"What's Hidden In The Vatican?" FACE-Off Bishop Barron Vs Michael Knowles
What secrets lie behind the walls of the Vatican? In this explosive episode of FACE-Off, Michael Knowles goes head-to-head with Bishop Robert Barron to debate the mysteries, myths, and facts surrounding the smallest—and most powerful—country in the world. From the hidden archives and ancient relics to alleged conspiracies and divine revelations, no topic is off-limits. Is the Vatican hiding something the world deserves to know? Watch now and decide for yourself.
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These are questions that take cultures thousands of years to answer.
During answer the call, I take questions from people just like you about their problems, opportunities, challenges, or when they simply need advice.
How do I balance all of this?
Grief, responsibility.
How do you repair this kind of damage?
My daughter, Michaela, guides the conversations as we hopefully help people navigate their lives.
Everyone has their own destiny.
Everyone.
you Thank you.
Which of the following is a popular but unproven conspiracy theory about the Vatican archive, that they house a time machine.
They contain proof that aliens existed on earth.
They hold the lost gospel of Jesus.
It has the Ark of the Covenant.
I've never heard the alien.
That's kind of funny that there's the Area 51.
The best is the Ark of the Covenant, if they really have the Ark of the Covenant, which is some plausibility.
The Vatican does not have aliens, correct?
There's no...
In preparation for the Pope and the Fuhrer, the secret Vatican files of World War II, streaming exclusively on Daily Wire plus August 13th, we're stepping inside the smallest country in the world with some of the biggest secrets, Vatican City.
Our competitors?
In one corner, Michael Knowles, who's here to uncover the real third secret of FADMA and promote his new documentary.
And he's all out of promo scripts.
And in the other corner, Bishop Robert Baron, a man who knows the Vatican and its secret archives so well, he might just break news and reveal lost secrets right here on this very show.
Hopefully.
Maybe.
Please.
I hope so.
Let's get into it.
This is Face Off Vatican Mysteries.
Gentlemen, thank you so much for being here.
Ben, thanks for having me on my own show.
How does a Protestant know about the third secret of Fatima?
I didn't know you knew what that was.
Google.
You know, there's some wild, wild theories about it.
And hopefully Bishop Barron can fill us in on it.
Before we get started, I have to ask about the premise here.
The premise was you're going to bring me on for Vatican trivia, and I have to play against His Excellency Bishop Robert Barron, not only a member of the Episcopate, one of the most knowledgeable and scholarly men of the church today.
Is that right?
Yeah, but not about Vatican Sydney.
So I've been to Vatican City, but all the details of it.
I don't know how good I'll be.
Is which subway line goes to?
I don't know, actually.
You may have an event.
I don't think Michael's been there.
Michael, have you actually been to Vatican City?
Yes, I have.
Thank you very much.
Of course.
Not recently.
Not recently.
All right.
So the rules, I'll read a question.
You'll have 30 seconds to write down your response.
At the end, whoever loses will do a commercial for the other person.
All right.
Okay.
Are you ready?
What is the commercial for a bishop?
I don't know.
Like, I'm going to promote the apostles at the various books, the fantastic books that Bishop Barron has written.
The fire or fire.
Okay, fair enough.
You're going to figure it out.
All right.
Here we go.
Question one.
How many of the 95 theses can you write?
Go.
How many do I choose to write?
How about that?
You have to write them down.
I don't know any of them.
How many do I choose to burn?
Here's the real one.
Okay.
Question one.
If you walked around the full border of Vatican City, how long would it take you to walk at a brisk pace?
A. Go ahead.
I rode my bike around Vatican City at the end of a trip from Paris to Rome with this friend of mine, and we did a victory lap around Vatican City.
So I can answer by, so this is by foot, though, huh?
At a brisk pace, by foot.
We have multiple choices.
Go ahead.
A, 10 minutes.
B, 40 minutes.
C, 90 minutes.
D, two hours.
All right.
