CNA staff, August 19, 2024 / 5:20 p.m.

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.’ These views shaped many of his shows,” according to his obituary in the New York Times.

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

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, into which 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,” 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 interview with the New York Times, Donahue said he still considers himself “a Catholic. I will always be a Catholic.”

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 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.”