>> rose: welcome to the program. we begin tonight with david gregory, the former moderator of nbc's "meet the press" has a new book all about his faith. it is called "how's your faith." >> it was something that was rising up inside of me for a long time. it was a longing to grapple with the questions of who am i, how should i live, what is a life full of meaning and purpose? for me, this arose at a time when i was very successful, covering the white house, married to a wonderful woman, great kids and started thinking, one, what else is there, what else is expected of me? >> rose: we continue with marlon james, author of "a brief history of seven killings." >> explicit violence or real violence may shock or stun the

reader but ultimately doesn't turn them off from the narrative. if the response was that was so bad i stopped reading the book and never went back. it's different from that was really shocking, i didn't like it, but i finished the book. it's a very fine, fine line and you always have to walk it. >> rose: we conclude with al hunt on the story. al talks with journalist maureen orth. >> the church is an extremely imperfect institution that always needs renewing and renewal, and you either decide to do it from within or you don't. i really do feel that you don't have to be a member of a church to care about mary because that's one of the most interesting things i learned in my reporting is the women in rwanda, i spoke to one of the visionaries who's still there, and she said mary never once mentioned a religion to her. it's not about religion, what kind of religion you are, it's

just she asks you to love her as much as she loves us. >> rose: david gregory on faith, marlon james on rightin,t with maureen orth. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> rose: david gregory is here, the former moderator of nbc's "meet the press." previously served as chief white house correspondent for nbc news. his book is about a spiritual journey to better understand his

beliefs and other religious traditions, it is called "how's your faith." pleased to have david gregory back at the table. how are you? >> very well, thank you. >> rose: let's talk about the book then politics and media and everything else. >> okay. >> rose: how did about? >> it was something that was rising up inside of me a long time. it was a longing to grapple with the questions, who am i, how should i live, what is a life full of meaning and purpose. this arose at a date when i was very successful, covering the white house, married to a wonderful woman, great kids and starting to think, one, what else is there, what else is expected of me. we had young kids mix wife is a christian, a protestant, i am jewish, and she was challenging to lead our family in faith if we were going to be a jewish family to do it out of a sense of knowledge and lead us in a spiritual path, and those kind of things came together and made me want to go deeper and

understand more. >> rose: and what did you discover? >> i discovered a lot about myself, about humility, about the search for goodness and how -- >> rose: this is reading the torah or religious readings by theologists or -- >> both. i found a teacher i write about, a jewish educator america brown, with whom i study texts, jewish identity, spiritual texts. in jewish identity as in other faith, a lot of scholars were self-help gurus that helped you keel deal with anger, pride, humility. so i think i discovered a loving, humble path and one that, for me, at least, was about, you know, something we don't talk a lot about in media circles, but finding and cultivating a relationship with god. >> rose: the title of the book comes from a conversation with

george bush. >> yes. >> rose: what was the conversation? >> we had a number of conversations. he knew i was studying with a religious scholar in an attempt to deepen my faith. when i got a job with "meet the press," i walked into oval office and he said, stand up, girls, meet the press. he asked me, how is your faith. i said stronger. but the question intimidated me. i grew up with a much more cultural and ethnic identity, not a real belief, yet the question invited me to examine myself and say, how is my faith? how could it be better? how could i be better by seeking answers and grappling with questions about living with meaning and purpose and trying to quiet myself, trying to become a little bit more humble, just to be better. and when i'm doing all of this, charlie, in these years, as i'm

kind of omniscient and network news, and i don't think i have to tell you, network news is not exactly the place where the spiritual journey flourishes. humility, trying to think more of others, the whole thing is structured around self. so i failed then and i continue to fail now, but i at least, you know, being on the path -- >> rose: you're circling around the questions i'm really interested in -- two, really. how has it changed your life both in terms of practice, practice of religion and practice of your daily life? and secondly, would it have made a difference in your life as you lived it, if you had discovered this journey ten years before? >> well, you know, i think -- >> rose: would you have made the same choices? >> i think i might have been a little bit different. >> rose: you already were? no, i think i would have -- i think i could have been different if i had been a little bit more committed to a path deepening my faith, seeking humility and goodness. i think i could have dealt with