And, you know, I'm a New Yorker, so you got to shave off.
I'm doing it in New York time.
That shaves off 10%.
You ready?
I'm ready.
Still writing.
All right, Mike, what do you got?
I would say 90 minutes around.
Bishop Baron?
I said B. B is correct.
All right.
Yeah.
That's not a good start.
Well, I did ride my bike around.
I can tell you that.
It took about 10 minutes, maybe.
Yeah, actually, Vatican City is only about 0.6 miles around, smaller than most people.
Is it really?
All right.
Huh, okay.
That's bad.
All right, number two.
How long did it take to build the current St. Peter's Basilica?
A, 151 years.
B, 59 years.
C, 88, D, 120.
What did you write, Michael?
Well, he has the letter.
No, I didn't do a number.
You gave a letter.
What is it?
I said A. I said D, 120.
Bishop Barron's running away with this.
It is D 120.
All right.
That was my second choice.
Do I get partial credit?
No.
This is bad.
Construction began in 1506 under Pope Julius II.
Yeah.
And then early, what, 1600s, they finished it.
Yeah, 1626.
I'm going to be demoted to whatever is below laity.
I don't know if there's anything, but I might, I don't know.
I don't know how.
Alter boy.
All right.
Roughly roughly how many printed books and manuscripts are housed in the Vatican library?
Oh, my gosh.
This is roughly.
A, 40,000.
B, 250,000.
C, 800,000.
D, 1.1 million.
Well.
Bishop Barrett, what do you have?
I had D. I chose the highest one.
Oh, thank goodness.
Yeah.
All right.
So we rise or fall together on this one.
I said D. That was smart, Michael, because you're both correct.
Oh, God.
All right.
I figured the highest number, yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Michael, I don't know why you're doing something.
I think you should have really like prayed before we started doing this.
I do.
I pray a lot.
Not enough.
Not enough, certainly.
You know, it would help you pray more.
Oh, that was a good segue that I totally missed.
Go check out Hallow.
Right now, you got to go to hallow.com slash Knowles.
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That doesn't refer to me.
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All right.
Number four, in miles.
In miles, okay.
How long is the shelving space inside the Vatican Library and Apostolic Archive combined?
Now, this will be the closest without going over.
In miles.
In miles.
Closest without going over.
There's no multiple choices.
Almost.
Oh, I see.
Okay.
And the Apostolic Archive is what we used to call the secret, the secret archive.
That's correct.
Well, have you seen it?
Me?
Oh, Bishop Aaron.
Yeah, no, they don't let me into it.
I've been into the parts of it.
Yeah.
Ah.
So he'll probably have a better guess on this than you.
No, but that's a total guess.
How many miles?
You were like counting off the shelves.
Like, all right, if we could see it.
How many miles is the entire Vatican Library and Apostolic Archive combined?
How many times around Vatican City does it go?
This is the question.
All right, 10 seconds.
Either way, DW's budget has to be pretty weak.
You didn't even get me a marker with ink in it.
Yeah, my mark is very good here at Word on Fire.
I think we need to hire some of the producers from Word on Fire.
I know.
3.1.
He said 3.1.
Oh, I said 5 total goes.
The correct answer is over 50 miles.
Bishop Aaron takes it again.
I win.
Okay.
50 miles.
Seriously?
Yeah.
Okay.
How high are they stacking them?
You said all the way around is 0.6 miles.
So how high are those walls?
There must be so many shelves running through there in the archive.
All the manners is that I won.
That's the only thing that anyone's going to remember.
That's all that manners.
I'm glad I got one point that Bishop Aaron also got.
That's good.
That's a good one.
Yeah.
What's the current score?
A billion to one.
No, it's three to one.
4-1, Bishop.
Okay.
4-1.
Who's counting?
here we go.
Which of the following is a popular but unproven conspiracy theory about the Vatican archives?
A, that they house a time machine.
B, they contain proof that aliens existed on earth.
C, they hold the lost gospel of Jesus.
