Catholic conversations with a generous heart.
Lisa Hendey & Friends pairs Catholic interviews with reflective solo episodes about ordinary faith in motion. The show moves gently through books, retreats, volunteering, media projects, illness, prayer, and the small practices that help belief become daily life.
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Lisa Hendey & Friends is a Catholic conversation show shaped by interviews, personal reflection, and a generous sense of spiritual companionship. It favors warmth over polish. Episodes move at a measured pace, giving guests space to tell the longer story behind a book, film, retreat, ministry, or moment of faith. The result feels less like a formal interview circuit and more like a familiar conversation where Catholic practice is connected to real choices, real worry, and real gratitude. Kevin Matthews' episode follows the arc from radio success and personal excess to illness, Marian devotion, the rosary, and the Broken Mary documentary. It is a conversion story with a strong testimony current. The conversation with Amy J. Cattapan is more practical and hospitable, focused on a writers' retreat with room for silence, small group discussion, flexible meals, and creative participation. A solo episode on volunteering turns a regular UCLA hospital shift into a meditation on purpose, community, and gratitude after cancer treatment. Another solo return episode lingers over the election of Pope Leo XIV, the surprise of hearing the news through family, and the desire to mark a historic Catholic moment before ordinary busyness overtakes it. Interviews with Mario Costabile look at virtual Catholic retreats, family participation, and the challenge of helping young people connect parish life with home life. Becky Eldridge's conversation about The Inner Chapel brings prayer into a moment when churches and chapels were physically unavailable. Gretchen Crowe's visit connects Catholic publishing with the rosary and St. John Paul II. Teresa Tomeo's episode brings faith into the strain of coronavirus anxiety and news fatigue. Across the show, books matter, but they are usually doorways rather than endpoints. Prayer matters too, especially the rosary, contemplative practice, gratitude, and trust in God during unsettled seasons. The show is comfortable naming Catholic specifics without turning them into insider code. It is devotional, conversational, and personal, with recurring attention to friendship, service, family faith, media, and the ways suffering can become part of a testimony rather than the whole story.
Made for: For Catholic listeners who like interviews that leave room for testimony, prayer, books, service, and personal reflection. It also suits spiritually curious listeners comfortable with explicitly Catholic language and devotional themes.
What sets it apart: The show blends interviews with intimate reflections on volunteering, illness, papal history, retreats, and daily Catholic practice. Its appeal is the way practical details become invitations to gratitude, prayer, and renewed faith.
Join Lisa Hendey as she interviews awesome guests, reviews the latest movies and books, and travels the world. "Lisa Hendey and Friends" invites you to dialogue with authors and entertainment industry professionals, spiritual bright lights and seekers, and whoever else Lisa meets along her daily journey. Come along for the conversation from LA to Kenya and all points in between! Visit on Substack at https://lisahendey.substack.com/ or at https://catholicmoments.libsyn.com/
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Lisa Hendey connects Catholic prayer, testimony, service, and family life through generous interviews and candid personal reflection.
Lisa Hendey treats faith as something practiced in schedules, families, illness, service, and conversation. Lisa Hendey & Friends moves between guest interviews and personal reflection, with a warm, attentive style that keeps spiritual claims connected to ordinary choices.
A silent dining room beside a talking one: Lisa Hendey leaves room for your kind of retreat.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Kevin Matthews connects illness, a broken statue, and a Chicago walk to a renewed life of faith.
Kevin Matthews moves from Chicago radio success into illness, job loss, and a renewed devotion to Christ and Mary. The episode draws its strength from clear, concrete turning points: a rare form of MS, a broken Virgin Mary statue found on the ground, and the 2019 Chicago walk…
A practical retreat preview where silence comes with options, participation is welcome, and hospitality shapes the whole experience.
Lisa Hendey's conversation with Amy works best as a practical reassurance for anyone wary of silence that feels forced. They describe a retreat where quiet is available without becoming a test: small-group discussions are optional, meals can happen in either a silent or talking…
A warm reflection on volunteering as an expression of service, purpose, community, and gratitude.
Volunteering comes through as a faith-inflected practice in this warm, personal episode, as the host thinks about service as a path toward purpose and community.
A candid look at bringing parents into their children's Catholic faith formation when Sunday churchgoing is uneven.
Lisa Hendy's conversation looks at how Catholic faith formation can reach children when family churchgoing is uneven. The guest describes virtual programs that let parents join from home by TV, monitor, or phone, with a live team using Q&A, polls, and chat rather than relying on…
A timely Catholic conversation on finding a prayerful refuge within when familiar sanctuaries are out of reach.
Lisa Hendy's conversation with Becky uses church closures as a way into a quieter question: where does prayer live when familiar sacred spaces are unavailable? Her book centers on the idea of an inner chapel, a place to seek God and rest wherever life happens, shaped by St.
Culture interviews with conscience and warmth.
Catholic books, prayer, and lived witness.
Catholic answers for complicated faithful lives.
Traditional Catholic commentary with doctrinal edge.
Catholic prayer with scriptural backbone.
A Catholic-themed show featuring interviews, reviews, and discussions on faith, spirituality, and Catholic living.
Lisa Hendey interviews Catholic author and speaker Teresa Tomeo about her book 'Conquering Coronavirus: How Faith Can Put Your Fears to Rest'.
Kevin Matthews, the subject of Broken Mary and the face of the Broken Mary movement, says he found a broken Virgin Mary statue near a dumpster over 10 years ago.
Lisa Hendey and Amy Katapan discuss the C3 Conference for Catholic educators in Los Angeles, covering its history and purpose.
Lisa Hendey opens with her weekly Wednesday volunteer shift at UCLA and frames the episode around “the three gifts of volunteering.” She says her first role was pastoral ministry, taking communion to patients during COVID, before she moved to the hospital’s kindness cart because grief after losing both parents made patient-room visits too heavy.
Lisa Hendey returns to Lisa Hendey & Friends after a hiatus since 2020 to record her reaction to Pope Leo XIV’s election.
Mario Costabile says Array of Hope, the ministry he leads as executive director, shifted from parish events to a virtual retreat platform called Rise Up after losing dozens of events in March 2020.
Lisa Hendy talks with Becky Aldridge, an Ignatian-trained spiritual director and Loyola Press author, about The Inner Chapel and the hospice promise that started it.
Lisa Hendey interviews Gretchen Crow about her new book 'Praying the Rosary with St.