some of the things that i think did hurt me. i was a very ambitious guy, succeeded young in this business. i think i was a bit too out for myself and when things didn't go well for me at nbc and ultimately losing my job at "meet the press," i think part of that period i could have done better making people understand my success is their success, too, and we were all in this together and i think i was more aloof and insular and i think being on a path of hue multithrough faith and being grounded in faith could have helped me more. i mean, which gets to your fundamental question which is how has it changed me? ivi feel faith has taught me things like understanding my life is pretty small in relation to god and the rest of the world, understanding if i am just for myself, then who am i? understanding that we're kind of all in this together and that

there is such an important virtue of being committed to each other in seeking to be better as individuals and to make the world a better place. this kind of outer-directed thinking is a way i think that has helped me an and, i would n, at no point do i feel like i have figured this out or that the journey is over or that i am better than anybody else. in fact, whatever weaknesses or flaws i have are magnified through a search for greater spiritual awareness and maturity, but there is also the comfort that i'm not alone, god is present and goodness is still a goal. there is something in that that has grounded me in a way that i have to say i was not grounded before. >> rose: you talk about the phapath. it was timothy dolan that said to you, don't make this a project, religion is not a project. >> yeah, and i think that's a more articulate way than i have been describing in our conversation which is, for me,

the search for god, the search for goodness, the search for the spiritual touch has become less about the head and more about the heart. it is, as cardinal dolan says, a dare, an act of love, and i think faith is ultimately about love. so this is about having an openness to receive, an onness for -- an openness for each other's humanity and to seek the presence, whether perspective appreciation and just to seek the presence of the divine in a way that i think elevates me, calms me, soothes me, comforts me, inspire mess and enforces me in my life to try to do better. >> rose: you also say that anger had always been your adversary. >> right. >> rose: how so? you know, my father who just

died about a month ago really scared me as a kid. that big, larger than life figure, booming ois voice, tall, intimidating, and i really resented that. >> rose: resented it? i resented it as i got older. >> rose: rather than being a model? >> i resented me made me feel that way. so as a parent, i said, i will never do that to my children, until i did, until i was very much like my father. not in the scope and scale of it, but until i had episodes that i frightened my children i realized that, yeah, this is a problem, something i have to control. >> rose: and you talked to people like timothy dolan and others, was there a common denominator message to you, a sense of what came back at you, a similar later to what they said? >> what's interesting is at a time when religion can so often

divide, the message i got from evangelical preachers tim keller, joel osteen, cardinal dolan. >> rose: you went right to the e stop. >> yeah, right. >> rose: i'm david gregory, i'm looking to find my religion, can i come by this afternoon? >> right, right. (laughter) >> rose: did you hear? i'm david gregory! i'm trying to find myself! i can't wait! >> come on! got to happen now! god is knocking at the door! >> rose: talking to cardinals and -- >> but, charlie, there was this acceptance, this universal acceptance of having a heart with god and trying to do more. that was a wonderful message of acceptance that i think we do well in organized religion to transmit a little bit more, to make people feel welcomed, to figure out what unites us in

common points of connection and light. >> rose: let me talk about your professional life. >> yeah. >> rose: what are you doing? what do you want to do? when? >> there is no time like now, you know. i felt it was a tough period to go through. i succeeded for a long time and very young. >> rose: you were on a trajectory. >> right, and i never knew any setbacks till i knew them, and it was hard and embarrassing and i think it was unnecessary. >> rose: take us to the middle of the storm, what it's like. it's not like a sex scandal where you get embarrassed. it was about your job. >> but it is about your identity, too, so it is embarrassing. it's a sense that people are looking at me and saying, ooh, what happened to him? >> rose: oh, he failed. he failed, you know, and that something ugly happened to him and that he failed. yeah, i felt that, and i felt it in the community, in our

journalistic community. i was also kind of stung by the fact that i felt there was a fair amount of indifference to what happened to me. again, i try to take some responsibility for that. >> rose: indifference meaning... >> people really didn't seem to care that much. >> rose: about what happened? ight, and they didn't really reach out. and i said, well, why don't i have more friends. >> rose: go ahead, explore that. >> but for me -- >> rose: it connects to the earlier conversation. >> yeah, for me, washington is a tough town, a tough business, we get all that. one of the things i try to absorb in all that is if i had been somebody who put myself out for other people, maybe i would have gotten more back. a colleague at nbc is a friend and she said everybody always thought you were unstoppable. i thought about that for a moment and said, you know, not really a way i would have wanted to have been known. >> rose: did you perceive yourself that way? >> yes, but obviously more