D, it has the Ark of the Covenant.
Or E, all of the above.
So a popular but unproven conspiracy theory.
Yes, popular but unproven.
It has to be popular, though.
Okay, well, I think I'll.
Say D, the Ark of the Covenant.
I'm going to say all of the above.
Don't do this to me, Ben.
Don't do this to me.
It is E. No, it's not.
What are you talking about?
No, because I've heard at least a couple of those.
That's why the Ark of the Covenant for sure and the alien life and all that.
So I figured, why not all the above?
I've never heard the alien.
That's kind of funny that there's the Area 51 of Italy.
Okay.
Bishop Baron, can you spill some tea on the time machine?
Because this one actually has some legs and some stories behind it.
Have you looked into this at all?
Yeah.
No, I must say that one I don't really know.
The time machine.
Yeah, there was like a cardinal system that left and he wrote, drew what it looked like and claims that they had this time machine down in the base.
It was wild.
This is wild story.
The Vatican hasn't.
Yeah, that the Vatican has, and there's a drawing of it.
The best is the Ark of the Covenant.
If they really have the Ark of the Covenant, which is some plausibility.
Yeah.
Yes.
If it was still around at the time of the Roman, you know, destruction of Jerusalem.
And that's the question.
Don't they say if the Ark of the Covenant still exists anywhere, it's either in the Vatican or Ethiopia?
Doesn't Ethiopia claim to have it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
In fact, I was not long ago, I was with an Ethiopian priest, and we talked about that.
And he said, oh, of course, we have it in Ethiopia.
Did you, I wouldn't want you to call your friend a liar.
Do you find, give any credence to these theories?
I think it was lost around the time of Jeremiah.
We don't know where it is.
I think either he hid it someplace and it remains hidden or it was destroyed at the time of the captivity.
That's our best guess.
There's the Tannis theory because, of course, Jeremiah goes to Egypt and likely died there, was killed there.
Did he take it with him?
Was it taken with exiles?
Who knows?
Interesting.
We have the new Ark of the Covenant anyway.
So it's just a historical curiosity as far as I'm concerned.
I mean, we have the true ark.
The true ark.
The true ark.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Do you know where Ben Shapiro thinks it is?
No.
Where does he think?
He thinks you guys have it.
He thinks it's in the Vatican.
Oh, I got to remember.
I think he said that on a yes or no one.
He did, yeah.
Well, it's a theory.
And if it were still around Jerusalem when the Romans came and destroyed Jerusalem, they certainly would have taken it and they'd taken it back to Rome.
And then the church, you know, plausibly might have gotten a hold of it.
But who knows?
Yeah.
Okay.
But Mary's the true Ark of the Covenant.
That's right.
That's the most important thing.
That's all that matters.
It's all that matters.
It's really all I care about with regard to this question, though I do have to ask, the Vatican does not have aliens, correct?
There's no...
I met some weird people in the Vatican.
I don't know about aliens, though.
And what we also know is that Michael's still currently getting destroyed as we go into Nevada.
No, okay, that's all that matters.
You don't need to update.
I remember.
I remember.
You don't need to update me.
All right.
Which pope commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?
Is it A, Pope Innocent III?
B, Pope Leo X. C, Pope Julius II.
D, Pope Clement VII.
All right.
Man, this is so embarrassing.
This is so embarrassing.
I am a Philistine.
I am.
Wow.
Well, what do you have, Michael?
Let's let His Excellency go first.
Okay.
It's C. Was that Julius?
Yeah, Julius.
Oh, thank goodness.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
All right.
I thought so.
And I didn't want to be laughed out of the room.
Michael, you thought it was Julius?
I remembered Julius.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right.
What's hidden beneath St. Peter's covenant?
Oh, sorry.
We're on the next question.
Go ahead.
There's something else you want to add.
You want to give Michael another lesson?
No.
All right.
What is hidden beneath St. Peter's Basilica?
Ah.
