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John Allen, Jr. is the prize-winning associate editor of The Boston Globe and the senior Vatican analyst for CNN. He is the author of six best-selling books on the Vatican and Catholic affairs, and writes frequently on the Church for major national and international publications.
The Tablet has called Allen “the most authoritative writer on Vatican affairs in the English language,” and papal biographer George Weigel has called him “the best Anglophone Vatican reporter ever.” Veteran religion writer Kenneth Woodward of Newsweek described Allen as “the journalist other reporters—and not a few cardinals—look to for the inside story on how all the pope’s men direct the world’s largest church.”
Two of Allen’s most recent books are The Catholic Church: What Everyone Needs to Know (2013) and The Global War on Christians: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Anti-Christian Persecution (2013).
Father Raymond J. de Souza was ordained a Catholic priest on 20 July 2002 for the Archdiocese of Kingston, Ontario.
He currently serves as chaplain of Newman House, the Catholic chaplaincy at Queen’s University, and as the pastor of Sacred Heart of Mary Parish on Wolfe Island, where he lives.
In addition to his priestly ministry, Father de Souza teaches at Queen’s in the Faculty of Education and the Department of Economics, is a Senior Fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto, and leads a week-long summer seminar for young Catholic leaders on Wolfe Island.
He is a Senior Fellow at Cardus, Canada’s leading Christian think tank, and serves on the board of directors of Catholic Christian Outreach and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. In 2014 he was appointed Chair of the Advisory Council to the Office of Religious Freedom in the Canadian foreign affairs department, and from 2011 to 2014 he served as a consultant to the religious liberty committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Father de Souza studied economics and political studies (BA Hons.) and public policy (MPA) at Queen’s University before doing graduate study in development economics (MPhil) at the University of Cambridge in England. His seminary formation was completed at St. Philip’s Seminary in Toronto (Bachelor of Thomistic Thought) and at the Pontifical North American College in Rome (STB, Pontifical Gregorian University; STL, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross).