About me

I am an historian whose research explores diverse Catholic cultures which have flourished over the past millennium.

I comment regularly in various media on Pope Francis and the Catholic Church, on higher education, LGBTQ+ issues, the Middle Ages, and on the public uses of history.

I’ve been very lucky in my academic career to have lived and worked in some of the world’s most beautiful cities and stimulating intellectual environments:

I have also held visiting fellowships in Bologna, Cambridge, Canberra, Madrid, Rome, Toronto, and Venice.

I am currently Programme Director at The Europaeum and hold affiliations with Oxford University in the UK and Deakin University in Australia.

I speak English, Italian, and Spanish, and am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts.

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Academic research

  • One of my major ongoing projects tries to answer one of the great questions in ecclesiastical history: what is a Church - the Catholic Church or any other? My work investigates the different levels on which such a Church can be said to exist, from its personnel to its rules, its ideologies, and sense of purpose. It asks, in particular, what made the Roman Catholic Church Roman and Catholic in the centuries after 1500?

  • My doctoral research focused on how politics worked in the Rome of sixteenth-century popes. I wrote a book about a notorious trial at which the former pope’s nephews were impeached for corruption in 1560-61 and another about the politics of papal elections.

  • The abuse crisis in the Catholic Church has focused attention on the unique sub-cultures that Catholic clergy have formed amongst themselves. Much of my recent work has come to concern the history of those sub-cultures and the communities that gave rise to them.

  • The Catholic Church likes to present itself as resolute, unchanging, and eternal. But it has often done this though quite specific kinds of appeals to its own past. My work on Catholic “medievalisms” looks at creative anachronism amongst Catholics and how it has helped them advance cultural or political agenda. It also looks at how others in society, such as queer activist group the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, exploit religious imagery from the Catholic past for their own ends.

For a full list of my academic publications please click here.

Writing

  • I wrote for ABC Religion & Ethics about Justin Welby’s legacy for the Church of England following his resignation as Archbishop of Canterbury in November 2024.

  • I wrote for ABC Religion & Ethics about the tension between Christian understandings about guilt’s non-heritability and growing demands for reparations for the historic slave trade.

  • I wrote for ABC Religion & Ethics about the controversial "Last Supper" at the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony and the worrying tendency of Christians to engage in competitive victimhood. Read here.

  • ACU proposes closing its Medieval and Early Modern Studies programme. This was my heartfelt defence of our work for The Conversation.

  • The Australian Catholic University has told staff it must make devastating cuts to teaching and research staff in Humanities subjects. This could imperil its place as a beacon for the Catholic tradition in Australia and is a personal tragedy for dozens of employees. Read my piece here at ABC Religion & Ethics.

  • I argued in The Sydney Morning Herald that His Majesty makes a mistake in trying to “modernise” the monarchy and dumb the Coronation down. I also wrote a further piece on “the meaning of the Coronation” for the ABC.

  • I wrote about the Gary Lineker affair for ABC Religion & Ethics. The problem with Lineker’s behaviour is not what he said but tone of how he said it. Read here.

  • Comedian Reuben Kaye made an off-colour joke on Network Ten’s The Project. I argued that serious and committed Christians ought to recognise a spoonful of satire is no threat to faith or salvation. Read more in The Sydney Morning Herald.

  • The Scottish National Party is a broad church, but some of its members seem to be finding difficulty in accepting that its breadth of opinion extends to traditional forms of Christianity. I explored the reasons for this and its implications for ABC Religion & Ethics.

  • My tribute to Her Majesty for the ABC at the time of her passing. I wrote a second piece for Eureka Street which reflected further on Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s public Christianity and the challenges facing King Charles as Defender of the Faith.

  • Jesus College, Cambridge has lost a dramatic court case which sought to remove a memorial in its chapel to a former benefactor accused of links with slavery. The case has not been much remarked on in Australia, but it holds invaluable lessons for our own “culture wars”. Read more in ABC Religion & Ethics.

  • By starving the humanities of cash and credo, the Coalition has abandoned its principles and become fundamentally un-liberal. Read more in The Australian.

  • The war in Ukraine has exposed complacency across the world. Australians should not exclude ourselves from those caught out. Read more in The Age/The Sydney Morning Herald.

  • John Dickson, a “public advocate for the Christian faith”, draws comfort from the fact that “the overwhelming consensus of university historians” believe Jesus to have been a real historical person. But he misrepresents us and does a disservice to important areas of scholarship. Read Dickson’s original piece, my response, his reply, and my second response.

