Father Dave Dwyer, CSP, answers a question while broadcasting “The Busted Halo® Show” live on location.

It all began with a text-based web site in 2001 and podcasts produced in an abandoned radio room in the basement of the Paulist Fathers residence in New York City.

A decade later, BustedHalo.com, an online magazine for spiritual seekers, attracts some 20,000 regular readers, Busted Halo® YouTube videos have each been viewed by as many as 100,000 people, and every day “The Busted Halo® Show with Father Dave” on The Catholic Channel on SiriusXM satellite radio reaches an estimated quarter-million listeners.

“Of all of the ways the Paulists and the church reach out to young adults, something about this is working, something about this clicks,” said Father Dave Dwyer, CSP, director of Busted Halo®, a media and ministry outreach to Catholics in their twenties and thirties. “It’s the technology, the tone and the demographic … firing on all cylinders and firing at the right time.”

Father Dave Dwyer, CSP, answers a question while broadcasting “The Busted Halo® Show” live on location.

Father Dwyer, who began his tenure in 2004, said the combination of technology and ministry that fuels Busted Halo® is eminently Paulist.

“It has always been an important part of the Paulist charism to bring people back and help them reconcile with the church,” Father Dwyer said. “The people to whom that applies these days are those in their 20s and 30s. There is a very urgent need for this ministry in the church.”

Busted Halo® grew out of Paulist Young Adult Ministries, founded by Father Brett Hoover, CSP, and Mike Hayes in 2000. A year later, the first version of the website was launched, and young adult focus groups came up with the name “Busted Halo®.”

The motivation behind the name? According to the site itself, “Catholic Christian belief is that all God’s children are ‘saints in the making.’ Everyone is called to aspire toward the holiness and selflessness of a Mother Teresa or Saint Francis. At the same time we are all too often aware that this journey toward sainthood is one fraught with imperfections, struggles, and mistakes. Each of us sports a Halo that is either dented, scratched, tarnished … in some way Busted. Yet God loves us anyway and continually calls to bang out the dents and polish our halos up to a nice golden shine.”

Busted Halo® Production Editor Joe Williams directs a scene with Father Dave Dwyer, CSP, for the popular Sacraments 101 videos.

Things continued to progress, with 2005 bringing a site redesign (complete with advertisements) and podcasts hosted by Father Dwyer and Mr. Hayes. The podcasts are still recorded and produced in the old studios of WLWL, the former Paulist radio station, which were built in 1931

“We had an unused radio studio right here in this building,” said Father Dwyer, who was a director and producer for MTV and Comedy Central before entering the Paulist novitiate. “It is wonderful to stand on the shoulders of the giants who have gone before us in media ministry.”

These podcasts were the genesis of a daily, three-hour talk show that’s broadcast all over North America. Sirius Satellite Radio was working with the Archdiocese of New York to develop programming for a new Catholic Channel.

“We sent over some recordings of previous podcasts, hoping they would put them on at 2 a.m. just to fill time,” recalled Father Dwyer. “But to my surprise, they told us that our show was exactly what they were looking for.”

So much so that, for the last five years, Father Dwyer has been hosting a live radio talk show every weekday from 7-10 p.m. ET on SiriusXM Channel 129.

Edward Cardinal Egan and Father Dave Dwyer, CSP, broadcasting “The Busted Halo® Show.” 

The second half of the decade has produced more successes, including: the first work to be published under the “Busted Halo® Books” imprint of Paulist Press, Googling God: The Religious Landscape of People in Their 20s and 30s, written by co-founder Mike Hayes; awards from the Catholic Press Association and Associated Church Press, including “Best-in-Class Website”; iPod retreats offered through iTunes; receiving grants from foundations including the Carnegie Corporation and the Catholic Communications Campaign; partnering with the National Catholic Young Adult Ministry Association and the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management on mutually beneficial projects; and recognition in national media including “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams,” “Fox & Friends,” CNN, The New York Times, “The Today Show,” Newsweek, The Washington Times, CBS-TV and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

To mark its milestone 10th anniversary, Busted Halo® shosting a fundraiser gala dinner on March 8, 2012, at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in New York with guest of honor and keynote speaker Cardinal Edward M. Egan.

As for the future, Busted Halo® Ministries seems poised to continue to run on all cylinders to further success.

“There is a force that is driving us, and that force is the Holy Spirit,” Father Dwyer said.

Father Dave Dwyer, CSP, with young adults after Mass.