting divorced. Hugely tumultuous time. I'm thinking, oh man, you know, why is this happening to me? Just given my past history, help me understand that the Lord lives in the mess. Like, sure, there's very clear parameters to the life of virtue, but there's also just a really messy part of life that doesn't have clear answers. So I strive for what I call an aggressively normal Catholicism. In case anybody out there is wondering how sold out I am for papal history, all of my boys are named for popes. Maybe this is terrible to say, but I love how quiet the first year has been. Aside from the excitement of having an American Pope. I just had an opportunity to chat with a married couple in Minnesota who have known him for almost 50 years. They said, Man, Bob, you're you're so good at this. I bet you're gonna be the first American Pope someday. I'm like Prophecy. Four and a half decades ago, I'm gonna get a lot of money.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Oh my goodness, I think I'm so excited because I can see your face. And uh and you don't put your face on the on any of the internet that I'm on. So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you have like a whole thread of just you and I've missed it.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

It's mysterious. It's very mysterious. No, it's funny you say that, because uh until I think it was last year, I finally I've had the YouTube channel for a really long time, but I finally, maybe last year, started publishing the episodes on YouTube. So unless you looked for my name, yeah, you're right. The Popecast Instagram and Twitter don't have my actual face on there very often.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

But no, and you don't look like the Pope, so here you are.

unknown 2:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

You look nothing like Leo.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

Yes, yeah, thankfully. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

I don't know. I mean Bob from Chicago, he's a great guy. So I think it's a compliment. He's a he's a nice looking man. You're you no, you look good. You look like we'll say you're a younger Leo. How about that?

SPEAKER_02 2:31

Yeah, maybe. Did he he had the he had the epic sideburns at one point?

SPEAKER_00 2:35

I don't know if he ever had facial hair.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

The Blues Brothers picture of him back in the 80s.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

Oh, that's fantastic. I need to see well, you would know you're the pokecast. So what is what is the pokecast? Is it is it a is it just a social media place? Is it uh a podcast? Is it a YouTube channel? What is it? Tell me as if I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

Yeah, well, if maybe this is a good uh I don't know if it's an indictment on how I uh how I presented it initially or something, but it's yeah, a good time to clear the air. So so it started as a podcast um back in 2018. Uh basically as out of kind of a desire to share that the problems with the world are nothing new because it seems like all these people were freaking out about the world's gonna end and our leaders are terrible or you know, whatever. And I had known papal history for quite a while. I I wrote a a daily email series at at my prior job, um a couple years before that. And having read from Peter to Francis about the whole history of the papacy, I'm thinking this happens every 50 to 100 years. What's what's going on in the world today is nothing new, far from it, the furthest thing from it. So knowing the stories of of the popes was it helped kind of calm. I'm not, I guess, an anxious person by by nature anyways, but it it kind of helped calm my nerves. But you know, wondering, oh, is the world gonna end tomorrow or is ours is the church gonna crash and burn into the ground, all these things. So so that was kind of where it started. So it's it's a podcast, but then it's such a the papal history, papal tradition is such a beautiful thing. And so it it's I think coming back into vogue in in society of obviously lots of conversions happening and people coming back to appreciate the beauty of Catholicism and Christian history and all that sort of thing. But it was just kind of a a natural uh outgrowth of it to grow an Instagram page and just basically share old pictures, old videos of popes from history and the regalia and the tradition, all that sort of thing. So my Instagram page grew larger, ironically, than the podcast did. The listenership specifically, but really I got started as a podcast, didn't but it's uh multi-layered, I suppose, if you want to say that.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

It is. Is it podcast still around? Are you still producing?

SPEAKER_02 4:50

Yeah, absolutely. So uh maybe this was um yeah, it had kind of a little hiatus, like mid-2022, until honestly, until Pope Francis died. It was kind of a good shot in the arm for me to revive it. It was just, you know, some life circumstances, job changes, all that sort of thing. Um became self-employed on purpose, but the all-consuming nature of owning your own business and growing that and all this, all that sort of thing, unfortunately made the Pope cast take a backseat. Still was posting on Instagram and things, but um but the podcast is definitely still around. Um started to incorporate more interviews with people. So, for example, I've become friends with this priest in um the Diocese of Duluth, who's not Father Mike Schmidt's. The the there are other priests, yes, yeah, priests on the diocese of Duluth who happens to have the largest papal memorabilia, papal artifacts collection outside of Rome, anywhere in the world, that is just a personal collection of his. It's huge.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

How does it do that?

SPEAKER_02 5:50

That's amazing. I think he he's in his mid-50s, late 50s, maybe now, but he started when he was 18. And just as he, you know, would save up money here and there, he started buying all these random papal artifacts ranging from Pius X straight razor to a 900-year-old papal document on parchment that he had to pay a lot of money to get unrolled and not have completely fall apart. So started to incorporate more of those kind of guest interviews as well. But it's it's it's fascinating for me as a Pope nerd, but I I think it's it's really fascinating for people to know what's not out there too.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

I um I was thinking about you because the Leo, I went to the um conclave, and that's kind of when you got on my radar because of my friend Merilus. Oh, yeah. Um, extent on the run, and she loves you. She's like, I don't know who this Pope cast person is, but they are fabulous. Or, you know, if there's 12 of them, whatever they are, like she just was raving about you. And so I started following, and I loved how positive that, you know, and but yet still real, you know, Matt, that you when you talk about the Pope or what you're posting about the Pope, it's not like just sunshines and rainbows, but it also isn't like this guy's the worst, you know, or whatever. It's very like positive and real. Um, is that an intentional choice to to shed certain light on the Pope?

