EWTN Radio announced this week that Father Mike Schmitz’s The Bible in a Year and The Catechism in a Year podcasts will begin airing nationwide on Monday, Jan. 15.

Nationally, the podcasts will air back-to-back in a one-hour time slot beginning at 10 p.m. ET, the EWTN network said in a press release this week. (EWTN is the parent company of CNA and the Register.)

Local radio affiliates who add the show to their lineup will have the freedom to shift the program to a time that’s best for their audience. Listeners are therefore encouraged, EWTN says, to check the schedule of the EWTN affiliate in their area or listen for free on the EWTN app. More than 600 domestic and international AM and FM radio affiliates carry EWTN’s Catholic programming.

Father Schmitz, a priest of the Diocese of Duluth, Minnesota, who serves at the University of Minnesota-Duluth’s Newman Center, hosts both podcasts and offers prayers and reflections to accompany the daily text. The Bible in a Year episodes run for an average of 23 minutes, while The Catechism in a Year episodes are generally slightly shorter.

Beginning at the start of 2021, The Bible in a Year proved to be a hit on the podcast charts, rising to No. 1 overall on Apple Podcasts shortly after the new year. Despite eventually relinquishing its No. 1 spot on the charts, The Bible in a Year has gone on to be downloaded more than 430 million times.

Instead of reading the Bible in a linear fashion from cover to cover, the podcast follows “The Great Adventure Bible Timeline,” developed by Jeff Cavins. This approach, which pairs readings from the 14 “critical narrative books” with readings from nonnarrative books each day, helps to maintain the story structure of salvation history, Father Schmitz previously told CNA.

The Catechism in a Year podcast follows a similar format to The Bible in a Year podcast, with 365 daily episodes, each including Father Schmitz adding his own short prayers and reflections. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had to give Ascension specific permission to distribute the Catechism of the Catholic Church in this format because it owns the copyright to the English translation for the distribution in the United States. That podcast, too, topped the charts for a time at the beginning of 2023.

While some people might think of the Catechism merely as a resource, “like an encyclopedia,” Father Schmitz previously told CNA, he said he hopes his podcast will help listeners to appreciate the Catechism as being permeated by “truth spoken in love.”

The podcasting priest added: “[The Catechism] is not just a heady document. [It has] a beauty that speaks to the heart, not just to the head.”