  • The Religious Discrimination Bill 2021 legislative package dangerously elided social ethos and religious belief. In doing so it mistakenly elevated particular (sub)cultural characteristics to protected status. My colleagues Michael D. Barbezat (ACU), Timothy W. Jones (La Trobe), and I made a joint submission to the Parliamentary inquiry. Read our submission here.

The Catholic Church

  • I wrote for Eureka Street about what the excommunication of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò might mean for the Church.

  • Pope Francis has allowed confusion to spread over his precise stance on blessing gay couples. I analysed how we got here for ABC Religion & Ethics.

  • Pope Francis’ response to the threat of climate change in his Apostolic Exhortation “Laudate Deum” seems simple. But it may come with costs attached if it proves as divisive amongst Catholics as Francis of Assisi’s teachings did eight centuries ago. Read more in ABC Religion & Ethics.

  • In Mongolia, the Pope stood in reverence before a statue of Genghis Khan and later lauded his empire. I asked why the pope has such a soft spot for authoritarians and what it will mean for his moral authority. Read more in The Spectator (Australia).

  • Alberto Melloni, Professor of Church History at the University of Bologna, has set out a case for reforming how popes are chosen. I reflected on the conclave’s history and on Melloni’s ideas. Read more in Eureka Street.

  • Pope Francis is travelling to Mongolia to minister to its 1,500 Catholics. But what is at the root of his apparent fascination with all things Eastern? Read more in ABC Religion & Ethics.

  • Pope Francis surprised many Catholics by announcing a consistory for the creation of new cardinals. Some have already begun speculating on what these promotions might reveal about his ongoing priorities and what they might mean for any upcoming conclave. Read more at ABC Religion & Ethics.

  • Some believe that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s death has freed Pope Francis to advance a progressive agenda, but there is good reason to doubt that. Read more in Eureka Street.

  • Pope Francis weighed in once again on the Catholic Church’s seemingly interminable debate over homosexuality. Homosexuality may be a sin, he told the Associated Press, but it should not be a crime. I reflected for ABC Religion & Ethics on the history of this distinction and what that should mean for Francis’ invocation of it.

  • The sudden death of George Cardinal Pell shocked and saddened Catholics in Australia and around the world. Various print media asked me to provide comment including the ABC, BBC Worldwide, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, Le Monde, Agence France-Presse (AFP),The Guardian, Australian Financial Review, the Australian Associated Press (AAP), France 24, Paris Match, and The Catholic Leader. My comments were also reported in other international media including The New York Times, The Daily Mail, The Irish Times, The Church Times, and The Wire (India). I contributed op-eds to The Sydney Morning Herald, ABC Religion & Ethics, The Conversation, and Crikey.

  • Benedict XVI’s death will leave a huge void in the Catholic Church’s self-consciousness and historical memory. I refected on this complicated man and his difficult pontificate for the ABC (“The Pope of Paradox”, long version), for The Sydney Morning Herald (“The Pope of Paradox”, short version), and for The Spectator (Australia).

  • Pope Francis travelled to Canada in order to “beg forgiveness” for the abuse of Indigenous children that took place at schools run by the Catholic Church. But what will the long-term consequences of this gesture prove to be? Read more in ABC Religion & Ethics.

  • It’s a paradox of papal history that each pope can create as many cardinals as he likes, and yet no pope has ever been able to use that power to choose his own successor. Read more in the Catholic Herald.

  • Rome is currently rife with rumours of an impending papal resignation, but Pope Francis has been busy warning of a grave “threat to public health”. Read more in ABC Religion & Ethics.

  • News leaked that the US Supreme Court planed to overturn its most famous decision, that in Roe vs Wade (1973) which protects a pregnant woman's freedom to choose to have an abortion. I asked what that might mean for the Catholic Church? Read more in Eureka Street.

  • Cardinal George Pell took two German bishops to task over their exhortations for the Catholic Church to change its teachings about homosexuality. But where does his statement sit within the history of the Church’s teaching on sexuality? Read more in ABC Religion & Ethics.

  • Pope Francis has faced a difficult balancing act in his efforts to oppose the war in Ukraine. What have been the factors involved? Read more in Eureka Street.

  • A now former parish priest from Arizona wrongfully adapted the liturgical formula used to baptise. But is it really the case that God would not recognise the baptism of any departed soul because the priest, his servant, had messed up? Read more in ABC Religion & Ethics.

  • A law firm has presented findings in its investigation into historic sexual abuse in the Munich archdiocese. The report is shocking but what should our response be? Read more in La croix international.