benignly, and i don't think i have the same self-awareness. but in the middle of all that hurt, but it led me to -- first of all, you know, my faith didn't always hold me. i thought, okay, this happened, i've got perspective, i'm on this path, i've got this handled. guess what? i didn't have it handled. there was a big blow to my identity. you know this, television magnifies us in a culture, in the way that a level of recognition, so i thought to lose that identity, maybe nobody will care about me that, if i'm not that guy on tv, i just don't matter. so working through setbacks happen and things don't always work out as planned. >> rose: so today you want to get back in there. >> yes. >> rose: you're much more connected to your faith. >> yes. >> rose: you're much more connected to who you are. >> yeah. >> rose: perhaps this is all a plus-plus. or maybe like as winston

churchill's wife said when he lost the election in 1946, she said it's a blessing in disguise, and he said, it's a hell of a disguise. (laughter) >> right, right. >> rose: or a better blessing. can i say about a different kind of gift in all this is my job and work will take care of itself and trying to be a better person. my father really wasn't a person of faith. culturally ethnically jewish. as he approached death, he became more vulnerable and scared and he became enthralled by this search. he didn't know where it came from in me but he was really enthralled by it. >> rose: he was near death and saw you going through this, aching for this. >> right, because he was uncomfortable about some of the things that i wrote about my childhood and him. >> rose: and your mother's alcoholism. >> all that. but as he gets closer to death, he's enthralled with the search. as he felt more vulnerable, i would read to him from psalms

and send to him notes about the presence of god and try to absorb that, things that were unusual vocabulary for both of us. on the wednesday before he died, i was with him. i said, dad, i'm going to go now and i hope to see you again, but if you die before i return, i want you to know my heart is full. we had our problems, we had been estranged at various times. >> rose: for years? for almost a year at different points where our relationship struggled and i said, i'm just so happy you're my father. i took his hand and played with him a beautiful poem in the jewish liturgy, into your hand i place my soul when i wake and sleep, god is with me i will not fare body and soul to keep. he took my hand and said that's beautiful. i said, i'll see you soon or in the world to come, but either way i'll see you, and he died

the next day. >> rose: the next day. that prayerful moment accomplished something that near words cannot accomplish. the beauty of my parting with my father is honestly gift enough of this path, reaffirms the search. >> rose: i urge everybody now because of cameras, you and i can put a camera here and record this, you know, to go, no matter how old and just record conversations with your parents, to let them know that their life lives through you and that you have it to show all descendents yet to be born and that your story is embedded in them, and not only in the dna but also in the sense of who i am and my consciousness of self. >> our parents are the authors of our story. >> rose: yeah. even the tough parts.

>> rose: i still think it's remarkable. however you see it, i mean, the search for who i am and how i relate to something larger than i am is a journey that has to be beneficial to you, because you will find some connection to that there is a lot more out there than just you, but you have context with people and place. >> and you also have something larger to aspire to. >> rose: exactly. even if in the great mysteries -- i haven't figured everything out, but there is something aspirational that keeps me reaching higher to be better and that seeking was not a part of my life up until ten years ago. i feel like i'm better for it. >> rose: happy to see you. thank you. >> rose: david gregory, the book is called "how's your faith," an unlikely spiritual journey. back in a moment. stay with us.

marlon james is here, the author of a brief history of seven killings, awarded the 2015 man booker prize for fiction: it's a story of attempted assassination of bob marley in 1976 and narrated over a dozen characters. the niesms called the book epic in every sense of the word. it's been optioned by hbo by a television series "adaptation." pleased to have marlon james at this table. welcome. >> thanks for having me. >> rose: pleasure having you and congratulations on all this. >> thank you. >> rose: you came seven years ago to the united states looking for a teaching job up in minneapolis. >> yes. >> rose: knowing you would do what? was this in your mind already? >> no. when i moved to minneapolis, i just finished my second novel which was set in the 18t