You'll have to be more specific, I think.
Do we have options or we just have to say what's going on?
No, it's just whatever this answer.
Is this like however many things you can name?
You get that many points.
Well, this is like the main thing.
If you Google what's underneath St. Peter's Basilica, this is what comes up.
There's two possible answers I'll take.
All right.
What do you have, Michael?
He said the relics of the first pope, St. Peter.
Bishop Baron.
Well, I said the scavi, which means the excavations under St. Peter's.
The correct answer that I have is first century necropolis and the bones of St. Peter.
Hey, I mean, so Bishop Baron is literally correct.
I don't know if I get the points.
The Scavi, that's what it uncovered was that first century cemetery.
So I think I deserve credit for that.
But Your Excellency, Mr. Davies is not cultured enough to have used that nice foreign word.
So can I get double points for that instead?
Yeah, because that word could mean whatever you tell me because I have no idea that my Latin is so bad in Italian.
I believe you that it's underneath there.
So we can take that.
I deserve some credit for that answer.
I'm not going to rest until I get some credit for that answer.
You know, I was actually down there, Michael.
Have you been to the Scavi tour?
I've never been.
It's spectacular.
They take you down there, and it does indeed reveal this first century cemetery with little roads and graves.
And they lead you finally to where they are pretty sure they found the tomb of St. Peter.
That's amazing.
Actually, just yesterday I was having lunch with a friend of mine who, you know, in recent decades, Catholics don't seem to care as much about relics as we used to for the first roughly 2,000 years of church history.
And so priests and other people have given her relics.
And I actually saw what purports to be a relic of St. Peter.
And she has some certificates of authenticity and things like that.
But it struck me because modern Christians and even Catholics today, they look at relics like it's kind of weird or idolatrous or superstitious or something.
But it seems to me Christians have always had a great reverence for relics.
Go back to the Acts of the Apostles.
You can see people going up to St. Paul and touching him with handkerchiefs and all that.
No, it's a very ancient practice.
It's all over the church fathers, the ancient church.
It's an extension of the incarnational principle, right?
That God really became one of us.
And then the saints who are aligned to Christ, it's sort of a continuation of that incarnational principle.
And so in reverencing the bones or the flesh or the remnants of saints, you know, we're reverencing Christ ultimately.
I was just in France.
We were filming on this cathedral documentary I'm doing.
And in Amiens Cathedral is the relic of the skull of St. John the Baptist.
It's like the front part of the skull, which came down me in 1206 from Constantinople.
And then, you know, so they were very big in the Middle Ages.
People loved relics.
And still to this day, talk to Catholic, they love collecting relics.
Yes, I was actually, my friend who I had lunch with, she was very kind and gave me two first-class relics, one of St. Jerome and one of St. Thomas Aquinas.
And I was, you know, I said, oh, that's so kind of you.
And I found, I don't know, especially because I'm a revert, so I have to learn everything that I should have learned when I was 10.
I find the veneration of relics is really helpful in my own prayer life.
Can I tell you a story about a Thomas relic?
So this is a year ago, March.
I was in Rome for this conference on Aquinas, and we went down to Fosanova where he died.
And there was a great mass, and Cardinal Perilin said the Mass.
He was a Papabole in the recent election.
And then right, I didn't even notice it till halfway through the Mass, right in front of the altar, they had the Fossanova skull.
So the people there claim that when Thomas's bones were moved to Toulouse, that's where most of them are now in the south of France, they kept the skull because that's where he died in Fosanova.
So they have it to this day.
And it was brought by car through the city.
And there's this photograph of the driver and next to him is the skull of Aquinas.
And then it was up in front of the altar.
And it's very moving, you know.
So there are two skulls competing for authenticity of Aquinas.
And people say, well, he was so smart he needed two hands.
But one could not have possibly held it all.
Right.
Right.
So during the Mass, I remember just sort of noticing the skull Of my great spiritual hero, Thomas Aquinas.