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Yeah, I I would say probably yes and no. Yes, because um I just try to take an honest look at at the whatever Pope I'm covering or whatever period of history I'm looking at. I try not to have an agenda. We all have our own biases, obviously, whatever, but um the intentional part is just taking it at face value and saying, you know, okay, I'm not gonna just be mad at this guy because I believe X, Y, or Z. I'm just gonna like, you know, let history take its course. And so maybe that's like the amateur historian part of me. I would say the unintentional part of me is um just give him my past history, my journey of faith, all that sort of thing, um, which we can certainly get into if you want to, but um it's it's helped me understand that the Lord lives in the mess. Like, sure, there's very clear parameters to the life of virtue, to being a Catholic, all that sort of thing, um, all of which I'm a hundred percent a fan of. But there's also just a a really messy part of life that doesn't have clear answers. And I think that's part of what I really love about papal history in particular, Christian history in particular, that the church has endured inexplicably, uh despite the mess, you know, despite bad pokes and good posts and all that sort of thing. So yeah, so I'd say yes and no, um, which is why it it it doesn't I don't know, I I I strive for what I call an aggressively normal Catholicism, um, in for you know personally, but then as far as how I portray that, you know, I d I like I don't I like making fun of people who wig out over dumb things. Yeah um and and kind of miss the forest for the trees. Yeah, so exactly anyways, yeah. So I I try to stay pretty upbeat because I'm a pretty upbeat guy. Um, but I also try to stay honest and very real. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

Yeah, I respect it. Um so okay, you mentioned your faith journey. What what is your faith journey? Were you cradle Catholic, convert, revert? Where where do you fall? Or maybe a category I don't know about.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

Sure. Yeah, so I grew up in western Montana. Um I'm yeah, mid-30s, yeah, 36, almost 37. Um, so classic millennial Catholic upbringing, you know. Um my mom is a Parish Youth Minister, still is. My dad helped cook all the nights of Cup. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so cute. Yeah, so love doing all the youth ministry conferences. Oh, totally. Um, so yeah, she still is. My dad cooked all the Nights of Columbus breakfast and all that sort of thing. So like very quintessential, very Catholic. Millennial Catholic upbringing. But, you know, as uh and we had great priests, not you know, not earth-shattering, you know, Father Mike Wow types. Um, but you know, fine. It was a good parish, solid upbringing, very stable. Um, all that type of thing. When I got to college, I went to a Catholic college, uh, Diocen College in Montana, Carroll College, go Saints. Um, but it was kind of a it was a continuation of of the comfort of the faith that I had. So I wasn't really super challenged um in like hard questions and stuff. But then I uh spent two years in graduate school at Northern Arizona University, encountered focused missionaries there for the first time. Nobody knew who I was, nobody k knew or cared what Carroll College was, because it was a thousand miles away. And so that was really where I had what I call a conversion. It was kind of an awakening in the faith. I went to a Sikh conference in 2013, and just that was kind of the spark for both investigating the truths of the faith and kind of claiming them for my own, but then also this fascination with history as well. So just consuming for the next two or three years everything that I could um everything I could get my hands on, um, was very zealous as new converts tend to be. It was it was a lot of head and not a lot of heart, I guess you could say. Um I love that.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

That is a great way to explain that. A lot of head, not a lot of heart, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:08

So then uh and I I I relate to Dave Ramsey for this next part because he always says, I I met God on the way up and got to know him on the way down when his life was crashing down around him. So interesting. Around that time I got I got married, um, it was not a good situation. Um a lot of I actually really loved your um episode with Edmund for this reason because I I did all the right quote unquote Catholic things and then ended up getting divorced. Um did not have any kids, but it was still hugely tumultuous time and thinking, oh man, you know, why is this happening to me? Sure. To keep a very long story very short, um got to know the Lord on the way down, so to speak. So I met him on the way up. That was where the heart really came in, where uh an appreciation for the mess of of Christian life and a real challenge from God to to fully surrender and not keep this little pocket hidden away from myself. Um, you know, all that sort of thing. So then um out of that, just had yeah, uh kind of a second conversion, I suppose, if you want to call it that. Um couple years later met my now wife and have been married for eight years and got our fourth due, as I mentioned, um, any day now. So um yeah, that's kind of it in a nutshell, I suppose. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

No, that's amazing. So so how long were you married in your first marriage, Matt?

SPEAKER_02 12:25

Uh I think from civilly it was two years from marriage date to the date it was dissolved, but functionally about a year, year and a half. So it's very, very short.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Very short. Okay. And how did you find the annulment process? Like, how did you find like especially listening to Edmund's um our first episode of the living room? We discussed with Edmund Mitchell his divorce and his annulment process. Did you I don't know how we don't talk a lot about it in the in the church. You know what I mean? Like nobody really it's kind of like this hush-hush, or I don't know. I don't know if it's taboo or if it's just people just don't talk about it because it's so painful to go through. Maybe they don't want to sit down and crack a cold one and say, Let me tell you about my annulment.

