Special US report: Catholics leading the way in Media in 2025

This year’s US Leaders Special Report highlights the new realities of American public affairs. Just as one Catholic left the White House, after Joe Biden finally decided not to seek a second term, another returned as Donald Trump was re-elected with JD Vance as his vice-president and a cabinet filled with conservatives who wear their faith on their sleeves.

In this fifth section of the report, we examine Catholics contributing across media platforms. From figures like Matt Fradd, who dominate the Catholic podcast sphere, to stalwarts of traditional media such as Bill O'Reilly, this selection showcases the Church’s clear and increasingly recognised voice in American culture.

John L Allen Jr and Elise Ann Allen
Editor, Crux
John and Elise Allen are Vatican-based journalists. John L Allen Jr is founder and editor of the Catholic-oriented news site Crux. He also serves as a senior Vatican analyst for CNN, and has featured in coverage of the conclaves of 2005 and 2013. Recently they have both joined The Catholic Herald as Special Vatican Correspondents. John L Allen Jr is the author of numerous books about the Catholic Church and has written two biographies of Pope Benedict XVI. His most recent book, Catholics and Contempt, looks at the fractured Catholic media landscape and gives an urgent call for it to change course.

Montse Alvarado
President, EWTN
Montse Alvarado is the president and chief operating officer of EWTN and was formerly with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. Born in Mexico City, she holds degrees from Florida International University and George Washington University.

Raymond Arroyo
Author, broadcaster and EWTN host
Raymond Arroyo, a resident of New Orleans, is the news director and lead anchor of EWTN News, a division of the Eternal Word Television Network. He is also the creator and host of The World Over Live and author of the Will Wilder series for young readers. Arroyo is a producer of the bestselling all-star audio Bible, The Word of Promise. Previously, he worked at the Associated Press, the New York Observer, and for the political columnist team of Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. Arroyo has authored several books on EWTN’s founder, Mother Angelica, as well as a series of children’s books.

Susan Braddock
Board chair emerita, America Media
Susan Braddock is a board chair emerita of America Media and formerly board chair of the New York Cristo Rey School. Her other board commitments have included the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and the Aspen Music Festival.

Arthur C Brooks
Harvard professor, author and columnist
Arthur Brooks is a professor at Harvard as well as a successful author, public speaker and a columnist at The Atlantic. He focuses on the science of human happiness, stating that his mission is “lifting others up and bringing them together”. He has given over 1,400 speeches during his career and has interviewed high-profile figures such as the Dalai Lama and presidents George Bush and Barack Obama. In 2023 he co-authored a book with Oprah Winfrey, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier, which debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

Elizabeth Bruenig
Writer, The Atlantic
Elizabeth Bruenig is a leading US journalist and a native of Texas. After reading theology and reading St Augustine at university, she converted to Catholicism from Methodism. She has been described as a “Catholic, socialist, family-focused thinker”. She works as an opinion writer for The Atlantic and hosts a podcast, The Bruenigs, with her husband Matt Bruenig. She previously worked for The New York Times and as an editor for The Washington Post. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2019. As a Marshall Scholar, she studied at Jesus College, Cambridge, earning a master of philosophy degree in Christian theology.

Robert DeFrancesco
Executive director, Catholic Media Association
Robert DeFrancesco is the executive director of the Catholic Media Association. He is a mission-driven communications professional with two decades of leadership and media experience. The Catholic Media Association was established in 1911 and advocates for the value, effectiveness and identity of member publishers and organisations, journalists and media professionals throughout North America. Prior to the Catholic Media Association, DeFrancesco worked for the Diocese of Arizona as director of communications.

Steve Doocy
TV host and author
Steve Doocy is an American television host, political commentator and author. He is an anchor of Fox & Friends on the Fox News Channel. Doocy has earned TV reporting and writing awards from the Associated Press, the Society of Professional Journalists and 11 Emmy Awards from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He is married to Kathy Doocy, a former model and TV sports reporter, and is a Catholic who serves as a lector in his church. He and his wife published the New York Times bestseller Happy in a Hurry Cookbook in 2020. His son, Peter Doocy, is a White House correspondent, also for Fox News.

Ross Douthat
Columnist, New York Times
Ross Douthat is an American political analyst, blogger, author and New York Times columnist. He lives with his family in Connecticut. He was previously a senior editor of The Atlantic. He has written on a variety of topics, including the state of Christianity in America and “sustainable decadence” in contemporary society. Douthat is a convert to Catholicism who describes himself as having a “conservative tendency” when it comes to the faith. Douthat is also a non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. His seven books include The Deep Places, in which he revealed he suffers from chronic Lyme disease, and To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism.

Colm Flynn
Journalist
Colm Flynn is an Irish journalist, originally from County Clare but long based in New York City, and a leading figure in global Catholic media. He anchors major EWTN coverage from studios in Washington, DC and Alabama, and reports from high-profile Catholic events in Rome and globally. Known for his prominent interviews and human-interest features, Flynn works across broadcast, digital, and long-form storytelling.