I had this thought, you know, in my office here, I have a Caravaggio St. Jerome writing as a memento mori that I should do my work so that I don't waste all my life.
And then I, and I found I even put when my friend gave me these relics, I thought these are two wonderful relics to have when you're trying to write because St. Jerome and St. Thomas are that they're definitely a little more prolific than me.
I crank out three tweets.
I'm basically spent for the day.
No, they both are extraordinary, you know, especially Aquinas in a short career.
He dies at 49.
Yeah.
So his writing career is about 25 years.
And he wrote a library of books at the highest level of literary and philosophical achievement.
So, I mean, he's one of the great geniuses, dictated to three or four secretaries simultaneously, like a chess master, you know, moving from chessboard to chessboard.
He would dictate, you know, an Aristotle commentary, a Bible commentary, part of the Summa, and then a sermon or something.
And he would just go around like that dictating.
And they say in the afternoon, he took a little nap and would dictate in his sleep.
That is actually at the Daily Wire.
That is how I do my tweets.
That happens.
Okay, talk about the American Eagle Jeans ad, you, and now you're going to talk.
Yes.
It's pretty impressive.
I'm sorry that I even have to continue the game.
It was so fascinating.
Well, I'm just trying to distract from my losing.
I guess we're out of time.
Sorry to buddy.
Well, I'm sure you just want to continue because you're winning by such a large margin, Bishop.
Let's continue.
Yeah, we'll just knock this out.
Number eight, what year did the name Vatican Secret Archives change to the Vatican Apostolic Archive?
Post this without going over.
Without going over.
Yeah.
I'm going to say.
Without going over.
And the reasoning was citing the negative connotation of the word secret.
Yeah.
I don't think secrets are bad.
I think discretion is good and people don't have enough of it these days.
Bishop Barrett.
I'm guessing 1985 during John Paul II's time.
I think it's more recent.
I think it's 2013.
Correct answer is 2019.
Just really recent.
No way.
2019 that recently?
Yeah.
Yep.
Okay.
I thought it was in the Francisco point.
He did.
Well, I mean, it makes sense because he's done so much research in the secret Vatican archives, especially during World War II, actually, Michael.
That's true.
And you can all watch that show, The Pope and the Führer, the secret Vatican files of World War II, at Daily Wire Plus, August 13th.
I want to share something that I'm very proud to have led here at Daily Wire Plus.
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Looks like a great show.
I'm glad you're doing that because there's a great calumny against Pius XII and against a lot of Catholics at that time.
So I'm glad you're doing that.
Yeah, I was thrilled when we could release this because of all the maligned men of the 20th century, some people earned their reputation, but Pius XII has just really been slandered, in my view.
And so I hope that people can enjoy it when it comes out.
No, good.
I think that's important to rehabilitate him because it was a great calumny against him.
I was just in Münster, Germany, you know, before Rome, I was in Münster and I went to the cathedral there.
And there's the grave of Cardinal von Gallen and his nickname, he was known as the Lion of Munster because he spoke out so strongly against Hitler.
So there were some very courageous figures, not to mention the great martyrs like Nietzsche and people like that.
So no, it's important to round out that story, certainly.
Yes.
And you can round it out in your own estimation, everyone out there, if you just tune in, Daily Ware Plus.
How's that?
That's correct.
And speaking of popes who have passed, how many popes are buried underneath St. Peter's Basilica?
Would it be A, 5, B, 12, C, 45, D over 90?
It's like the way you said D makes me think it's D. Oh, you know me too well.
It is D, gentlemen.
So we both got it.
Okay.
All right.
That's good.
Over 19 is my lead.
You do.
All right.
Number two.
There's a sign there.
They say, oh, here are the popes buried in St. Peter, this huge line.
So that's what I knew it was a big number.
You know, I was just, I was in Rome very briefly with my family about a month ago.
And it was so brief, in fact, that we didn't really have time to get to the Vatican.
We were staying on the other side of the city.
But we were near the papal basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.