18th century, so i hadn't thought about that before. i was haunted by that story from way back in 1991 when i was still in college i felt read this article. timothy white wrote the definitive biography of marley and wrote this curious post-script in '91 and went back to the assassination attempt. that was the first time i read anybody talk about these men and what happened to them and he still didn't know quite what happened but a lot of the things that i think of as a novelist, i'm attracted by mysteries. i'm never going to solve any of them but i like playing around with them. >> rose: that was a ripe subject for you? >> still took me over 20 years to get back to it but the spark was from them. >> rose: and in between you wrote two other novels. >> yes, one was in the 1950s in jamaica about two preachers fighting for a village, one is an alcoholic, the other is

possibly dean possessed. and the second novel was about a slave narrative, about six women who planned a slave rebellion in secret, all female. and then this one. >> rose: you wrote you had a hard upbringing and thought about killing yourself when you were only 16. stunning to me. >> growing up in jamaica and growing up with jamaica's very, very acute homophobia, it's not something that necessarily had to happen to you for you to have this sort of a feeling of dread -- >> rose: you have gay characters here. you didn't come out till you were 43 or 44. >> 44. >> rose: but you knew when you were 16, . >> i knew from before that.

>> rose: of course. i'm not sure why. i think a huge part of it was just finding avenues to disappear in. like, for a long time, that was a church, and a great place to disappear in if you don't want to be yourself. it's a great place to do that. that knocked off ten years. >> rose: yeah. so before i knew it, i blinked and i was 40. but there was always some way to escape it and deal with it, cope with it. >> rose: you connected as a writer, influenced by dickens, you said. >> yes. >> rose: who else influenced you as a writer? >> toni morrison, a huge, huge deal. simon rushly. >> rose: why? simon rushly, part of the simon rushly story is set in church. when i was deep in church and he had a novel "shame" and i had

big bibles with leather binding and the preacher is saying we're all going to hell and in it i'm reading "shame" with the three sisters. the idea of messing with narrative like that never occurred to me, just didn't. in reading it, it kind of gave me permission to write in a certain way. toni more rison's "song of solomon "-- you know, i grew up in a very british colonial education. ideas that books like that existed never occurred to me. >> rose: you eventually left the church. >> yes. >> rose: what happened? disillusionment? >> disillusionment, change of geography. i think i was looking for bigger answers than that.

jamaican church can be a lot of praise and worship, not a lot of intellectual growth or stimulation. >> rose: different being gay in jamaica? >> i wasn't. you know, i was pretty much just kind of this cursed and pleefg it. >> rose: and believing it? thinking you was sustaining myself that way. it's not something i necessarily confronted in jamaica. it's not until -- and my standards for moving when i left was i just wanted to be somewhere else. which is not necessarily bad in jamaica, i adore my country. but that is all. i think years of coming into

myself and just wanting more of life, i think, that made me start to think about what i want and where i want to go. >> rose: you've readt readta rei coates? >> yes. he gets it. i have been following him for a while. his article on reparation is the best thing said about it which is something i followed and i think people don't realize the acute nature of race in jamaica and in america. as a jamaican i was doubly unaware because our racial mess is a different kind of mess. >> rose: how so? we are far more subtle than ours. it's more endemic in ours. we have a very british racism in

jamaica. we never had to desegregate a school but, at the same time, you didn't have to as everybody is trying to bleach their skin and just get their families lighter and lighter and lighter skin. >> rose: when you write, do you get up and write at a certain time? >> it's been a different thing for each book. for the second novel i got up at 5:00 in the morning and wrote till 9:00 because i had a day job. this i tend to write more mid morning, mid afternoon, 11:00 till 2:00 and then i'm done. >> rose: you just exhausted yourself. >> yeah, iould stop, regardless of where i was. this book, i was working on a character a day which is one of the reasons it ended up being the kind of book that it is. >> rose: how did you find it to be the kind of book? >> well, it's the first novel i wrote where i had to let go of my idea of what a novel should