SPEAKER_02 13:07

Yeah. No, yeah. I mean, that's a great question. That that could be a podcast on all its own, honestly. Um, I have nothing bad to say about that process. In fact, um, there's an article I wrote for the National Catholic Register that I still go back to every so often. And, you know, I'll every time I read it, I say, yeah, I still stand by that. It's it's a reason that I really love Pope Francis for all of his imperfections, for all the, you know, legitimate reasons that people had to not prefer him. Um he right around the time that I was petitioning to have my marriage declared null, um, he simplified the process. So normally I live in the Diocese of Spokane, so it's a what's the technical name for it? Um uh it's under the Archdiocese of Seattle. I forget the the actual the word for it. So at any rate, before Geography's hard.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

Yeah, Archdioceus of Seattle is the Metropolitan Sea, whatever. Suburbicarian, gosh. We can put it in the notes or somebody can correct it. Put a little snippet at the bottom of the screen. We're not that fancy at the in the living room. Anyways, you can just cut this whole section. Uh so Pope Francis basically made a provision to uh not require a second process. So one of the things that people had always complained about that I had heard up heard about is that it took so long that it would just, you know, it was already a really fraught thing because you're having to go through this. Basically, a court, a second court case with the diocese where maybe the two ex-spouses don't like each other, don't want to have all this contact or whatever. So you have to petition your diocese, and then your diocese would have to send it to the archdiocese and have to go through the whole process all over again, and then you'd have to wait for them to send it back. It was this whole rig and roll. So, mercifully, right about the time that I was petitioning, it Pope Francis had taken away the archdiocese and review process. So basically, my diocese could be it. So I was able to petition them, our tribunal could review it and get it back. So I I think I had a pretty short case process. Um it was only about six months, I want to say. Which from what I'd heard was um very unusual. So I I appreciated that. Um I also I don't know, I had I had a run across a couple of articles I remember in those times as I was you know praying through being divorced, being newly single, realizing, for example, I had never actually properly discerned whether I was called to marriage in the first place. Um turns out obviously I was, uh, and the Lord made that very definitive. But I realized that um the annulment process it gets a bad rap. I think it's it's a legitimate exercise of the church that Jesus established because he calls us to something specific. So I I'd seen these um sentiments from people who said, Oh, the annulment process is bad because 90% of them get approved, or um, you know, is it's just Catholic divorce. Well, you know, the things you'd you'd hear. And I couldn't disagree with those more because if the Lord allowed for a church to make you know legal distinctions, to give us clear rules to live by, and also calls each of us to something specific, whether that's the priesthood, religious life, or marriage, or the single life or whatever, then if we make an error as we do as humans, then there ought to be a process to to litigate that, I suppose. So that's that's what I found. I really I didn't like the process, but I appreciated that it was there and that it was clear. Um so yeah, I guess yeah, the rest of rambling too long.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

That's no, no, no, no. Oh, I want to ask you, what's the most beautiful thing that came out of your divorce in an ulmit?

SPEAKER_02 16:48

Uh I had never encountered what is it, St. Paul, who talks about the peace beyond all understanding in scripture. So um through my prior relationship and um putative marriage, I think that's the technical narrative, because it wasn't actually a marriage. Okay, true. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Yeah, the prior relationship. No, that's good to know. That's thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 17:09

Yeah, but that the so the prior relationship to now, it was just so tumultuous, and it was there wasn't the free, total, faithful, fruitful um union on the day that we got married, as far as everybody saw. There wasn't a valid marriage that that happened that day, and it was so clear. I still remember I sat in a Starbucks for like three and a half hours because it's um it's basically like a deposition. The the church gives you uh like 20 questions, says, you know, how did you come together? How or how did you meet? Tell a story about your dating life, your engaged life, your married life, um, how did your friends react? How did when did it start to go wrong? All these sorts of things. I think I wrote like six and a half, yeah, six and a half pages single spaced typed 12-point font. Like it was a ton.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

And when I when I walked through that, it was like it was that side. That actually was what it was, like this um like feeling of feeling so feeling sorry for my ex-wife because of all that she had gone through um prior to us getting together. Seeing so clearly laid bare where I was wrong, where I missed stuff. So not laying blame all on her or anything like that. And then having known my wife by that point, we'd we were really good friends. Um, my my current wife, obviously, we were we were really good friends by that point, and already seeing in that friendship with her what was clearly missing before. Namely that it was really easy to communicate, we understood each other on a just a a basic level, and that living a life of faith with uh uh her in friendship at the time, and then later dating, engagement, married life, and still now is just so peaceful because life throws so much crap at you. Yeah, no matter what. Yeah, it's crazy. So it's it's uh yeah, it was just beautiful to to be able to see and enter in and clearly hear the Lord saying, This is what I'm calling you to, and in the way that I'm calling you to it, where I just you know plug my ears, la la la la la. I'm gonna do whatever I want, whatever I feel like, in the in the prior case, and seeing it crash and burn.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

So Yeah, yeah. So finding peace and what that actually like what peace actually feels like and what it is as an experience.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

You would say, yeah, that's beautiful. I love that. So here you are going forward, you're married, about to have your fourth baby, and you're self-employed. What does that look like? So what what does the Popecast do on the daily that we see or don't see? Is it is it faith related what you do, um, self-employment, or is it not faith related?

