"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 this grief, responsibility?
How do you repair this kind of damage?
My daughter, Mikaela, 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.
They have the Ark of the Covenant.
I've never heard the alien.
That's kind of funny that they, 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?
That there's no Not that I know of.
Yeah.
In preparation for the Pope and the Führer, the secret Vatican files of World War II, streaming exclusively on Daily Wire Plus, August 13, we're stepping into 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 Fatma and promote his new documentary.
And he's all out of promo scripts.
And in the other corner, Bishop Robert Barron, 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.
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 theories about it.
And hopefully Bishop Barron can fill us in on it.
I just, 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 City.
Okay.
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.
You may have an event.
I think Michael's been there.
Michael, have you actually been to Vatican City?
Yes, I have.
Thank you very much.
Of course.
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, we'll 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 succession from the apostles?
The World Fire.
The World Fire.
Okay, fair enough.
You're figuring it out.
Yeah.
All right, here we go.
Question one.
How many of the 95 theses can you write?
Let's go.
How many do I choose to write?
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. 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.
At a brisk pace, by foot.
We have multiple choices.
I'm going to go ahead.
A, 10 minutes.
B, 40 minutes.
C, 90 minutes.
D, 2 hours.
All right.
And I, you know, I'm a New Yorker, so you got to shave.
I'm doing it in New York time.
That shaves off 10%.
You ready?
I'm ready.
Still riding.
All right, Mike,, what do you have?
I would say 90 minutes around.
Bitch 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 of it.
Yeah.
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.
B, 120.
What did you write, Michael?
Well, it's the letter.
No, I didn't do a number.
What is it?
I said A. I said D, 120.
Bishop Baron's running away with this.
It is D, 120.
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 yeah 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 have.
Alter boy.
Alter.
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 Barrow, 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, cool.
All right.
I figured the highest number, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
Michael, I don't know why you're doing so.
I think you should have really 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.
This August, I want you to join me for the St. Michael's Lent Challenge on Hallow.
That doesn't refer to me.
It refers to the Archangel, actually, who boots the devil down to hell.
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inspired by St. Francis of Assisi's devotion to St. Michael the Archangel.
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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?
That's going to be the closest without going over.
In miles.
In miles.
Closest without going over.
There's no multiple choice.
It's just...
Okay.
And the Apostolic Archive is what we used to call the secret archive.
that's correct well have you seen it me oh bishop aaron yeah no i haven't they don't let me into i've been into the parts of it yeah so he'll probably have a better guess on this than you no but that's a total how many miles you were like counting out the shelves like all right how many miles is the entire vatican library and apostolic archive combined How many times around Vatican City does it go?
That's 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 yeah we gotta 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 five total guess the correct answer is over 50 miles uh 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 archives.
All that matters is that I won.
That's the only thing that anyone's going to remember.
That's all that matters.
I'm glad I got one point that Bishop Baron also got.
That's good.
That's good.
Yeah.
What's the current score?
A billion to 5-1?
No, it's 3-1, isn't it?
4-1, Bishop.
Okay.
4-1.
Who's counting?
Yeah, 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...
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. Oh, 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...
Of Italy.
Okay.
Mr. Barron, can you spill some tea on the time machine?
Because this one actually has some lags and some stories behind it.
Have you looked and did this at all?
Yeah.
No, I must say that one I don't really know.
The time machine.
Yeah, there was like a cardinal that left and then he drew what it looked like and claims that they had this time machine down in the basin.
It was wild.
This is a wild story.
And the Vatican hasn't.
Yeah, the Vatican hasn't.
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 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...
Doesn't Ethiopia claim to have it?
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 arc.
The true arc.
The true arc.
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, yeah.
I can't 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, you know, 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...
Yeah.
Okay.
But Mary's the true arc of the covenant.
That's right.
That's the most important thing.
It's all that matters.
It's all that matters.
It's really 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?
That is no...
Yeah.
I met some weird people in the Vatican.
Yeah.
I don't know about aliens, though.
And what we also know is that Michael's still currently getting destroyed as we go into number You don't need to update.
I remember.
I remember.
You don't need to update.
All right.
Which Pope commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sixtine 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'm a Philistine.
I am.
Wow.
Well, what do you have, Michael?
Let's let his Excellency go for it.
Okay.
It's C. Michael.
Was that 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?
Oh, sorry.
We're on the next question.
Go ahead.
Just another thing 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?
No, it's whatever.
Okay.
This answer.
Is this like however many things you can name, you get it at 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?
Oh, man.
You 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 scavi that's yeah that's what it uncovered was that first century cemetery so i think i deserve credit for that but but your excellency um mr davies is not uh 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 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.
I 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— 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.
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're 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. Thomas Aquinas.
And I was, you know, I said, all right, that's so kind of of you, you know, 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, in my prayer life.
Can I tell you a story about the Thomas relic?
So this is a year ago, March, I was in Rome for this conference on Aquinas and we went down to Fosonova where he died.
And there was a great mass and Cardinal Perolyn said the mass.
He was a pop-up away 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 fossonova skull so the people there claim that when thomas' 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 fossonova 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 and then it was up in front of
the altar and it's very moving you know yeah so there are two skulls competing for authenticity yeah of aquinas and people say well yeah he was so smart he needed two but one could not have possibly held it all right 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 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.
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 chessmaster, you know, moving from chessboard to chessboard.
He would dictate, you know, 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.
I was talking about the American Eagle Jeans ad, you and now you're going to talk yeah all right it's pretty impressive that's that's i'm sorry that i even have to continue the game it was so fascinating uh well i'm just trying to distract from my listening sorry i guess we're out of time sorry to button you know uh well i'm sure you just want to continue because you're winning by such a large margin of course 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 closest without going over without going over to name the exact year yeah um i'm gonna say without going over uh over.
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.
Yes.
Really recent.
No way.
2019, that recently?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
I thought it was in the Francisco boy.
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.
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.
That is a new documentary series that uncovers one of the most distorted historical narratives of the modern age.
It's called The Pope and the Führer, the Secret Vatican Files of World War II.
For decades, Pope Pius XII, one of the most consequential men of the 20th century, one of the greatest men of the 20th century, has been slandered and condemned for his supposed silence during Hitler's rise and during Nazi atrocities.
That narrative was always false.
Now, with unprecedented access to the Vatican's wartime archives, we uncover what really happened and why the truth was buried for so long.
Check out this teaser.
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This is not just a story about Hitler and the Holocaust.
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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 that was a great calumny against him.
I was just in Munster, Germany.
Before Rome, I was in Munster and I went to the cathedral there.
And there's the grave of Cardinal von Galen.
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 More 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. He's a gentleman.
He's a D. He's a D. He's a D. He's a gentleman.
He's a D. He's a D. He's a gentleman.
He's a D. He's a gentleman.
He's a gentleman.
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 maybe that's but then I remembered oh Pope Francis is all is entombed here and so there was a separate line just to go see the Pope's grave when yesterday was the feast of the dedication of St Mary Major that's right that's right and it was you know the our lady of the snows you know that story about No, a little bit, but not really.
August 5th, so 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 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 Theo Tukos, 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 she be nice to the mother of our Lord?
And they say, well, she's the mother of Jesus, not the mother of the church.
That's an historian heresy, though.
That was what they fought about at the Council of Ephesus.
Because Astoria said just that.
Call her, if you want, Christotokos.
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, bear of God.
So that, you know, 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 that they're making that determination.
But also going to the Bible, I say to my Protestant friends, Mary says, you know, 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 and now we move on.
Oh, that's settled doctrine.
That's why 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 and one person no you have to say that you can further amplify it deepen it but you have to say that so mary the mother of god that's settled christian doctrine that's right and right luther loved mary luther got very strong things to say about mary Absolutely.
