The Vatican’s Implosion and American Catholics

Robert Mickens is Vatican correspondent for the THE TABLET, the international Catholic weekly founded in London (England) in 1840.  He is author of the paper’s popular weekly column, “Letter from Rome,” covering mostly church governance and politics.  Born in Toledo, Ohio in 1964, he has lived in the Eternal City since 1986. He studied philosophy at the Benedictine-run St Meinrad College in Indiana and theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He worked at Vatican Radio for over a decade (1989-2000) as a journalist, producer and on-air presenter. And he has long been a featured Vatican-affairs analyst for the BBC in the United Kingdom.  In 2011, Mickens published a 3-part series covering the new translation of the English Missal, Mass prayers that were introduced during Advent of that same year.