Damian Thompson

Earlier this week, the Rome correspondent of the Times found himself mugging up on the history of Genghis Khan's Mongol Empire, and this is what he reported:  While the empire brought stability, it was created through the large-scale massacre of anyone who refused to submit to Mongol rule, leading to the death of millions. Mongol troops triggered famine in Iran by destroying ancient irrigation systems and catapulted diseased corpses into towns they besieged, a technique which reportedly introduced the Black Death into Europe. Why were the media suddenly writing about blood-crazed 13th-century warriors?

King Charles III is the first British monarch to inherit a post-Christian kingdom. Less than half of his subjects identify themselves as Christian, and only about one in 20 adults in the UK go to church on Sundays. Since 1980 church attendance has more than halved – and that's broadly the situation in most of Western Europe.  In the traditionally God-fearing United States, in contrast, roughly 20 per cent of people are practising Christians. But there, too, the statistics now point to a steady decline in religious belief; the figures are worrying for American Protestants and catastrophic for American Catholics.

Conservative Catholic critics of Pope Francis are referring to 2023 as his 'Year Zero' – a time of revolutionary upheaval initiated by an 86-year-old pontiff who feels liberated by the death of his predecessor Benedict XVI on New Year's Eve.  Events are moving fast. This October, the world's bishops will gather for a synod in which left-wing lay activists have been given an advisory vote by the Pope and permission to discuss ultra-sensitive topics such as women's ordination and blessings for same-sex couples.  It's true that Francis has rejected attempts by the ultra-progressive (and ultra-empty) German church to pursue a liberal Protestant agenda without reference to Rome.

For 75 years, the most anti-Christian regime in modern history has thrown its citizens into prison camps if they are suspected of the slightest dissent. Ten per cent of people live in modern slavery; perhaps 200,000 are behind bars. I'm talking about North Korea, of course – a regime even more abhorrent than Stalinist Russia, but which attracts suspiciously little attention from Western governments and churches unless they feel threatened by its nuclear arsenal.  My guest in this episode of Holy Smoke is Timothy Cho, a Christian human rights activist who escaped from North Korea. Even as a child, he was sentenced to forced labour for the crime of watching a James Bond film.

In the ancient Syro-Malabar Church of south India, clergy who try to change the liturgy do so at their peril. At St Mary’s Cathedral Basilica in Ernakulam last December, a long-standing dispute over whether the priest should face the people led to scenes in which protestors attacked clergy in the middle of the service, sending the sacred vessels crashing to the ground. As a result, the cathedral was closed – and remains so, six months later. This liturgy war is a hideous embarrassment for the Vatican, because the Syro-Malabar Church is the second largest Eastern Church in Communion with Rome. Traditionally dated back to St Thomas the Apostle's mission to India, it has four millions members worldwide.

A charming octogenarian who plays ruthless games with the people who think they're going to succeed him: I reckon Logan Roy would have recognised a kindred spirit in Pope Francis, despite their diametrically opposed politics. Like many of you, I'm heartbroken that Succession has come to an end – but if you're missing the back-stabbing melodrama then you could always start following the real-life struggle to shape the Catholic Church after Francis. Plenty of cardinals would like to swap their red cassocks for a white one. But, as I suggest in this episode of Holy Smoke, whoever eventually takes the job will have to confront at least five nightmare situations, most of them created by the camera-friendly but privately ferocious current occupant of the See of Peter.

The Sicilian Mafia is one of the most murderously amoral organisations on the planet – yet babyishly sentimental when it comes to Italian peasant Catholicism. And, like other branches of Italian organised crime, questions exist over whether they have allies in the Vatican, some of whose senior officials are as keen on money-laundering as the Mafia, only not so good at covering their traces.  The relationship between the hitmen and the hierarchy casts an exotic shadow over a new series of thrillers by Alexander Lucie-Smith, the first of which, The Chemist of Catania, has just been published. To quote A.N. Wilson, Lucie-Smith's plots are fast and his characters unforgettable. 'Menace, suspense, lust, love and fear all enliven his narrative.