You know, 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 Reformed friends are 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, you know, the importance of venerating Mary?
But again, that's a deeply ancient Christian practice, and it's grounded in people like Luther.
And 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 tradition.
uh 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, B, 2001, A Space Odyssey.
Which was not included on their list.
It was not on the 45.
All right, what do you mean?
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 a mob movie on there, but they don't.
Bishop Barron seems very confident.
Not really.
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 it's not 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 i think i remembered schindler's list being on it uh yeah okay uh that's brutal i think claven hates that movie He says it totally misunderstands the whole,
the entirety of the war, but I think I don't want to put words in his mouth, but I just did.
So too bad.
If Drew, if you disagree with me, correct me.
Yeah, Schindler's list.
Yeah.
I've never been to the Vatican either.
I have no idea of these questions.
Number 11.
I've never been to the Vatican.
Go ahead.
Which artist designed the grand colonnade that surrounds St. Peter's Square?
A. Michelangelo.
B. Dante Bramante.
My Italian is 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 Bramante.
Number 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 you know that i love starbucks but only one of these things is in the vatican 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 so that it does you said that it does have so it does oh at the observatory that's what i had the observatory which
is out of Catherine Dolfo.
It's not at the Vatican, but it's considered Vatican territory.
That makes more sense.
I was wondering if there's one in Phoenix.
Well, there's one in Phoenix too, or outside of Tucson.
Tucson.
But the big one's in Castle Gandalfo.
That makes so much.
I've been to the Vatican, I don't know, three times.
Maybe I never got the Vatican quarter pounder, the Vatican big vat.
I thought the spa might throw you off.
And you're such a big Starbucks fan.
I'm like, maybe, maybe.
Yeah.
Okay.
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, like the remnants of the Apollo?
Yeah, the Atlantic equipment.
telescopes see that?
Can the Vatican telescopes see that?
Of our alleged trip to the moon?
Oh, yeah, right.
Yeah, Michael.
Yes?
Mr. Barron?
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 telescopes can't resolve that small amount.
I was trying to imagine a telescope being able to see to that degree.
So, all right.
So that backs up my first insinuation.
It was obviously totally fake.
right we can't even see with 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 was renovated.
This is one of the more modern buildings, which is always Michael's favorite.
I know that 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 nail.
But I would then have to have holy orders, wouldn't I?
Once I was elected, I would ordain you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My wife would not be she actually might be thrilled i don't know you're right that might be a good uh a good vacation plan for us okay you go to room what is the name michael what you have uh is that is that paul the sixth auditorium the paul the sixth audience hall that is correct yeah okay all right all right that's i spend two months there the synod the last two october's i spend six days a week eight hours a day in that hall This is not my favorite place.
No.
I can't, you know, I'm not asking you to tell tales at a 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.
So what, anyway, yeah.
It was of its time.
You know, like Paul VI himself was a devotee of modern art and thought, you know, let's bring the modern sensibility.
And he knew people like Jacques Maritan, who very much appreciated like, you know, 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, you know, 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 uh 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 guste bus no disputant de mest as far as i know i think some of like go to the east wing of the national gallery in washington you'll see some of like the early picassos like from the 1920s and some of them are very fine um 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 skip the number.
How many works of art are in there?
We know your least favorite.
What about these other ones?
All right, Mike, what do you have?
I said Aleph Nall, accountably infinite number of works of art.
Is that?
You get no credit for that.
Is it highest without going over?
How did you know?
I said one million, simply as a guess.
the answer?
Around 70,000, only 20,000 are on public display, I think there's much more than 20,000 on display.
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 Barron ran away with it.
So Michael, would you please give us a 30 second commercial?
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 Barron would want to gamble away.
Amazing victory, truly astonishing.
-You mean because he's an intelligent man?
-Yeah, this is the greatest victory we've ever had on it.
on face off oh is that right yeah yeah that's that's bad i think i i may have automatically just become a Lutheran because of that.
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 some bit 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 Baron 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 great.
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.