Matt Fradd
Catholic podcaster
Matt Fradd is a Byzantine Catholic and the creator and host of the Pints With Aquinas and Love People Use Things podcasts which are listened to by tens of thousands of people every month. He is the author and co-author of several books including Does God Exist? A Socratic Dialogue on the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas and The Porn Myth: Exposing the Reality Behind the Fantasy of Pornography. Much of his work has centred around fighting pornography in contemporary society.

Bryan Gruley
Journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner
Bryan Gruley was educated at the University of Notre Dame, majoring in American Studies and graduating in 1979. His career spanned 41 years in journalism, and he retired in 2020. Gruley wrote for The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek and The Detroit News. He was part of the Journal’s team that won the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks. He is the author of five award-winning novels, all set in his home state of Michigan. Gruley was educated at Detroit Catholic Central.

Trent Horn
Catholic media broadcaster
After his conversion to the Catholic faith, Trent Horn earned master’s degrees in theology, philosophy and bioethics. He serves as a staff apologist for Catholic Answers, where he specialises in teaching Catholics to persuasively engage those who disagree with them. Horn models that approach each week on the radio programme Catholic Answers Live and his own YouTube podcast The Counsel of Trent. He is married to Laura Horn, whose YouTube channel produces comedy from a Catholic viewpoint. He is the author of Counterfeit Christs, among other books.

Laura Ingraham
Conservative television host
Laura Ingraham, a convert to Catholicism, is a US conservative television host. She has been the host of The Ingraham Angle on Fox News since October 2017, and is the editor-in-chief of LifeZette. She formerly worked as a speechwriter in the Reagan administration before earning a JD and working as a judicial clerk in New York and then for US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She is an active philanthropist and often donates proceeds from her website to several causes. She has three adopted children.

Alex Jones, Alessandro DiSanto and Erich Kerekes
Co-founders, Hallow
Alex Jones, Alessandro DiSanto and Erich Kerekes are co-founders of Hallow. Graduates of Notre Dame, and feeling there was “something missing” in their business lives, they began developing the Hallow app in 2018. It has become a leading platform for prayer, meditation and spiritual reflection.

Megyn Kelly
Broadcaster and journalist
Megyn Kelly, a former Fox News anchor, is an independent journalist based in New York with a large following on Sirius and 3.5 million subscribers on YouTube. Kelly was raised in an Irish Catholic family in Albany, New York and is married with three children. She lives in Connecticut and on the New Jersey shore.

Roger Kimball
Writer, founder and editor, The New Criterion
Roger Kimball is an art critic and conservative social commentator. He is the editor and publisher of The New Criterion and the publisher of Encounter Books. He contributes to a variety of newspapers and journals including The Wall Street Journal, The Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement and The Sunday Telegraph. Kimball has authored many books, notably Tenured Radicals: How Politics Has Corrupted Our Higher Education. He serves on the board of the Manhattan Institute and is chairman of the William F Buckley Jr Program at Yale.

Kathryn Lopez
Senior fellow, National Review Institute
Kathryn Jean Lopez is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute where she heads the Center for Religion, Culture and Civil Society. She is also editor-at-large of National Review magazine and speaks on faith in public life, virtue and prayer. Lopez is the author of A Year with the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living. She is the chair of Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s Pro-Life Commission in New York. At the opening Mass of the Year of Faith in Rome in October 2012, Pope Benedict XVI presented Lopez with a message to women throughout the world.

Diane Montagna
Vatican commentator
Diane Montagna is a Vatican journalist based in Rome. She has contributed to the Catholic Herald and co-authored, with Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Christus Vincit: Christ’s Triumph Over the Darkness of the Age, as well as co-authoring Father Gerald Murray’s bestselling memoir and spiritual guide Calming the Storm: Navigating the Church in a Time of Crisis. She has been a Vatican correspondent since 2014 and has worked as a translator for L’Osservatore Romano as well as Bishop Schneider’s book The Catholic Mass. She is a regular Vatican commentator for international TV networks.

Robert Moynihan
Founder and editor-in-chief, Inside the Vatican
Robert Moynihan is a journalist and seasoned Vatican analyst who is the founder and editor-in-chief of Inside the Vatican magazine. He interviewed Pope Benedict, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, more than 25 times. He is a world-renowned commentator on Catholic issues and has appeared on news outlets such as Fox News, CNN, ABC and EWTN. He is the author of several books on issues facing the Church today, including The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI: Let God’s Light Shine Forth and Pray for Me: The Life and Spiritual Vision of Pope Francis, First Pope from the Americas.

Peggy Noonan
Journalist and former White House speechwriter
Peggy Noonan is a weekly columnist for The Wall Street Journal and contributor to NBC News and ABC News. She was a primary speechwriter and special assistant to President Ronald Reagan from 1984 to 1986. In 1995, she received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. Five of Noonan’s books have been New York Times bestsellers. She was also nominated for an Emmy for her work on America: A Tribute to Heroes. She is a practising Roman Catholic and lives in New York City where she attends St Thomas More Church on the Upper East Side.