SPEAKER_02 19:51

No, so I uh that's kind of what was funny about that was um I'm a remodeling, I have a small remodeling company. So we do anything from you know handyman punch list to we just remodel an entire basement of a house for these for some people. So um so it'll it's ancillary faith stuff. So you know, I'll work for Catholics or not. I've you know work for this lady who fell away from the faith. Okay, you know, putting caulk around the bottom of her toilet and replacing a light fixture, and all the while she's just grilling me with questions about, you know, what's most important to you? What's your you know, what do you want your kids to be? You know, how do you how do you train them up in the faith? Or what you know, whatever. That's not uh a normal occurrence, I wouldn't say, but it's it's just really interesting. So, you know, I mean I I work on people's houses and um and it's beautiful. I love working with my hands and all that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

So the pubcast is kind of like a contractor by day, paper historian by night kind of thing, or whatever, but I love that though, but that's so beautiful because um, you know, we're called to live our faith in our work. And so you working with human beings, which listen, I don't know if you've heard, we're getting further away from working with each other all the time. Um, that's really cool that you do that. So being someone who's in both, which is fascinating, you have this digital life and you have this real life. What are you seeing like in the topography of humanity? Uh, how we're like, do you see us falling apart from not talking to each other? Do you think we're fine? We're talking to each other plenty. Uh do you see those two things at battle, or do you see them not as not as scary as sometimes we hear they are, since you have a foot in both?

SPEAKER_02 21:36

That's a really good question. Um I do a lot of work for people who are like my parents and grandparents' age. And so I find that a lot of the online spats just don't factor in at all, whether they are aware of it or not. So that's encouraging to know that okay, the things that people seem to be super obsessed with online like probably aren't really that big. A deal. You know, the the liturgy wars or whatever you want to, you know, whatever it might be. People just have, you know, their own joys. Like the people who I was working for, their grandkids were running around a bunch of the time that we're working. And so like they're occupied by those things, which are normal real life things, which is great. Um, but then there's also, you know, uh, I'm you know, I'll be driving around, and it seems like people are on edge, like cutting people off in traffic or whatever. That's like the other thing. It's like uh maybe similarly related to the digital world that yeah, um, we're all kind of on edge, so it it it's good when we actually talk to each other, have conversations, um, ask about life, aren't on our uh devices all the time, something like that. It's you know, it's good to stay plugged in, it's good to learn about the things that the digital world affords us to learn about for sure. But no, I don't think it's nearly as bad as as the picture that's painted online, at least.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

Okay, I love that. So do you see so you don't really see a loneliness epidemic going on that? Or do you you know, like I guess that kind of could be a different question. Do you think being in digital and being in the everyday, like, do you see people as lonely on either side or on both sides, equally lonely?

SPEAKER_02 23:14

Now that I think I do think that's a different question. That is a different question, yeah. I think that's a I think that's a real, a very real thing that just flies under the radar because you don't a lot of times you don't know, don't, don't know to look for it. So I said I you know do a lot of work for people who skew older. A lot of widows in particular. There's a a gal who's one of my favorite people. I tell my wife I need an extra hour allotted whenever I go to this lady's house to sit and chat because she'll make me sit and drink a whole cup of coffee, she'll have cake a lot of times. Um, but her husband has Alzheimer's, and so it's one of the biggest joys of my life to do the little bit of work that I do at her house, but then also to sit and chat with her because you know her kids don't live in town, all that type of thing. And I can kind of I can tell in some cases too, when I go to somebody's house and I might be the only person they see that day. They might talk to somebody on the phone or whatever, but they'll kind of, you know, when you he when you know people are kind of extending the conversation, um, I try to kind of be a little attuned to that and not if I have to be in a rush, that's one thing. But I try to, you know, if I don't have to be in a rush, okay, can I stay five, ten more minutes and chat with this little old lady who, you know, is lovely and has a beautiful home and is showing me pictures of her kids and her grandkids and all these things and you know, trying to keep the main thing the main thing, you know.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

I love that. So what's interesting is that you're kind of, you know, you're in a way you're still a historian in your real life because you're you're kind of capturing the history of these people that maybe nobody's listening to. I don't know if you've thought of it that way before. Sure. But you're you're digital and a and a real historian. That's a good way to look at it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

My grandma was my grandma was big into genealogy. She died a few years ago. Um, and I don't know if there was a c one or two of my cousins also have interest in it, but you know, not very many people are interested in ancestry five generations, six generations back. And so I've always obviously had a fascination with that. So yeah, I love hearing about that, that sort of thing too, because old people have really cool old things in their houses a lot of times. So to be able to ask about stuff like that and figure out another reason that Father Rich from Duluth um that we love chatting with each other is all the cool old stuff, you know, that's important to care about. It might not be the the most important thing, but to realize that we don't have a lot of like old tactile things. A lot of stuff is just plastic throwaway, which again has its place, I guess. But yeah, it's just neat, yeah. I like yeah, I like that characterization. I never thought of that historian and historian of real life. So you are.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

You're in both. So how are you teaching your children, or how will you teach them to appreciate history and the story of a person?