be and that was all right because my last novel, despite being written... it's a crisis resolution. >> rose: multiple characters. multiple characters which is not the original idea. the novel doesn't end, it just stops. which is weird for a 700-page novel. but i had to let go of all of that. at one point, i just told myself, you know what? i'll leave it until my editor takes it out, and that's how i got there. >> rose: the editor didn't take it out? >> i ended up taking it out more than he did. even after he approved it, i took out 10,000 more words. >> rose: to make it leaner or -- >> not necessarily. well, yes, one to have the problems with a multiple narrative is you have a lot of characters end up saying the same thing. sometimes they may say it in a different way, but, you know,

after the fourth character talks about a killing on orange street, you know, we get the point. so that, and a lot of it was just trimming the fat line by line until, you know, i ended up with something which i think worked. >> rose: is it hard to distinguish writing between history and memory and fiction? >> i don't think i tried to distinguish them. one of the great things i think about writing novels, even historical fiction is i'm certain, as a writer, i still kind of reserve the right for invention, the right to invention, the right to fantasy, to make things up. and this was, in many ways, my responding to gaps in history. there are things we're just never going to know including the names of some of the men who tried to kill marley. we'll never know, or at least whoever knows is not telling. >> rose: when you began this,

did you say i'm about to start writing the great jamaican novel? >> no, i didn't start to write a novm. i was starting to yi a novela. reading short crime novels and i wanted to write a cool crime novel. >> rose: when did it change? when i kept running into dead ends into the character. the first character in this novel is page 458, a hit man from chicago. i thought the one voice would carry the whole narrative and i kept running into dead ends with each. my friend rachel who sadly is no longer with us, i said to her, i don't know whose story this is. she said, why do you think it's one person's story?

go back and read esladine. it doesn't have to be anyone's story. it could be one person's story. >> rose: or marley's story. yeah. and the marley happened because i reread frank sinatra hasn't called and the circumstances were just by hovering around, circling sinatra and the people he bumps into in that circling. >> rose: you can describe him. you can describe him. which is what happened until the point i didn't even need marley's name for the book. because it turns into this bob marley has a cold kind of novel. >> rose: and the characters are circling around him. >> yeah, including the people who tried to kill him. >> rose: why did they want to kill him? >> lots of reasons, lots of theories for that. one being that he was just becoming too influential a

figure. illustrated this way, in my grandmother's house, where there are pictures on the wall, picture of the head of the political party -- there are no pictures of us, no pictures of the family, but there are pictures of politicians. that's how much the personality becomes engrained. >> rose: in the south there are a lot of pictures in african-american homes of martin luther king and a in catholic homes of jack kennedy. >> yeah, but the idea that people in the ghettos and the slums of jamaica could think for themselves and even to the point of forming their own government was unthinkable. both sides, the right and left wing, both hated that. so he was just becoming too much of a unifier, i think. there is a character in the book that says bad times or good

times are somebody. and he was disrupting that way too much. i think that's one of the reasons the idea of that one side may have wanted him to become a martyr, the other side wanted to erase his influence. marley, the only person on the level of marley i can think of is maybe felacoozie. i cannot think of another artist that had so many forces working against him at once even though he's trying to create. he's doing brilliant records and every day is a negotiation between some of the most dangerous men in the country who, probably days before he was eating food and smoking weed with, which is the reason why the attack on marley -- the attack on the house is as outrageous as the attack on him because of the house being a big sanctuary in kingston and these killers violating that. >> rose: you show violence and sex in a rather graphic and

detailed way. you've heard that before. >> mm-hmm. >> rose: simply because that was the reality you felt and wanted to say? >> well, you know, i've said this before, i think violence should be violent. i think there is always a danger of sliding into a pornography of violence, and a danger of sliding into a pornography of sex. i tell my students, risk pornography. risk it. get close to it because there is not just a matter of being visceral, it's also a matter of being real, and i think explicit violence or real violence, it may shock the reader, stun the reader but ultimately it doesn't turn them off from the narrative. if the response i was getting is that was so bad i stopped reading that book and i never went back, that's different from that was reader shock and i

didn't like it but i finished the book, and i think that it's a very, very fine line and you always have to walk it, i think. >> rose: writing female characters? >> mm-hmm. >> rose: hard? well, i mean, writing all characters are hard. >> rose: no less or no more? i think they're equal. >> rose: you started with them early on? >> i started with them early open. it was another writer who read my first novel, elizabeth nunez from trinidad, she said you're a good writer but you don't have a clue about women. i said, what are you talking about? i'm the typical jamaican man raise bid a woman. i know lots of women. she said, yeah, but who do you read? like a lot of male writers, i had read no women.

>> rose: reading toni morrison changed your life? >> yes, there is a scene in sula where sula is on her death bed and sula hadn't slept with her husband and nell confronts her and sula says i've lived my life, done and seen this, i have all these great things i've done unlike anybody else and nell said, what do you have to show for it? and i said, yeah, what do you have to show for it? you're dieing aloan. what do you have to show for it? and sula says, show to who? that's a fall off the chair moment. i'm having chills thinking about it now. more than other people, more than the church, more than friends, that was the validating moment. i was, like, i don't have to prove anything to anybody. >> rose: you called winning the ma man booker prize affirmi.

affirming what you should do or -- >> well, affirming this is the riskiest and loosest novel i've ever written. >> rose: risky and loose? yeah, which is two things i've never been with fiction. i still consider myself a victorian novelist, and i still sometimes believe in the nuts and bolts to the point of annoyance with my students of telling a story, and also just the playing with the narrative, writing a chapter in blank verse or writing a chapter that's a nine-page sentence, and the idea that me -- that -- the novelist in my head came down to the page in tact, and to be rewarded for that is a hell of a thing because it means i can be myself as a novelist. >> rose: will this affect caribbean literature? >> i hope so.

the caribbean literature is so good it doesn't need me. there are so many exciting voices. for once, when we talk about caribbean literature, we don't mean just angelo. caribbean literature has been there for years. we have a novel from the virgin islands. jamaica has a whole bunch of new writers coming out. >> rose: what's next? i'm leaving the 20t 20th century blind fo behind fo. >> rose: where are you going? africa in the 11th century. >> rose: what is it about that? >> it came about because one i was having an argument about the black hobbit. >> rose: a black hobbit? it was the year when casting

was a known for the hobbit film and we're having a discussion we always have about diversity, and i was in an argument with someone about, you know, if the shire was multiracial, nobody would have cared, would have just moved on. and my friends respond, well, it's european and i said lord of the rings is not real, you can do whatever you want with it. and i said, i don't care, keep your hobbit. it made me think about the rich mythical and historical tradition of africa and the great african empires of east and west africa, the folk lower that's there. there are monsters and witches. africa had its own vikings. they had nothing to do with scandinavia but were pillaging and plundering. i'm not trying to write an

historical novel. i'm trying to do an invented world but pull on that huge resource and be a total geek with it. >> rose: are you influenced by film? >> hugely, almost more so than books which i would never admit publicly. >> rose: you just did. (laughter) >> yeah, there are things that a touch of evil can do for an opening of a novel that i'm not going to get -- particularly the crime writers. orson wells, alfred hitchcock's visual language. one of the things i like about film is film has to get its resonance from the actuality of the scene. i don't get to tell you a metaphor for you to appreciate a scene. >> rose: the book, "a brief history of seven killings." on the man booker prize. marlon james, author of the book

nightwomen. thanks for having me. marlon james. back in a moment. stay with us. >> hunt: this holiday season, christians around the world celebrate the birth of jesus christ. maureen orth one of america's best and most versatile magazine writers traveled across continents and cultures to explore the phenomenon of mary two millenia later. her 5,000 word piece in national geographic calls mary the most powerful woman in the world, a global symbol of maternal love, sacrifice and suffering. we are so pleased to welcome her. merry christmas. >> merry christmas to you and thank you. >> hunt: this is an extraordinary piece. mary, there have been over 5,000

sightings, apparitions, visions, whatever you call them, many in recent times. tell us about this. >> well, there are many people all over the world, starting 400 years ago at the council of trent, there have been 2,500 reported apparitions and sightings and appearances of mary. only 16 of those 2,500 have ever gotten vatican approval to ever be considered to be actually meeting the standards that they consider them to be real. that doesn't nine others weren't, but that just there are very, very high standards to meet. >> hunt: and there's a pattern to it. >> yes. >> hunt: she does gotten see big shots. >> no. >> hunt: it's always the poor and crisis-ridden places. >> it's often very poor children. she speaks to hem them in their own language.

