Following up on my article in America about the Sagrada Familia and looking forward to Pope Leo XIV’s visit to Spain, I had a chance to sit down at the beginning of the month with Robert Duncan, host of Vatican Access, a new podcast from Catholic News Services.
It was a great conversation, and I was happy to discover this excellent new podcast. You can watch the interview here: “Why Pope Leo Chose Sagrada Família.”
Readers might also be interested to check out the 20th Anniversary Issue of Dappled Things magazine. The fact that this unique contribution to the Catholic literary scene has been going for two decades is indeed worth celebrating, and I was honored that they included one of my stories from 2017 in an anthology of their favorites. The story has dystopian ring, which in retrospect feels almost prophetic….
Here’s a final rundown of recent posts on Gaudí and the Sagrada Familia:
I’m honored to have a couple of recent works appear in print in the past few weeks, the first an article in La Civiltà Cattolica, a publication founded by Italian Jesuits in 1850, which has since gone international. The article “Gestis Verbisque: The Words and Actions of the Sacraments” (the Italian is here) analyzes a recent Vatican document dealing with sacramental theology — specifically the question of invalid baptisms. The document Gestis verbisque was available only in Italian at the time I wrote the article, but has since come out in English (and other languages) here. It’s an important document because it reminds priests and deacons of the need to faithfully celebrate the sacraments according to the Church’s tradition and liturgical books. We probably all have had unfortunate experiences of goofy things happening in liturgy because Father thought that he could improve upon a centuries-old ritual with regrettable results. Gestis verbisque reminds us that “The Church is the ‘minister’ of the Sacraments, but she does not own them.” My own article fleshes out some of the background behind the document and points out where I think it adds something theologically (its treatment of the minister’s intention). It was interesting to see some of the strange cases in history that I found while researching Baptism of Desire and Christian Salvation come up again in modern settings. You’d think we’d learn!
The other publication is the first short story I’ve published in a while–too busy with academic work–in a magazine that will be familiar to readers of these pages, Dappled Things. Dappled Things is the only literary magazine I know of dedicated exclusively to Catholic literature. I’ve been honored to have a number of short stories and essays appear in their pages over the years, some of which can be found on their site. My most recent story, “Pious Tchotchkes,” is in their Easter 2024 issue, which is only available in print. Their print issues are always beautifully crafted.
The story is set in Portugal, and here are a couple of places alluded to — baroque exuberance in Coimbra and Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe.
Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 