So I said, okay, good.
And we had to fly out for Sunday morning.
So we went to a vigil mass on Saturday.
And we're there.
And I said, man, there's a huge line to get into Mass.
I'm so glad people are showing up to go to Mass.
It's a Jubilee year.
But then I remembered, oh, Pope Francis is entombed here.
And so there was a separate line just to go see the Pope's grave.
One, yesterday was the feast of the dedication of St. Mary Major.
That's right.
That's right.
And it was Our Lady of the Snows.
You know that story about August 5th, you're at the height of Roman, you know, tropical summer.
And so way back when, when they were designing that building, snow fell anomalously on August 5th at the outline of the basilica.
That's the story.
So she's known as Our Lady of the Snows.
And they do it in the liturgy, right?
Don't they drop rose petals?
Yes, yeah, yeah.
And that was built right after the Council of Ephesus when Mary was declared Theotokos, mother of God.
So it's the first great church in the West dedicated to Mary.
But that's an important kind of theological point that church is making.
And Francis loved it.
He visited there all the time, and that's where he's buried.
This is also a point where sometimes when I'm chatting with my many Protestant friends, some of them are more pro-Mary than others.
Some are decidedly anti-Mary.
But sometimes you'll hear, say, well, don't you know she's the mother of God?
I mean, don't you think you should show respect to your degenerate friend Billy Bob?
You're nice to his mother.
Shouldn't you be nice to the mother of our Lord?
And they say, well, she's the mother of Jesus, not the mother of ours.
That's an Astorian heresy, though.
That was what they thought about at the Council of Ephesus.
Because Astoria said just that.
Call her, if you want, Christotakos.
She's the mother of Christ or Anthropotokos.
She's the mother of the human nature.
But the church said, no, she's properly called Theotokos, the bearer of God.
So that, no, it's making an important Christological point.
If you believe in the divinity of Jesus, right?
Jesus is divine.
Mary's his mother.
Well, then she has to be called mother of God, as sort of surprising as that title might be.
But that's the ancient church.
We're not talking the Reformation.
That's in the early 5th century.
They're making that determination.
But also going to the Bible, I say to my Protestant friends, Mary says, from this day, all generations will call me blessed.
Well, that's the biblical witness that she's predicting, encouraging all generations will call her blessed.
So, you know.
That's right.
And there's no way to resolve modern debate.
If we can't even resolve debates from the Council of Ephesus, for goodness sakes, how are we going to get to the modern stuff?
You know, we got to, all right, we figured that one out.
Now we move on.
Well, that's settled doctrine.
That's the way you should look at The council, that's settled doctrine.
There's no more debate about that.
Like, you can't say, let's go back behind Chalcedon.
Maybe Jesus wasn't the hypostatic union of two natures in one person.
No, you have to say that.
You can further amplify it and deepen it, but you have to say that.
So, Mary, the mother of God, that's settled Christian doctrine.
That's right.
Luther loved Mary.
Luther got very strong things to say about Mary.
Absolutely.
No, I think I'm noticing even in this moment of the culture we're in where a lot of people are becoming Catholic, a little bit Eastern Orthodox too, but a lot of Catholic.
I've noticed even many of my pretty hardcore Protestant reform friends, they're coming to realize that there's something to venerating the Mother of God.
Well, didn't Charlie Kirk just do that?
Didn't he just say something nice about the importance of venerating Mary?
But again, that's a deeply ancient Christian practice, and it's grounded in people like Luther.
I'm not sure about Calvin and Mary, but Luther certainly had strong things to say about Mary.
Yeah, that's the thing.
I don't point to the Protestant revolutionaries most of the time, but if they back up the point I'm trying to make, I do cite them.
I'm happy to do it in that case.
Another hotly debated topic is the Vatican's top 45 films.
That's the next question.
Which of these films was not officially screened or included on the Vatican's list of 45 important films?
Okay.
It was not.
A, the Godfather.
B, Flowers of St. Francis.