SPEAKER_02 26:08

Yeah, that's a good question, too. It's I think it's helpful to be one around older generations. So it's it's yeah, uh my in-laws are all here.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Intentionally, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

Yeah, yeah. My in-laws are all here, but we make a point whenever we go back home to see my family. Well, my grandpa's still alive, he's in his late 80s, you know, going and like having reverence for old people who have a lot of old things or important things to tell you about, you know, old stories and things like that. The same with my wife's grandparents. Um, but also as you asked the question, I was reminded Father Rich just sent me a box of stuff um that uh he was just trying to kind of call from his collection. So I bought some stuff from him, and uh a lot of it was kind of knick-nack-y-type stuff, but there was a bandana, a big silk bandana uh made in Italy with a picture of the Swiss guard on it. And so my oldest, Leo, my oldest is Leo. Um in case anybody out there is wondering how sold out I am for papal history, all of my boys are named for popes. So my oldest is Leo, uh, but he claimed that bandana immediately. Oh daddy, can I take it and he was trying to find a place in his room to put it, and then the next one, Gregory, uh see this little medallion that looks like a medal of honor, but it's like a little medallion, like a religious education award or something. But it had Pope Pius X on it. And so he wanted to wear it to school, to preschool today. So I love that. Like encouraging the natural fascination with old things, I think, is is another just as important thing.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

The respect of it. Okay, so uh we know Leo and Gregory, now I gotta know the other Pope names.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

What are the other Yeah, so uh Nicholas is the is our third. Um, so l the least known the great. So Leo the Great, Gregory the Great, everybody's already usually heard of them. Yeah. Um St. Nicholas the Great is not Santa St. Nicholas, but he was the Pope in the I think of the end of the 800s in the ninth century. So great defender of marriage. Um I forget exactly why he is he's the least known, but it would you know the the title of the great just kind of was a natural outgrowth of the Pope's personality. So Nicholas the Great, and then uh the newest one will be John Paul for obvious reasons. Oh sweet. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

I love that. Do you have a favorite Pope? I'm sure you get asked that a lot.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

I'm sure you get uh Yeah, I think John Paul II probably takes the cake, as is, you know, I I I don't I don't know if if he he's your favorite too, but it seems like a lot in our generation really love him. So it's John Paul and then like ten who make up the the next list.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

So it's Leo getting on that list, the new Pope. How are you what are you thinking about our new Pope? Um fan?

SPEAKER_02 28:48

Huge fan. Um he I feel like that so John Paul II's in in one spot, and then Pope Leo is in like a category all his own because he's the current Pope, and then there's you know that's fair favorite popes of history. But no, I yeah, I love how um maybe this is terrible to say, but I love how quiet the first year has been, aside from the excitement of having an American Pope. Yeah, there's just like not a lot of drama drama. Again, whatever. I love I love Pope Francis. I didn't love everything that he did. Yeah, I think I didn't love a lot of his yeah, I didn't love all of his you know personal non-faith beliefs. Um, but I loved him. I love that he, you know. Sure. But there was a lot of drama. You just like nobody can argue that. There was there was a lot of drama with Pope Francis, and it just like got a little exhausting, I think, by the end of it. Um but with Pope Leo, it seems like he's he's all the good things that Pope Francis was, and then has this kind of measured listening administrative ability that just wasn't Pope Francis's gift, it didn't seem like so um but then I just you know love this the simplicity of him and his kind of quiet goodness. I just had an opportunity to chat with um a married couple in Minnesota, Lutherans, ironically, um, who have known him for almost 50 years. Really still been in touch with him, even still, um, since he's been Pope. And they kind of just affirmed that, that he's just always been that guy. This kind of you're just drawn to him for some reason. There's just this quiet goodness about him. He listens super well, is very faithful, but is not ostentatious about it. So for all those reasons, yeah, love, love Poplio.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

So he is exactly kind of what he seems. How do they know the Pope? How do they do you know that story? Do you know how they know him? Yeah, it was pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_02 30:38

So he so I I don't know if it's still the case. I think it varies diocese to diocese, but um, at least back in the 80s, there was this uh course called Clinical Pastoral Education that was like a hospital chaplaincy course that was required for all Catholic seminarians and I guess Lutheran seminarians too. So they happened to be in the same cohort for 10 weeks in 1980, I think.

SPEAKER_00 31:01

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 31:02

46 years ago. So he was still a sem Pope Leo was still a Augustinian um in formation. I I don't know if they call him seminarians or not. Um, and then John was in formation to be a Lutheran pastor, and so they spent 10 weeks in Minneapolis or wherever it was and just got to be super good friends. So there's a picture of Pope Leo riding his brother's snowmobile with this, you know, with giant snowmobile suit, and apparently he was like rip roaring around the hills because he loves to drive, is you know, apparently another little tidbit about him. But yeah, so then since then, I guess Bob. They still call him Bob, by the way, which is hilarious. Oh my gosh. Because they I guess they've known him as Bob for 45 years of the last 46. But they said he he said, if we're gonna be friends, we need to make a commitment. Like as an early 20s, you know, 23-year-old uh Augustinian formation. He said, Okay, if we're gonna be friends, we need to really be friends, like we need to commit to this. And so he's lived, they've lived that that commitment out, so they've exchanged letters over the years and all that sort of thing. But yeah, spent just kind of 10 intense weeks together in this course and got to know each other really well and have been friends ever since.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

Are they surprised that he's the Pope, or are they like, ah, that's Bob?