rwanda she spoke in kiriwanda and sometimes it is reported that she appears so frequently and for over such a long period of time that the three young women to whom she allegedly appeared to in rwanda in 1982 just started calling her momma because she taught them songs and dances and prayers. this is what's alleged. >> rose: what do detached cold scientists or even religious historians say about this? do they say it's spiritually nice or hocus pocus? >> you bet get the the whole range. some think it's hocus pocus. others fervently believe in it. the catholic church itself, which isn't the only religion necessarily that believes in miracles, but says that you are free to believe it or not. >> hunt: you mentioned rwanda

a moment ago. you wouldn't instinctively associate that with mary, but there were three women there in the '80s who said they spent considerable time -- >> three young girls. >> hunt: -- three young girls there and mary foresaw the terrible genocide that took place in the '90s. by the way, was she a black mary? >> they said neither black more white, they said she was kind of a brown color. one of the things people said to i spoke to around the world said she's breat breathtakingly beau, young and has this beautiful voice and she emanates such radiance of life and love that people are awe struck. she first appeared in the boarding school. poor girls ability 1 about 16 as old in 1982 and she appeared

over eight years' time and during that time there are many other people who also reported apparitions but the church decided these were the three they would officially recognize. but in the course of it, to many, many witnesses, eyewitnesses, some of whom i also interviewed, and the doctor who was in charge of the medical commission to investigate them, that the girls really started crying. they would have these public apparitions and thousands of people would come and gather and it would be like a one-way telephone conversation. they could hear what the girls were saying but not, obviously, what was coming back. and the girls just started crying and saying, don't show me, don't show me, and she was predicting the horrible rivers of blood and the genocide that happened 12 years later. >> rose: you went to lords where 80,000 sick or disabled people go every year. >> no, more. >> rose: no, but they

visited -- >> 79,000. >> rose: where millions go. yes. >> rose: but you went with iraq and afghan wounded war veterans. that must have been very touching. >> it was an incredible experience for me. once a year the military from many, many nations all over the world gather at lourdes. a tradition after world war ii so that the germans and french could get together and talk and focus on peace and justice and human rights instead of war and mary would be the unifying figure and lourdes. i was there with a group of wounded warriors who were there from the amp die sees of the military and 40% of them came from different religions were non-catholic. they had traumatic brain injuries, some were in wheelchairs, and again it was a sense of peace they got from

being in that place. it was a very humbling experience. >> hunt: were you bathed in the spring waters? >> i did. >> hunt: was ate spiritual experience for you? >> it's interesting. it was freezing cold, rainy, and volunteers help you out of your clothes and you go into a small room and there's a picture of the virgin mary and you state your intention and you walk down the steps and you can get into the water and you can go fully immersed or up and i try to be the very objective reporter throughout the whole thing and i have to say after i was walking out of the water i got this really very, very calm sense of peace and tranquility. >> hunt: there is nothing that surprised me more in your terrific piece than the fact that she is celebrated by muslims. >> yes. >> hunt: and i believe you wrote that she is in more citations in the qur'an than in the bible.

>> mary in the qur'an is known as the holiest woman ever to be born and there is fascinating nativity birth narrative in the qur'an about how the baby jesus was born. the angel appeared in the qur'an. the angel appears to her as a person, i think, and tells her that -- and she says the same thing, how can that be because i know not man. and god says, it's going to be, it's going to be. and then because she's vilified, sort of, to be pregnant without a man, she goes off into the desert to have the baby by herself, and she's so humiliated and it's so painful, she would say i would rather die than to have to go back like this. and as the baby jesus comes out, he talks like a man and says, there is a palm tree that the dates are going to fall. this is a scene -- instead of

the scene in the manger, the qur'an says she's out in the desert, the dates fall from the palm tree, the water comes around her and she brings the baby who speaks like a man back to her community so she can be accepted. so in any case, it's fascinating for me to see, when i was in egypt in cairo, i met muslim women with their head scarves and everything who have a great deal of love for mary and some women go into coptic churches and also pray to her there. i was with a woman who did that and she keeps the qur'an in her purse and medals of mary in her purse. >> hunt: we mentioned she was cited more in the qur'an than in the bible. there really is not that many references in the gospels, which means we don't know a lot about her. >> no. >> hunt: i mean, the facts are rather illusive, aren't they?