Bill O’Reilly
Journalist and TV host
Bill O’Reilly is a political commentator, journalist, TV host and author. He hosts the podcast No Spin News. He hosted The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News until 2017, which was the highest-rated cable news show for 16 years. Prior to joining Fox, he served as a reporter for several local news stations in the US as well as ABC News and CBS News. O’Reilly was raised in a Catholic family, attended Chaminade Catholic High School in Mineola, New York and Marist College in Poughkeepsie. He and his wife were married at St Brigid Parish in Westbury, New York.

Matt Pinto
Matt Pinto is the founder and former president of Ascension Press, a host of The Catholic Entrepreneur podcast and founder, in 2024, of The Genesis Group, a Catholic venture capital and private equity firm. He is a graduate of Temple University and lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

Rusty Reno
Editor, First Things
Russell Ronald Reno III is the editor of First Things magazine. He attended Haverford College, receiving a BA in 1983 and began graduate studies at Yale University in the Department of Religious Studies in 1984, completing his doctoral degree in 1990 in the area of religious ethics. He was formerly a professor of theology and ethics at Creighton University. A theological and political conservative, Reno was not originally Catholic, having been baptised into the Episcopal Church and growing up as a member of the Church of the Redeemer in Baltimore. In 2004 he was received into the Catholic Church.

Robert Royal
Author and president, Faith & Reason Institute
Robert Royal is an influential broadcaster and conservative commentator who is president of the Faith & Reason Institute based in Washington, DC. A former Fulbright Scholar, he is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing site which he founded with Michael Novak. He is the St John Henry Newman Visiting Chair in Catholic Studies at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire. He has taught at Brown University, Rhode Island College, and The Catholic University of America.

Christopher Ruddy
Christopher Ruddy is the founder and CEO of Newsmax Media, a leading conservative multimedia platform that went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2025. He began his career as a journalist with the New York Post and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review before launching Newsmax in 1998. Ruddy serves on the board of the Financial Publishers Association and is a member of the CSIS Kissinger Council. A practising Catholic and Long Island native, he now resides in South Florida and has been recognised by Brooklyn’s Cathedral Club for his contributions to Catholic life.

Eric Sammons
Editor-in-chief, Crisis Magazine
Eric Sammons is the executive director of Crisis Publications and the editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine. He is the author of several books including Deadly Indifference, The Old Evangelization and Holiness for Everyone. He has contributed several essays and articles to publications such as OnePeterFive, The Federalist, and CatholicVote. He is a board member of the Confraternity of Our Lady of Fatima. He considers himself a “traditional Catholic”. A former United Methodist, he became a Catholic after hearing Scott Hahn’s conversion story.

Monica Gerard-Sharp
President, Monali Media
Monica Gerard-Sharp is president of Monali Media, an investor, publisher, and strategist. After a successful career at Time Inc/Time Warner and then Disney/CapCities/ABC, she became an independent entrepreneur, focusing on finance, marketing and applied technology. Her areas of expertise include producing, publishing, consulting and directing, and she serves on for-profit and non-profit boards. She lives between the US and UK.

Maria Shriver
Journalist and author
Maria Shriver is a former first lady of California, a member of the Kennedy family, and the founder of the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement. She was married to former governor of California and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, whom she divorced in 2021. Shriver has two Emmys for her role in developing The Alzheimer’s Project. She is a practising Catholic who sought advice at a convent after her marriage split.

Brandon Vogt
Founder, ClaritasU, and senior publishing director, Word on Fire Ministries
Brandon Vogt, from Orlando, founded ClaritasU and is the senior publishing director for Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire Catholic Ministries. He is also the founder of Chesterton Academy of Orlando, a classical high school rooted in the Catholic faith. He has served as a consultant for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Evangelisation and Catechesis, and on the board of the Society of GK Chesterton. He has authored 13 books including Why I Am Catholic (And You Should Be Too) and Return: How to Draw Your Child Back to the Faith. He has been featured on news outlets and publications including Fox News, CBS, EWTN, NPR and National Review.

Michael Warsaw
Chairman and CEO, EWTN
Michael P Warsaw is chairman and CEO of EWTN and serves as the publisher of the National Catholic Register. His association with EWTN began in 1991, and he progressively took on leadership roles, becoming the network’s president in 2000 and assuming the position of CEO in 2009. Following EWTN’s acquisition of the National Catholic Register in 2011, he took on the additional role of publisher for the magazine. In 2013, Warsaw was appointed as the chairman of EWTN. Outside EWTN, he is actively involved in various Catholic organisations. He sits on the board of directors for the Napa Institute and serves on the board of trustees for the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. He is also a member of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre. Warsaw was appointed consultor to the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communications in 2017 by the late Pope Francis.

Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service, Rome Bureau
Cindy Wooden is editor-in-chief of the Rome Bureau for the Catholic News Service and a fellow of the Berkeley Center for World Affairs at Georgetown University. She has covered the Church from Catholic News Service’s Rome bureau for over 30 years and in that time she has written about, and travelled the world with, three popes.

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