  • Pope Francis has stirred controversy over remarks about the “selfishness” of those who prefer owning pets to having children. His position is consistent with his Franciscan emphasis on simple living, but not with the Church’s promotion of celibacy as the highest state of Christian being. Read more in ABC Religion & Ethics.

  • Pope Francis turned eighty-five tin December 2021, the same age at which his predecessor Benedict XVI “retired”. So does a dilemma now face him? Read more in Eureka Street.

  • Pope Francis caused a stir in the Vatican when he ordered cardinals and other senior officials to take a pay cut. Can he succeed it curtailing their agenda or lifestyles? Read more in ABC Religion & Ethics.

Features

  • The Catholic Church’s ban on wigs in the 18th century was as revealing of attitudes towards disability as vanity and sanctity. Read more in History Today.

  • Historians usually write about institutions as static entities, but what would it look like to write a history that captured their dynamism? I contributed an essay to Space & Society Magazine which explored this question using the Catholic Church as its example.

  • Michael Barbezat and I remembered Fabian LoSchiavo, the founder and “Mother Inferior” of Sydney’s Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for ABC Religion & Ethics. “If someone said to me back when I was a teenager, ‘oh would you like to be a nun? Maybe you should be a nun?’, it would have been too mad,” Fabian confessed in his last interview. “Then all of a sudden it did come about. Weird. It was good.”

  • March 2023 marked the 25th anniversary of the passing of twentieth-century England’s best-known (or most notorious) Catholic priest. I remembered Mgr Gilbey (1901–98) for The Catholic Herald.

  • A grave-countenanced mother holds a young man tenderly in her arms. This is David Edwards’ Untitled (aka “A.I.D.S. Pietà”), which Michael Barbezat and I have been studying. Read more in ABC Religion & Ethics.

  • 2022 marked the fortieth anniversary of a remarkable book by a generous and genial Catholic scholar. I wrote for the Catholic Herald (November issue) about Paolo Prodi and his path-breaking analysis Il sovrano pontefice (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1982). Unfortunately, this article is not yet available online.

  • Eclipsed by the more popular Saint Patrick, Gertrude of Nivelles is also celebrated on 17 March, a holy woman who somewhat inexplicably became the patron saint of cats. Read more in The Conversation.

  • The introduction of chocolate to the Catholic world caused a dilemma: could it be eaten? Should it be given up for Lent? Read more in History Today.

  • Olga of Kyiv is today recognised as one of Eastern Orthodoxy’s greatest saints – and her bloodthirsty tale is one of defiance and vengeance is worth remembering today. Read more in The Conversation.

  • Science has made a strong case for the year 536 as being one of the worst in human history, a year punctuated by volcanic eruptions, drought, famine, plague, and endless winter. Read more in The Conversation.

  • During lockdown, I pitted my wits against the cryptography of a seventeenth-century Spanish priest. Read more in The Journal of the History of Ideas blog.

  • 500 years after his death, I reflect on Leo X, the man who became a cardinal at just 13 – but had made neither priest nor bishop before he was elected pope. Read more in The Conversation.

  • A public monument, a place of memory and a crumbling testament to how far we’ve come. A centuries old church at Blythburgh in windy Suffolk, England is a world away. Read more in The Conversation.

  • Did Pope Joan exist? Probably not. But her legend has had important resonances for the Catholic Church. Read more in The Conversation.

Reviews

  • I reviewed Diarmaid MacCulloch's Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity for Australian Book Review. Read it here.

  • I reviewed Catherine Fletcher’s The Roads to Rome: A History for the Literary Review.

  • I reviewed Josephine Quinn’s How the World Made the West: A 4,000 Year History for Australian Book Review.

  • I reviewed Noel Malcolm’s new history of homosexuality in early modern Europe for Australian Book Review.

  • I reviewed Mary Beard’s new book on Ruling the Ancient Roman World for Australian Book Review.

  • Pius XII bears the dubious distinction of being the twentieth century’s most discredited Catholic and perhaps also the millennium’s most controversial pontiff. I reviewed David Kertzer’s new book about him for Australian Book Review.

  • The visual has always held a special place in Catholic devotion. Suzanna Ivanič’s new book argues for the richness of its subject matter through the ages and emphasises Catholic art’s sheer variety of modes and forms of expression. Read more in the Catholic Herald.

  • Oxford is not what it was once. We scholars swot too hard and even the Bullingdon has lost its brio. My review of Daisy Dunn’s Not Far From Brideshead observes a cottage industry in aesthetes’ nostalgia for the time when students could still be boys, and boys could be Sebastian Flyte. Read more in Australian Book Review.