SPEAKER_02 32:16

So so that was kind of a wild story that they told. And I didn't know this. I had met them previously, before we talked, it was just last week. Um, but I had met them previously and they had told me some of these stories. I hadn't heard though, that when I think it was during that summer, um, he was maybe the only Catholic in their group of friends. They said, Man, Bob, you're you're so good at this. I bet you're gonna be the American pope the first American Pope someday. I'm like, prophecy. Four and a half decades ago.

SPEAKER_00 32:47

How do you stay Lutheran when you're like besties with the Catholic Pope? I don't know, you know what I mean? The pressure of that, or be like, well, I guess I gotta become Catholic. I mean Bob became the Pope, so you know, we gotta go to the other side. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 33:03

I don't know. They're they're happy, at least they say that they're they're glad to be Lutheran ambassadors for for Pope Leo. So I don't I don't know of many other Lutheran ambassadors, but I love great that.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

But at least we have them. That's fantastic. What's the most interesting Pope fact that you've ever learned? Do you have like something that's just weird, off the chart, wild kind of a Pope fact?

SPEAKER_02 33:26

There's a couple. The the first one that comes to mind is um Pope Leo X ushered in the Reformation, maybe in large part because he had a pet elephant. And Martin Luther was so mad that he had that there was a such excess going on in Rome that Pope Leo would have the audacity to accept a gift from I think Persia maybe. Yeah. Um that he accepted this gift of a pet elephant and would ride it around. And he's got a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

They have a statue of this pet elephant.

SPEAKER_02 33:55

They might have a statue, they in the the Vatican museums in the the Raphael rooms, I think, that Pope Leo commissioned, Leo X commissioned, inlaid in one of the wooden doors is him riding the elephant. And so actually, I think until a few years ago, they didn't know if it was actually real, if the elephant actually had existed. Yeah. But then they were doing some excavations in the Vatican Gardens or somewhere and found elephant bones.

SPEAKER_03 34:17

Oh it was actually real.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

So there's that crazy Pope story, but I think a crazier one, and the name of the Pope is escaping me. It's it was further back, I want to say like the 12 or 1300s, it's like high Middle Ages. This one Pope had such a proclivity to eat eels that he ate too much eel and died. Or something. I I'm pr I'm pretty sure that's accurate. And I'll I'll send you a little bit. We say yes. We validate a little bit of it, but it's truth. Yeah. He loved he loved eel so much that his successor, when he commissioned his gr his tomb, wrote on the epitaph basically, this guy loved eel so much that he died.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

Why would you die from eel?

SPEAKER_02 35:02

I don't know if they're you know, mercury poisoning or whatever might have been. Oh right. Okay, I didn't think that through. Yeah, no, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 35:08

I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:09

Well, and they're electrocutionist. I don't think maybe. I don't know. Electrocuted from eels. Or is that just a fake thing? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 35:21

There have to be multiple multiple species of eel.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

Are there I don't want to know any of them. I don't, I'm, I'm good. I'm I'm eel free. Um I am not pro-eel. Unless, unless that has something to do with purgatory and getting to heaven, then yes, I love eel. They're my favorites. But um, if not, then I'm against it completely. Um, especially ever since, oh geez. Anyway, I won't even go into it. I was thinking of a movie. So, okay, let me ask you this. What is your what is like a quote or a beautiful story from a Pope that really inspires you, or like a mantra, or something that you're like, oh, that's so cool that you know this is around the and you don't have to get it verbatim, but like it's some type of thought that is so beautiful that came from a pope of ours.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

Oh man.

SPEAKER_00 36:14

That is like I'm thinking like Pope John Paul II had a lot of great, and here's here's what's real, right? A lot of the past popes have been very quotable because we were here to write it down, or we have them on camera, or you know, we have books that they did. But I was just wondering if you ever came across maybe, and maybe maybe a better question would be like a a very interesting pope that if he had been alive today, he would have been one that we would have quoted a lot. You know, he would have been a guy that we would have thrown on TV. He was a really interesting speaker, or like St. Anthony of Padua, right? Like he was apparently this amazing speaker, and we would want to sit at his feet and listen to him. Is there a pope that you've learned about that you're like, oh, this guy was really interesting?

