As part of the Diocese of Parramatta’s Bishop Vincent Presents series, Vatican correspondent and Pope Francis expert Christopher White is coming to Australia for a series of events in Parramatta, Sydney and Melbourne.
Landing in Australia fresh from the Synod on Synodality in Rome, journalist and Vatican insider, Christopher White from the National Catholic Reporter will conduct a series of talks on the future of the church and Pope Francis’ pontificate. His public lecture “Will our faith have children? Reflections on the health and dynamism of global Catholicism” will be held in Parramatta on Thursday 9 November and in Melbourne on Thursday 16 November 2023.
Currently, over 400 delegates from around the globe are meeting in Rome to listen, discuss and discern the future of the Church. In a first for the Catholic Church, this month-long meeting includes selected women and lay people, who have been given voting rights at the Synod. Christopher White is reporting live from Rome and will be giving his reflection on this global event and placing it in a local context, as the Diocese of Parramatta gears up to hold its first-ever Synod this weekend, 13 – 15 October 2023.
Christopher White has been reporting on Church affairs for over a decade now and has travelled with Pope Francis on over a dozen trips to Switzerland, Slovakia, Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Canada, Kazakhstan, Bahrain, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Portugal, Mongolia and France.
He’s also reported from four World Youth Days (Lisbon in 2023, Panama in 2019, Poland in 2016 and Madrid in 2011) and three Synods of Bishops – the current Synod on Synodality, the Amazon Synod in 2019, and the Synod on Young People in 2018. He has reported from all seven continents and his last trip to Australia was in 2015. As a young Catholic covering the Vatican, he has a unique perspective on the internal workings of the Vatican and the tensions within the global catholic church.
Prior to moving to Rome in August 2021, Christopher served as NCR’s national correspondent where his award-winning reporting included coverage of the Catholic vote during the 2020 campaign and the election of President Joe Biden.
He holds a master’s degree in ethics and society from Fordham University and a bachelor’s degree in politics, philosophy and economics from The King’s College. His work has appeared in Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Forbes, Foreign Policy, New York Daily News, International Business Times, among many other print and online publications. He has regularly appeared on television and radio programs, including CNN, NPR, RTE and BBC and is a Vatican analyst for NBC and MSNBC news.
National Catholic Reporter is an independent publication based in Kansas City, Missouri. Because of its independent status, NCR goes where other Catholic news sources cannot. In its early days, NCR reported on the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, including the secret findings and the dissenting opinions of Pope John XXIII’s/Pope Paul VI’s commission on birth control. They were the first, and for many years the only, publication to report the clergy sex abuse crisis and were the first catholic publication to report extensively on the environment.
For more information and to register for Christopher White’s public lectures, please visit: www.parracatholic.org/christopherwhite
