CNA Newsroom How "The Bible in a Year" podcast changed the world

Father Mike Schmitz Father Mike Schmitz is the host of the podcast "the Bible in a Year," produced by Ascension. / Courtesy of Ascension

On January 1, 2021, the Bible in a Year Podcast published its first episode. 

The format was simple. Every day, listeners would hear a few, preselected excerpts from the Bible. Then the host, Father Mike Schmitz, offers a prayer and a short reflection on them. The average length of an episode is about twenty minutes.

In hindsight, it seems like a no-brainer that it would be popular. But at the time, no one really expected the podcast to be such an immediate hit. Within days, it jumped to the top of the charts, surpassing in popularity podcasts from The New York Times, National Public Radio, and other massively established mainstream organizations. 

And that success continued. Although the podcast relinquished its top spot by January 18, 2021, it was back on top by the beginning of January 2022. 

By the end of last year, the podcast had over 142 million downloads, which equated to about 3.3 billion minutes of listening worldwide.

This week on the CNA Newsroom podcast, we’ll bring you just a tiny sampling of the thousands of lives touched by God’s word, thanks to the Bible in a Year

Listen here, or on any podcast app:

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