  • We live in an age that worships data, but when quantitative scientists use trendy tools to legitimise very old preconceptions, it is as if movements that sought to ground scholarship in careful, close-read qualitative analysis never happened. Read more in Australian Book Review.

  • Few Australians today will have heard of the Empress Maria Theresa but this matriarch for a nation bestrode the eighteenth-century stage like a dumpy colossus. Read more in Australian Book Review.

  • What makes a man become a priest? The Catholic Church would do well to look again at this story about one remarkable man’s inspiring but implausible path to the priesthood. Read more in Australian Book Review: Arts.

  • Catholicism gets a bad rap when it comes to sex these days. Paul Verhoeven’s “historically inspired” film explores the hypocrisies that arise from its callow credos. Read more in Australian Book Review: Arts.

  • George Pell has recently published the journal he wrote during his thirteen months in prison. As an historical document it certainly deserves full appraisal. Read more in ABC Religion & Ethics.

  • To kidnap one pope might be regarded as unfortunate; to kidnap two looks like a pattern of abusive behaviour. Ambrogio A. Caiani tells the story of Napoleon’s second plot, to capture Pius VII in 1809. Read more in Australian Book Review.

  • The first encounter between a pope and Britons was in the late second century. That it was so obscure is apposite, for Stella Fletcher shows how politicians, churchmen, and historians have argued over Anglo-papal relations ever since. Read more in The Times Literary Supplement.

Broadcasting

  • I recorded an episode of ABC's God Forbid with Sami Shah discussing our age of perpetual outrage and how Christians should respond to offence. Listen here.

  • I talked with the hosts of America Magazine’s Jesuitical podcast for young Catholics about the quirky history and future of papal conclaves. Listen here.

  • The medieval is still modern I told James Carlton as part of a panel on ABC Radio National’s God Forbid. Listen Here.

  • I spoke to Andrew West on ABC Radio National’s The Religion and Ethics Report about the Scottish politician Kate Forbes and what her case reveals about how much personal faith we now permit in those who take part in political life. Listen here.

  • I spoke to a broad range of domestic and international news media following Cardinal Pell’s sudden death in January 2023. Television interviews included CNN, ABC 24, ABC Breakfast, the Seven Network, the Nine Network, Network 10, SBS, Sky News (Australia), and Agence France-Presse (AFP). I also gave radio interviews to ABC Radio National, The Briefing (podcast), and ABC, SBS, and independent stations across Australia. You can listen to one of my ABC RN interviews here.

  • I gave twenty interviews to Australian and international media, including the ABC, the Nine Network , Network 10, SBS, and Sky News Australia, to provide commentary on Pope Benedict’s death and funeral. Clips available include when I spoke to ABC News Breakfast about Pope Benedict’s declining health and what he means to Catholics, and when I spoke to ABC News Radio about how the world may remember him. I also recorded interviews for SBS Italian in Italian and SBS Spanish in Spanish.

  • I gave a series of interviews to Australian television stations (ABC, the Seven Network, Network 10) as part of ACU’s contribution to coverage of Her Majesty’s death and funeral. The topics included her life of service, what she meant to Christians, and the symbolism and ritual of her funeral in Westminster Abbey.

  • I talked to Richard Glover on ABC Sydney’s Drive programme about a group of “gay male nuns” who reclaimed a Catholic past for advocacy and activism. Listen here.

  • Australia, much like the rest of the world, is experiencing a critical shortage of priests. I took part in an episode of ABC National Radio’s God Forbid which discussed the problem.

  • I told Tom Elliott that studying European history would provide greater understanding into the motives of Vladimir Putin and the Russian state. Listen here on 3AW Melbourne Drive.

  • I read my review of Paul Verhoeven’s film Benedetta for the Australian Book Review podcast.

  • I spoke with Amanda Vanstone about the year 536 - the worst time to be alive in recorded history. Listen here on ABC National Radio: Counterpoint.

    Listen here to a different interview on this topic with ABC Radio Canberra.

  • I took part in a discussion about the origins of papal infallibility and its effect on the Catholic Church. Listen to BBC Radio 4: In Our Time.

  • The Spanish empire was one of the world’s most significant. Listen to my commentary as part of a documentary produced by Pilot Productions.

Contact me

I believe passionately in the value of Public History and I’m always looking to do media work and write commissioned essays in areas where I have relevant expertise. Do please get in touch via email.