Donahue was born in Cleveland in 1935 and grew up in a Catholic family. He attended a Catholic boys’ high school and the University of Notre Dame.

Phil Donahue, a self-described “apostate Catholic” who reinvented the format of daytime television talk shows in the 1960s, died Sunday at his home in New York at the age of 88.

Donahue was born in Cleveland in 1935 and grew up in a Catholic family. He attended a Catholic boys’ school and the University of Notre Dame. He later dismissed the church as “sexist,” “racist,” and “unnecessarily destructive,” sentiments that permeated many of his shows. New York Times Obituaries.

When The Phil Donahue Show When he made his debut in 1967 on a television station in Dayton, Ohio, Donahue encouraged audience participation in his interviews and discussions, a practice that was unusual at the time but was later adopted by numerous other programs.

In his nearly 30 years on the air and 6,000 episodes, Donahue frequently courted controversy, both through his choice of guests and the topics he covered.

He was often critical of the Catholic Church, where he was baptized, especially during the sex abuse crisis. He first addressed the sex abuse scandal in a 1988 episode and revisited it in later seasons of his show, Reuters reported.

In a 2002 interview with Oprah Winfrey—who cited Donahue as a major influence on her—Donahue described an infamous episode of his show in which he showed footage of an abortion.

“If you look up ‘outrage’ in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of me. We even filmed an abortion once – a side shot of a woman in stirrups, the doctor opening the cervix, everything,” he said.

“Then we called the Archdiocese of Chicago, the pro-lifers and the pro-abortionists, put them in a room and played the tape before we put it on the air anywhere. When I walked into the room after they saw it, half the people were crying,” he continued.

“The biggest complaint from pro-lifers and the Catholic Church was that the tape made abortion look easy. I said, ‘Well, that’s the procedure – 15 minutes.’ They were afraid that if we aired that, everyone would rush out and get abortions. I said, ‘Look, this issue divides families. It’s at the heart of the American agenda.’ Somehow we had to air it,” he recalled.

Donahue describes herself as a feminist and also supports same-sex marriage.

In a 2002 New York Times In an interview, Donahue said he still considers himself “a Catholic. I will always be a Catholic.” He also said he refused to have his first marriage annulled because he “refused to pay a fee to four or five celibate men I didn’t know who, behind closed doors, would conclude that my marriage never existed.”

Donahue’s show was canceled in 1996 due to declining ratings, and a rerun in 2002 was canceled after only six months. In 2024, President Joe Biden, a Catholic, awarded Donahue the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Despite their many differences, Catholic League President Bill Donohue has fond memories of the legendary Irish-American Catholic television personality.

“I was a guest on Phil Donahue’s show for many years and really enjoyed chatting with him,” Donohue recalled. “He told his producers several times that he was happy to have me on, even though we usually clashed. That made him unusual – he wasn’t afraid to confront a conservative. He was a real man. And I always appreciated his kindness. May he rest in peace.”