(OSV News) — Beginning in October, Our Sunday Visitor newspaper readers can expect to see something new in their mailbox: the Our Sunday Visitor magazine.
“We really think that this magazine is one of a kind, that there’s no other Catholic publication like it that helps someone integrate the whole of their Catholic life,” said Dominican Father Patrick Briscoe, editor of Our Sunday Visitor. (OSV, a Catholic publishing company based in Huntington, Indiana, is the parent company of the Our Sunday Visitor publication and the OSV News wire service).
After over a century of publishing a weekly newspaper, Our Sunday Visitor is transitioning to a monthly lifestyle magazine. The decision comes after OSV’s years of extensive research into what Catholic readers are looking for and the most effective ways to help them deepen their relationship with God and grow in faith. It also follows in the wake of OSV launching the OSV News wire service Dec. 31, 2022, as part of its institutional commitment to provide excellent Catholic news content to newspapers, magazines, and other print and digital media outlets in the U.S. and around the world.
“Everything that we are doing is undergirded by mission,” said Gretchen R. Crowe, editor-in-chief of OSV News, who also serves as OSV’s editorial director of OSV periodicals. “It’s all coming from us trying to help Catholics connect more fully to Christ, help them connect more fully with their parishes, help them connect more fully with their faith.”
The new magazine format for Our Sunday Visitor will focus on inspiring Catholics to live out their faith every day. Bursting with sacred art and colorful imagery, the magazine promises to engage readers and accompany them in their faith journey with more than 60 pages of articles from Catholic voices such as acclaimed speaker, author and podcaster Katie Prejean McGrady and Msgr. James Shea, author of “From Christendom to Apostolic Mission: Pastoral Strategies for an Apostolic Age,” conversations with Catholic celebrities like Jonathan Roumie, spiritual encouragement, Scripture reflections, practical guidance and inspiring stories from ordinary Catholics.
The inaugural issue, for example, centers on the National Eucharistic Revival — the U.S. bishops’ initiative to renew the Catholic Church by enkindling a living relationship with Jesus Christ in the holy Eucharist — and features Catholics transformed by the Eucharist, from a woman who had an abortion to a married couple.
New subscribers can get a one-year subscription (12 issues) at the introductory rate of $49.95, 53% off the cover price.
Father Briscoe, Crowe and Scott P. Richert, publisher of OSV, described the new magazine as a “monthly retreat” for spiritual renewal and sustenance.
“It’s a way for people to disconnect, to be able to put away their laptops and their phones — all their devices — and just sit down and spend time with God,” Crowe said.
Continuing a legacy of mission
The magazine continues the legacy of the newspaper, founded in 1912 by then-Father John Francis Noll, who later became the bishop of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and then archbishop in 1953. The newspaper sought to serve Catholics amid a rising tide of anti-Catholic sentiment in the country — and to encourage them to live joyful, hopeful lives of faith.
By 1962, 50 years later, OSV was printing 1 million copies per week, Richert said. He called the magazine “firmly in the center of the mission that Archbishop Noll established when he founded Our Sunday Visitor.”
“Publishing a newspaper was the way in which he put his mission into action,” Richert said. “What we’ve done now is to bring that mission forward and to fulfill it more completely by providing people with the content they need in the format that they will actually use in 2024 and beyond.”
A data-driven decision
Our Sunday Visitor’s change to a magazine follows a 2018 reader survey and a 2022 national research project conducted by OSV.
After the 2018 survey, the Our Sunday Visitor newspaper began moving away from the news, which most of Our Sunday Visitor’s readers were finding online, including on OurSundayVisitor.com and — following the 2022 launch of OSV News — at osvnews.com.
“What they were looking for in Our Sunday Visitor was content that was more faith formation and spirituality content and things that would feed their faith, help them grow in their faith, help them become better Catholics, help them live their Catholic faith, seven days a week,” Richert said of Our Sunday Visitor’s readers.
They knew then, he said, that if readers responded well, the format would change to better suit the content.
The 2022 Catholic market research, done with a secular research company, looked at a variety of people who identify as Catholic, he said.
“What we wanted to do was look more broadly at the contours of the Catholic market, especially post-COVID in 2022, as we’d seen this decline in church attendance,” Richert said.
According to Pew Research Center survey data from 2022, 24% of U.S. Catholic adults say they attend religious services in person less often than before the pandemic. Gallup survey data from 2023 also found that church attendance decreased among Catholics.
OSV focused on those who attend at least once a month, Richert said, and found that they were looking for the same kinds of things that Our Sunday Visitor’s readers were.
Reaching millennial readers
With the magazine, Our Sunday Visitor hopes to serve longtime readers and attract new ones, including millennials, the generation that describes adults born approximately between 1981-1996. Among other things, the magazine will expand travel coverage, provide more interaction with beauty and sacred art and develop editorial sections.
“Every Catholic wants an authentic presentation of the faith, something that grounds them in a lasting tradition, that helps us feel and think and look beyond the passing trends of our own day and helps us to connect with the Lord and to better love our Church,” Father Briscoe said.
The final issue of the newspaper will be for the last week in September, with the first issue of the magazine printed for the month of October. Readers can subscribe at oursundayvisitor.com/subscribe to receive the premiere issue.