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The Religion and Ethics Report

ABC Australia
The Religion and Ethics Report
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484 episodes

  • The Religion and Ethics Report

    Catholic hopes lie in a long papacy

    14/10/2026 | 29 mins.
    Pope Leo has had surgery to remove part of his lung, with doctors confirming they found a small cancer. Leo has become the world’s most prominent advocate for the poor and the migrant, and opponent of the wars started by Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in Ukraine and Iran. The prognosis for his recovery is good but any absence from the world stage alarms millions of people hoping for a long papacy. Until recently, Kim Daniels served on the Vatican Dicastery for Communication. She’s in Australia to deliver the Dom Helder Camara Lecture at Newman College.
    Those with fond memories of our grandmothers will often say she “was a saint”. For Martha Hennessy, that will literally be the case. Her grandmother, the American Catholic writer and social justice activist Dorothy Day is on track to canonization. Dorothy Day died in 1980, almost 50 years after she co-founded the Catholic Worker newspaper, but Pope Benedict, Pope Francis and now Pope Leo have invoked her life and work. Martha Hennessy is currently touring Australia.
    GUESTS:
    Kim Daniels heads the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University in Washington DC.
    Martha Hennessy is an American Catholic peace activist and member of the Catholic Worker Movement
  • The Religion and Ethics Report

    Prayers and hope for a quick recovery for Pope Leo

    14/10/2026 | 21 mins.
    Pope Leo has had surgery to remove part of his lung, with doctors confirming they found a small cancer. Leo has become the world’s most prominent advocate for the poor and the migrant, and opponent of the wars started by Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in Ukraine and Iran.
    The prognosis for his recovery is good but any absence from the world stage alarms millions of people hoping for a long papacy. 
    Until recently, Kim Daniels served on the Vatican Dicastery for Communication. 
    Kim is in Australia to deliver the Dom Helder Camara Lecture at Newman College.
    GUEST:
    Kim Daniels heads the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University in Washington DC.
  • The Religion and Ethics Report

    Martha Hennessy on her saintly and very real grandmother Dorothy Day

    14/10/2026 | 19 mins.
    Those with fond memories of our grandmothers will often say she “was a saint”. 
    For Martha Hennessy, that will literally be the case. 
    Her grandmother, the American Catholic writer and social justice activist Dorothy Day is on track to canonization. 
    Dorothy Day died in 1980, almost 50 years after she co-founded the Catholic Worker newspaper, but Pope Benedict, Pope Francis and now Pope Leo have invoked her life and work. 
    Martha Hennessy is currently touring Australia.
    GUEST:
    Martha Hennessy is an American Catholic peace activist and member of the Catholic Worker Movement
  • The Religion and Ethics Report

    Rise of global antisemitism and humanitarian disaster in Gaza

    07/10/2026 | 21 mins.
    In the three years since the gruesome Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, and included the documented use of sexual violence, Israel has responded with its own fierce bombardment of the Gaza strip. 
    An estimated 70,000 people have died, mostly from Israeli air attacks. 
    From the October 7 massacre, flowed twin tragedies: a humanitarian crisis in Gaza and a global explosion of antisemitism, most obviously the 2025 Hannukah massacre at Bondi Beach. 
    GUEST:
    David Myers is a distinguished professor of Jewish History at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a lifelong activist for Israeli-Palestinian peace and human rights
  • The Religion and Ethics Report

    Rise of the Jim Crow theobros

    07/10/2026 | 11 mins.
    They pose behind luxuriant, often ludicrous moustaches, smoke pipes and affect an air of genteel intellectuals.
    But these so-called "theo-bros", as in theological, have very radical agenda to change America that hearkens back to the country’s worst times. 
    Bob Smietana has been tracking this online group as it preaches a version of Christianity to lost young men. 
    GUEST:
    Bob Smietana is a senior writer based in Chicago for the Religion News Service.
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About The Religion and Ethics Report
The Religion and Ethics Report, where religion and ethics meet news and current affairs in Australia and around the world.
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