SPEAKER_02 37:02

Yeah, I think Gregory the Great fits that bill pretty well. So he was at the end of the 500s, uh I think he died in 604. Um, I did an episode pretty early on and called it the Pope who founded Western civilization because he kind of laid the groundwork. So the backstory about him was he was a native Roman um from an from a noble family, but he was born when Rome was basically being sacked and burned multiple times throughout his childhood, let alone his adulthood. So Rome was just in in shambles, the seat of the empire had gone to Constantinople, all these sorts of things. So he was this guy who one had this duty to care for Rome instilled in him by his his parents. Um his dad died pretty early on, and then he was kind of a sickly kid, and just wanted to kind of put all of the cares of the world behind him. And so he entered uh religious life, he founded a monastery, which you can still go to in Rome. So because he was in the Roman nobility, you can see the Circus Maximus from his house. It's um San Gregorio Alcellio, I think is the name of the church in Rome. So it's built on the the uh the his house that he had turned into his monastery. But the thread that ran all through his life was civic duty, so being a good citizen of the milieu that you were born into, whether you like it or not, and then also following what God asked of you, also whether you like it or not, because you know God so well that you know God's gonna bring ultimate your ultimate happiness and ultimate goodness out of following that. So it's this really weird tension. And I think it's reading so that uh sorry, I'll back up. There's a great biography about him where I learned all of this that's relatively new. Ignatius publishes it um on St. Gregory the Great, uh written by a I think it's a woman, Sigrid Grabner. I think she's German. So it got had to get translated in English. But it's it's quotes from him copiously. There's a ton of letters that still survive from him because he was such a great figure, um, and so so much was saved. It was a Benedictine monk, so they probably you know copied and copied and copied those down through the centuries. But you read stuff that he wrote, and you're thinking, he wrote this 1500 years ago. This sounds like it was written yesterday for the people who are vain and selfish and like you know, care only about their own, you know, victimhood or you know, all these sorts of things. It's crazy. Um I wish I I wish I could think of an example off the top of my head, but it's just it's all throughout the his his life. But he followed what the Lord asked, even though he was sick all the time, even though he was, I think, pretty introverted, even though he just wanted to r retreat into his monastery and just be by himself and pray all day, every day, he knew that the Lord was calling him about. He was annoyed about it, but he knew that it was the Lord legitimately calling him to be the Pope. Um, and sometimes that insistence from the Lord came in the form of the Roman populace who loved him so much, grabbing him bodily and taking him from his monastery to I don't know if it was Saint if it would have been St. Peter's Basilica or the Lateran at point at that point, and then crowning him. They said, No, you are coming, we need you. You have to be the Pope. And so it's like his first act, for example, was ending the bubonic plague. So the the figure of St. Michael the Archangel on top of the Castle St. Angelo.

SPEAKER_00 40:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:35

Acros right next to the Tiber. That figure that statue obviously isn't 1,500 years old, but it comes from St. Gregory the Great leading a procession through Rome, getting to the Tiber, seeing the Castle St. Angelo, and seeing Saint Michael on top of it sh wiping a bloody sword and sheathing it, indicating that the plague was over. And he's leading this before he had been installed or whatever, coronated as Pope. People were falling, dropping dead, literally on the the procession. And but he so he yeah. It's this interesting figure of a guy who spoke really well, preached really well, but um what's the line from Chesterton? Um uh oh gosh. Uh each each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most. So I feel like St. Gregory the Great fit that bill really well because civilization was crumbling around him. Right. And he wanted no part in it. He wanted to just go follow God in his monastery and sit and pray all day. And just pray all day, and we made him but but you know and then we're we're quoting Chesterton and Gregory the Great, and then we're quoting Spider-Man with great power comes great responsibility.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

So I love that. There you go. All right, fun question. You have five spots at your dinner table to fill them with five popes. Who are the five popes you would you would fill to eat mac and cheese? Because you've got mac and cheese. You've got little kids.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

Yeah. Chicken knock. It's a staple, yeah. My wife would make mac and cheese and bring it to soup and stations every Friday because the kids would never eat the soup. So that's what I think of it. I think of mac and cheese. We're fresh off land. Oh gosh, five seats. Let's see.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

Five seats. You got five seats, you only pick five popes for you bringing. And they have to be your favorite. They could be wacky, they could be whatever. Like, but who would you want to have a meal with?

SPEAKER_02 42:27

I feel like I have to put Saint Peter there. Oh, that's fair. I have ide I identify a lot with St. Peter because he's sure. He loves the Lord so much, but he's such a meat head. Yeah. He made so many dumb choices in the Gospels. But then, you know, it ended well. It ended well. So I feel like St. Peter has to be there. Yeah. So John Paul II, do I want to use up two seats? Because I love John Paul I also.

SPEAKER_01 42:50

We haven't talked about him yet.

SPEAKER_02 42:52

He's just a really fascinating, super joyful guy. Who I think we can talk about this more if you want. But uh he I think he knew that he was gonna die. I think he knew he was only gonna be Pope for a month. Really? Because he called himself John Paul I. Notice Francis didn't say I'm Francis I. John Paul said, I'm John Paul the First. Interesting. So I feel like I'd put him there. Um let's see. Pius VII, he was put in prison by Napoleon for ten years and then reigned for ten years after and like took care of Napoleon's family. Great, great figure. On the road to St. Interesting. Uh golly. This is so tough. It is. Well, we've had a few. St. Peter, John Paul I. I feel like we know John Paul II enough, you know. So we'll say he'll come to the show.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

I don't want to break bread with him. He's fine. John Paul I just got to meet him. So I had my marriage blessed. Yeah. Spozzio Novelli blessing with Pope John Paul II. So how how old was he like still it was three years before he died. So I was married in 2000. This was uh in June of 2000, this was March of 2001. In fact, my daughter, her first name is Kana after the wedding feast of Kana, where Jesus performed his first miracle and she's our miracle because we didn't know we could have more children. So um we only have two and they're almost eight years apart, and so that's where she gets her first name. Her second name is Caroline with a K, which we named her after Pope John Paul II. So because his first name was Carol. Yeah, that's it. So I mean you can have you know what? How about this? It's it's like when you say who's your best friend, but you can't count Jesus. We'll say five, but you can't count Pope John Paul II. He's gonna be there anyway. Like we're gonna say so the JP2 is there. Yeah, he's gonna knock on the door after we're all there. It's his house, and your wife is making the mac and cheese at JPT's. Okay, so he's already there. So you got JP1. Who else did you say?