C, Schindler's List.
D, 2001, A Space Odyssey.
Which was not included on their list.
It was not on the 45.
What was the second one?
The Flowers of St. Francis.
It'd be kind of weird if that were the only one they didn't include.
You know, they put the Godfather.
They put a mob movie on there, but they don't.
Hmm.
Bishop Baron seems very confident.
Yeah.
Not really.
I'm just getting.
I said C, Schindler's List.
I said A, the Godfather.
The correct answer is A, the Godfather.
All right.
It's not, it's just that Schindler's List.
It's not, it's just, I'm not saying it's like a terrible movie.
It's just to me, it doesn't rise to the level of greatness of a godfather or or I vaguely remembered that list when it came out.
That's right.
And I think I remembered Schindler's list being on it.
Okay.
Oh, that's brutal.
I think Clavin hates that movie.
He says it totally misunderstands the entirety of the war bait.
I think I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I just did.
It's not too bad.
If Drew, if you disagree with me, correct me.
Yeah, Schindler's list.
I've never been to the Vatican either.
I think I have no idea these questions.
Number 11.
I've never been to the Vatican, huh?
Go ahead.
Which artist designed the grand colonnade that surrounds St. Peter's Square?
A, Michelangelo.
B, Dante Bramante.
My Italian's great.
C, Raphael.
D, Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Please tell me it's Bernini.
Is it Bernini?
It's Bernini.
It is, in fact, Bernini.
When you stumbled over 12, which of these does the Vatican have?
A, its own telescope and its astronomical observatory.
B, its own McDonald's.
C, its own spa.
D, its own Starbucks.
There's such good coffee in Italy.
Why would they need a Starbucks?
I love Starbucks, but...
What do you have, Michael?
So it's the golden arches.
They don't have a McDonald's.
This is the one that does have.
Oh, that it does.
You said that it does have.
So it does have.
Oh, at the observatory.
That's what I had, the observatory, which is out of Castle Gandolfo.
It's not at the Vatican, but it's considered Vatican territory.
That makes more sense.
I was wondering where the Vatican says.
Yeah, isn't it in like Phoenix or like the actual telescopes in Fiennes?
Well, there's one in Phoenix too, or outside of Tucson.
But the big ones are Castle Gandolfo.
Oh, that makes so much.
I've said I've been to the Vatican, I don't know, three times.
Maybe I never got the Vatican quarter pounder, the Vatican, the big Vat.
I thought the spa might throw you off, but you're such a big Starbucks fan.
I'm like, maybe, maybe.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
Number 13.
This is a true or false.
Can the Vatican's telescope see the Apollo mission equipment on the moon?
The Apollo, oh, like the remnants of the Apollo?
Yeah, the Atlantic equipment.
Can the telescope see that?
Can the Vatican telescope see that?
Of our alleged trip to the moon?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, Michael.
Yes?
Bishop Aaron.
I'm going to say it was false that I can't see that.
That's correct.
Oh, man.
Come on.
But it's not just y'all's telescope.
Even Earth's most powerful telescope can't resolve that.
I was trying to imagine a telescope being able to see to that degree.
Oh.
So, all right.
So that backs up my first insinuation.
Yeah.
It was obviously totally fake, right?
We can't even see the telescope.
All right.
What is the name of this building inside Vatican City?
What is the name of this building?
I hope that someday the name will be the former building that stood on this location when it's renovated.
This is one of the more modern buildings, but there's always Michael's.
I know your building very well.
Yeah.
It's known for its modern design and massive seating capacity.
Over 6,000.
I don't think I'm at any risk of becoming Pope, but if I ever do, that will be known as a ruin, actually, and will be rebuilt.
Technically, you could, right, Michael?
You could theoretically.
I would baptize Catholic male.
But I would then have to have holy orders, wouldn't I?
Once I was elected.
My wife would not be.
She actually might be thrilled.
I don't know.
You're right.
That might be a good vacation plan for you.
