Cardinal Czerny: "The Church Is Not a Policy Machine"

Vatican Access with Robert Duncan · Apr 1, 2026 · 50m

Cardinal Michael Czerny — a senior Vatican official and longtime collaborator of Pope Francis — has become one of the Catholic Church’s most influential voices on migration, human dignity, and global solidarity.

In this conversation, he reflects on his origins, shaped in part by his parents’ experience as immigrants of Jewish and Christian background—a story marked by displacement, survival, and renewal. That inheritance would later inform his priestly vocation, through human rights work in El Salvador and the fight against AIDS in Africa, and eventually in his service in Rome.

A close…