>> very much so because she's only mentioned four times, really, in the bible. she speaks very, very little. she speaks when the angel appears and she appears in the song of mary early in her pregnancy and says, you know, at the time of christ's first miracle they don't have any wine and he says, why are you telling me this? it's not my time yet, and she tells the servants, do what he tells you to do, and that's like the beginning of the deal that she can intercede with god. for example, in the catholic religion, you're not supposd to pray to her, you're praying to god, but she can intercede for you. >> hunt: for the first ten centuries she was depicted as imperial, then it changed and she became the mother, kinder, more compassionate. >> yes. it's fascinating because when

christianity was declared by constantine and really mary -- it was really only until about the fifth century that -- in this council of ephesus that she was declared as the god bearer. as time went on and monasteries were springing up all over europe, particularly, and children of younger and younger ages were being put into these con vents and monasteries, they didn't have their moth were them. i spoke to one historian whose theory was this is when mary became much more of a core maternal figure because there was not a mother present. but i also think, because for so many people the figure of god is so authoritarian or distant, that mary is much more comfort and joy. >> hunt: i wondered as i was

read you can piece, which -- reading your piece which i read several times, we separate the mother mary from the virgin mary, and i find the latter more interesting. >> we separate her because she's not the same as the young, innocent virgin that is told she's going to bear christ and the mary at the cross. there is a huge amount of difference in between and a great deal of wisdom and love and miracles, yes. >> hunt: during christmas, we don't want to be political, but you cited earlier the magnificat, the song of mary. "the lord cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the locally. he filled the hungry with good things and the rich he sent away empty ." when you read that she makes bernie sanders look like ted cruz. >> i think our pope francis

today takes this teaching, you do unto the other, blessed are the meek. to me, the fact she's in the qur'an, i don't know why we're not using this as a meeting point to discuss the muslim religion and what we have in common instead of what we don't have in common. we're supposed to try to come together, not to push each other away. >> hunt: i think most or many people, certainly many political figures would probably be as surprised as i was that the muslims would have the feeling they have toward mary, which is partly why you describe she is the most powerful woman in the world, because of this reach. >> exactly, and it goes across centuries and and i was fascinated to go into the al-hadar university in cairo which is the leading sunni kind of university and know that there is a benedicting priest

that has thousands of volumes about mary in a nearby library and all the guys from the university which is so fundamentallest these days go over to that library to use the books about mary to study. >> hunt: maureen, there are some people watching who say this is a beautiful story, but miracles, come on, give me a break. do you believe in the miracles? >> huh... i think i have come to see a lot of things. i really started off this whole story as a skeptical reporter and i really didn't want to have to -- and i'm writing for a scientific magazine and, you know, i didn't want to be any kind of a pushover, but i have seen some things and influences on people that i have to think cannot be explained by rational means. >> hunt: did it change the view of your church, of mary,

did it change the view of yourself and your own spirituality? >> i think it has deepened by own sense of spirituality. i think in terms of -- the church is an extremely imperfect institution that always needs renewing and renewal, and you either decide to do it from within or you don't. i really do feel that you don't have to be a member of a church to care about mary because that's one of the most interesting things i learned in my reporting is that the women in rwanda, i spoke to one of the visionaries who is still there and she said mary never once mentioned a religion to her. it's not about what kind of religion you are, it's just she asks you to love her as much as she loves us. >> hunt: that is a great note to end on. it's in the national geographic, december issue, mary, the most powerful woman in the world. maureen orth, thank you so much

for being with us. >> thank you. >> hunt: thank you for joining us. >> rose: for more about this program and earlier episodes, visit us online at pbs.org and charlierose.com. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

announcer: the following kqed production was produced in high definition. ♪ >> must have soup! >> the pancake is to die for! >> it was a gut-bomb, but i liked it. >> i actually fantasized in private moments about the food i had. >> i didn't like it. >> you didn't like it? >> dining here makes me feel rich. >> and what about dessert? pecan pie? sweet potato pie?