Vatican Access with Robert Duncan
Jun 10, 2026 · 49 min · 11 segments
Father Tony Lusvardi is a Jesuit priest, sacramental theologian, and professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. His work focuses on liturgy, the sacraments, Christian salvation, as well…
Tony LusvardiGuest
Robert DuncanHost
I mean, you're looking at the landscape of Barcelona, and the city is all fairly level, and then there's this [laughs] this giant building which doesn't look like anything else that you've ever seen right there in the middle of it.
For more than a century, Antoni Gaudí's unfinished masterpiece has risen above Barcelona, a city shaped by his imagination and transformed by the forces of modernity that many believed would leave Christianity behind.
You feel like you're in a redwood forest because it's so high, and there are so many pillars.
You're looking up in the forest, the light is filtering in through the trees, and you're just in a new world.
Father Tony Lusvardi is a professor of sacramental theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and a scholar of worship, beauty, and sacred space.
What he found was more than an architectural achievement, a vision of faith that speaks directly to an age convinced religion is in decline.
The way that we need to evangelize and to catechize and to form Christians in this new era that's opening is in some way embodied in it.
Because there's a great irony, right, in building an enormous church when people don't go to church anymore.
Yet the church endured, and today, as many once again predict the decline of Christianity in the West, the Sagrada Familia stands as a reminder that history is often longer and stranger than its critics imagine.
The, the frame of this story is a little bit broader than, than what you're seeing."
Are you optimistic that this is more than the equivalent of a museum visit for most people? This is Vatican Access.
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I mean, you're looking at the landscape of Barcelona, and the city is all fairly level, and then there's this [laughs] this giant building which doesn't look like anything else that you've ever seen right there in the middle of it.
For more than a century, Antoni Gaudí's unfinished masterpiece has risen above Barcelona, a city shaped by his imagination and transformed by the forces of modernity that many believed would leave Christianity behind.
You feel like you're in a redwood forest because it's so high, and there are so many pillars.
You're looking up in the forest, the light is filtering in through the trees, and you're just in a new world.
Father Tony Lusvardi is a professor of sacramental theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and a scholar of worship, beauty, and sacred space.
What he found was more than an architectural achievement, a vision of faith that speaks directly to an age convinced religion is in decline.
The way that we need to evangelize and to catechize and to form Christians in this new era that's opening is in some way embodied in it.
Because there's a great irony, right, in building an enormous church when people don't go to church anymore.
Yet the church endured, and today, as many once again predict the decline of Christianity in the West, the Sagrada Familia stands as a reminder that history is often longer and stranger than its critics imagine.
The, the frame of this story is a little bit broader than, than what you're seeing."
Are you optimistic that this is more than the equivalent of a museum visit for most people? This is Vatican Access.
