01/05/2025: Pope Francis, Notre Dame, Built By Angels

This past May, Norah O'Donnell met Pope Francis for a rare and historic interview at his home, the Santa Marta guest house in Vatican City, a week before the Catholic Church hosted its inaugural World Children's Day. The 88-year-old, Argentinian-born pope, the first named Francis and first from the Americas, is known for his dedication to the poor and marginalized, and for being the most unconventional head of the Church in recent memory. He spoke candidly with O’Donnell about the wars in Israel and Gaza, Ukraine, and the migration crises around the world and on the U.S. southern border. Their wide-ranging conversation also touched upon the Church's handling of its own sexual abuse scandals; Francis' deep commitment to inclusiveness within the Church; the backlash against his papacy from certain corners of U.S. Catholicism; and an exploration of his thinking on surrogate parenthood.

Last month, the arched doors of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris opened to the public for the first time since April 2019, when a devastating fire nearly destroyed the great Gothic church. Correspondent Bill Whitaker had a first look inside a modern miracle of repair and restoration by workers and artisans who made possible French President Emmanuel Macron’s impossible-sounding pledge to complete the rebirth in five years. As Macron told Whitaker, “The decision to rebuild Notre Dame was…about our capacity to save, restore, sometimes reinvent what we are by preserving where we come from.”

Correspondent Scott Pelley travels to Ethiopia to witness the Christmas vigil at Lalibela, a mysterious holy place, where churches are situated on a 42-acre site and are said to be built by angels. Pelley witnesses 200,000 Ethiopian Orthodox Christians who pilgrimage on Christmas Eve to celebrate its origins and speaks with Fasil Giorghis, an Ethiopian architect and historian, who tells Pelley, “coming here as a devout Christian is a very strong sign of their belief…some people travel hundreds of kilometers here on foot, and they have been doing it for several centuries."

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