Bible podcast becomes most popular

NEW YORK - Fr. Mike Schmitz, a Catholic priest, hosts a new podcast called  "The Bible in a Year".

"This is a true story about real life that I think even people who don't have faith would get a lot out of it," Fr. Schmitz says.
    
Even before the New Year’s Day launch, the podcast was at the top of Apple's religion and spirituality chart.  It's now the top podcast beating every category.

Fr. Schmitz says, "I think it reveals a lot about people's hunger.  I think it reveals it's the new year they want to make a change."

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During the podcast, Fr. Schmitz, a chaplain and professor at the University of Minnesota, Duluth reads the Bible starting at the beginning with the Book of Genesis.

"It is a true story about a broken people us and how God has worked with a broken people and I think that is really powerful," Fr. Schmitz says.

His engaging and charismatic delivery takes the listener through all of the books.  He tries to put events in context letting listeners know what else was going on at the time four-thousand years ago. 
 
"Not everything in the Bible is pretty.  It's not meant to be a children's story," Fr. Schmitz says.

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He believes the Bible offers timeless wisdom still relevant to the modern world.

"One of the things the pandemic has done is making it virtually impossible to deny the fact life is uncertain," Fr. Schmitz says.  "We only live under the illusion of certainty."