SPEAKER_02 44:54

St. Peter.

SPEAKER_00 44:55

St. Peter, Pius VII, Pius the Seventh. I'll never remember that. All right, you got two left. Just be fun. Who would be fun? Who was a funny guy? Yeah. A funny guy.

SPEAKER_02 45:06

Ironically, Pope St. Hilarious was not hilarious. He was just kind of really boring. Oh, well, let's have that guy just so we can like throw throw rolls at him. He might have been. He might have been funny. I don't know. Uh okay. I Pope Hilarious. Pope uh Pope St. Fabian. He was the 20th Pope. He was the one who famously uh got elected by a dove landing on his head in this gathering of the Roman citizenry. Oh, there was there was so it was the gosh, it was before Christianity was legal. So because I think he got martyred. So it would have been like 250-ish. Uh and the primitive conclave at the time, all the citizens, all the clergy came together in this big room, nobody could decide. And then a dove flies in, lands on his head, and everybody said, He he's the guy.

SPEAKER_00 45:49

That's the guy.

SPEAKER_02 45:51

Yeah. We'll we'll never know this side of heaven how accurate the story is, but that story has been passed down. It sounds accurate.

SPEAKER_00 45:58

We say yes.

SPEAKER_02 45:59

Yeah. So he'd be a good one.

SPEAKER_00 46:01

Everything on this podcast is true. All of it. 100%. All real.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. Accurate. We're just gonna go with it.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

Exactly. Okay, one more seat.

SPEAKER_02 46:12

One more, one more seat. I'm I'm super fascinated. I'm not like a ultra Deus Vault, you know, crusader, yeah, rah-rah kind of guy. I love the crusades. I love the stories of them, the characters. Um, but I'm not like a well, the sycophants feels like a bad word for it. But I'm not like really sold out. But Urban II, I feel like would be a fac would be a fun one to put in there and say, alright, let's chat about the Council of Claremont, 1095, sending Crusaders to Jerusalem. Because this is, you know, like ultra-trad superhero now, but uh life being messy, I'm sure there was a super interesting story behind it. As far as this, because okay, for context, my um I've had people ask me, Oh, what do you think about Pope Leo saying God doesn't hear the prayers of the people who pray for war or whatever? And like giving Pope Leo the benefit of the doubt 100%.

SPEAKER_01 47:07

Right.

SPEAKER_02 47:08

Um but then we have these characters, these popes who called crusades, sent soldiers to battle. And there's so I'm I'm just curious about the like the if there was moral tension within them to say, okay, well, have we waited long enough? Muslim conquest in the holy land, the whole thing.

unknown 47:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:29

Sending Christians to battle to rec to reconquer that. What like what went into the decision to call that? I'm just ultra yeah, super fascinated by that.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Okay, that would be interesting. See, and I would have I would have picked Pope Pope Leo because then we could have had amazing pizza from Chicago, but that's not for a really good reason. Um our time is already done, which is terrible because I love hearing all the things that you know in your brain. I just want to like tap it and just siphon out all of the amazing knowledge that you have. But I always ask my guests, how can we pray for you? How can the people listening pray for you? What are some prayers that you need? Obviously, we'll be praying for your wife. Hopefully, by the time this comes out, she's had the baby. Most definitely that would be lag time is, but yeah, I hope it's like five minutes from now for her sake. Yeah, exactly. We're gonna sneeze and the baby's here. Yes. Um and the podcast. No, so so we're already praying for the baby and your wife. So, what is something else that that how can we pray for you?

SPEAKER_02 48:28

Hmm. Yeah, thanks. I I yeah, I would just say going back to the the people who I get to do work with, the, you know, the who this like epidemic of loneliness. So just the people that I encounter who could use extra prayers, are you know, searching for the Lord, searching for what they're where they're supposed to go in life, maybe life transitions. So, yeah, praying for the people who I get to do work for, yeah, wouldn't I think that'd be great.

SPEAKER_00 48:51

Okay, we can pray for them. Matt, thank you so much for your time and thank you for doing all that you do for the popes and and educating the rest of us that have no clue about anything, except thinking that Leo is you know a White Sox fan and that's all we know, and he plays Wardle. I'm sure there's more to that man than those three facts that and that he's from Chicago. Um, but thank you so much, really appreciate it. Praying for you and your wife and your beautiful popish children. Um that's not a word. It is popish, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:21

It totally is a word. The popish we have like 30 more seconds, the popish plot was famously in uh I think to to try to take over the English monarchy after the English Reformation. It was called the Popish Plot. And I want to I want to say the guy who was Yeah, totally. I want to say the guy who was supposed to execute it blabbed in some pub somewhere and blew the whole thing. Like it had a chance of succeeding. Ah, there's always that guy. But the guy just was running in his mouth. That guy. I don't know. Yeah, but the popish plot. Yeah, it's a real one.

SPEAKER_00 49:55

Well, good, then you're popish children. We love them and we pray for them. No, thank you so much, Matt. And I will see you on the interwebs, my friend. Yeah, thanks.