Okay, you go to Rome.
What is the name, Michael?
Is that Paul VI Auditorium?
The Paul VI Audience Hall.
That is correct.
Yeah, okay.
All right.
All right.
I spent two months there, the synod, the last two October.
I spend six days a week, eight hours a day in that hall.
It's not my favorite place.
No.
You know, I'm not asking you to tell tales out of school or anything, Your Excellency, but there's a lot of great art and architecture in the history of the Catholic Church.
I don't think that the Paul VI audience hall makes the first 2,000 buildings list.
It was of its time.
Paul VI himself was a devotee of modern art and thought, let's bring the modern sensibility.
And he knew people like Jacques Marie Tan, who very much appreciated Georges Rouault and people like that.
So he did have, I think, he had good taste in modern art, but that was so much of its time where it looks like something from the space age.
And it's, to me, not a very warm space.
And I don't like that kind of metallic sculpture behind where the Pope sits.
So, no, I'm not the biggest fan of it.
Yeah.
To me, the good taste in modern art is kind of like being the best basketball player among the pygmies, you know, but listen, de gusti busno disputant de mest, as far as I'm sure.
Well, yeah, I think some of, like go to the east wing of the National Gallery in Washington.
You'll see some of like the early Picasso's like from the 1920s and some of them are very fine.
But yeah, that hall to me does not speak the best of the Catholic artistic tradition.
The most diplomatic phrase I've ever heard in my life.
Well, speaking of art, it's the last question.
Roughly how many works of art are housed in the Vatican Museum collection?
Closest without going over.
All right.
You have to just give the number.
How many works of art are in there?
And we know your least favorite.
What about these other ones?
All right, Michael.
What do you have?
I said Aleph Nal, a countably infinite number of works of art.
You get no credit for that.
Is it highest without going over?
How did you go?
I said 1 million.
Somebody has a guess.
What's the answer?
Around 70,000, only 20,000 are on public display, There's much more than that.
20,000 are on display.
There's other ones that are hidden away.
So if it's closest without going over, then both a million and countable infinity are.
So then we're even on that one.
You are even.
Yeah, we both went over.
Okay.
Which means Bishop Aaron ran away with it.
So Michael, would you please give us a 30-second commitment?
Hold on.
You used to do a thing, Ben, where you'd say, whoever won, you say you could double or nothing on a bonus question.
What happened to that?
I don't think there's any chance that Bishop Baron would want to gamble away.
Amazing victory.
Truly astonishing.
Because he's an intelligent man.
Yeah, this is the greatest victory we've ever had on FaceOp.
Oh, is there a picture?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's bad.
I think I may have automatically just I might have automatically become a Lutheran because of that.
That's bad.
I got to, oh man, I got to put in a little work next time.
Well, in any case, I can very sincerely say that you should all, well, you should go to church and you should avail yourself of the sacraments.
And, you know, that's Bishop Baron's main job.
But his side hustles are really great, too.
Word on Fire is absolutely magnificent.
All of the lectures, all of the series, all of the books, the Word on Fire Bible is wonderful.
I have editions of it with the epistles and with the Gospels in my home.
And so you should go check out all of that.
I don't, somehow, I'm not a bishop.
I'm not a priest.
I don't, all I do is this.
And somehow Bishop Barron manages to produce more content, marvelously compelling content, and also manages to do his day job as well, which is very impressive.
Well, thank you for that.
That was very nice.
My pleasure.
It is great.
I do have, you know, I have a picture of it somewhere on my bookshelf.
I have, I have a little statue of Dante.
I have certain little, you know, icons and relics and things.
And I got the Word on Fire Bible, right?
Two books of it right there.
Beautiful.
Oh, thank you for that.
Well, there you have it.
If you haven't already, go follow Bishop Robert Barron at Bishop Barron and subscribe to the Word on Fire show.
And don't forget to grab a copy of What Christians Believe: Understanding the Nicene Creed available wherever books are sold.
