Al Kresta, president and CEO of Ave Maria Radio and host of “Kresta in the Afternoon,” died June 15 following a brief battle with liver cancer, the Kresta family and Ave Maria Radio announced. He was 72.
Kresta regarded himself primarily as a missionary, whether he was on the air, writing books, or simply being a husband, father, parishioner, and neighbor.
Born into a Catholic family in 1951 near New Haven, Connecticut, he attended a local Catholic high school but drifted away from Catholicism as a young man. He played in a rock band and was arrested twice for possession of illegal drugs, which he was also using, according to a 2013 profile in Catholic World Report.
In 1994, Kresta wrote about that period in Surprised by Truth: 11 Converts Give the Biblical and Historical Reasons for Becoming Catholic.
“In 1969, I left home and became homeless by choice. I lived on the street, slept in vacant apartments, stayed on the beach in the Florida Keys and bummed off of friends,” Kresta said in a 2000 interview. “After some hallucinogenic LSD experiences, I hitchhiked along the eastern seaboard looking for someone who could help me make sense of my hallucinations. I ended up in a New Age group.”
But as a student at Michigan State University, his reading of Pope St. John XXIII’s Journal of a Soul and C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity gave him a different view of life.
“I must have been asking, ‘What am I going to do with my life?’” he said in the Catholic World Report interview. “What I wanted to do was to ensure that what I was realizing there in reading Lewis and John XXIII — that the picture of life, the world they were describing – I wanted to propagate that … because I was absolutely shocked when, as an adult, I began to realize what Christianity was and realize that the Christ of the New Testament was different from the Christ of the New Age movement and realize that there was a good, sound, historical basis for the Christian faith.”
Evangelizing his future wife
He worked in a Christian bookstore, and after graduation in 1975, he did graduate work in theology. He was eventually ordained pastor of a Protestant church and became well known in the Detroit area for a top-rated Christian talk radio program, Talk from the Heart.
Along the way, he met the woman who would become his wife, a fallen-away Methodist. Sally Kresta got an early picture of how Al would be so effective for the rest of his life in winning people over to Christ.
“He had a way of explaining things that made the faith more plausible than anyone I’d ever heard,” she told Catholic World Report in 2013. “One way he approached it was to ask you to frame what you thought, and then he’d ask questions to lead you down the road to find out how inconsistent your reasoning was. He’d help you to come to that yourself. … He was always not pushy, just made himself available. He doesn’t corner people to win an argument.”
The Krestas married in 1977.
A convincing priest
When he began the Talk from the Heart program, Kresta was a Protestant pastor, but he said later that he sometimes received questions that the Bible alone couldn’t settle.
“I had no authority,” he admitted in a later, 2007 “Journey Home” interview.
In the early 1990s, Kresta hosted a Catholic priest on his radio program and said he was so moved by his answers that he realized, “My God, I’m a Catholic.” In 1992, he returned to the Church, accompanied by his entire family.
Kresta would later say that the “intellectual integrity of the Catholic faith is unlike anything in Protestantism,” according to Catholic News Agency.
“The Catholic faith has never disappointed me when it comes to my use of reason or intellectual coherence,” he said.
In 1997, Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan recruited him to launch a media apostolate, Ave Maria Communications. Over the years Ave Maria Communications has included Credo, Michigan’s largest religious publication; Ave Maria Radio, and local radio stations 990 AM WDEO (Detroit and Ann Arbor) and 1440 AM WMAX (Saginaw, Bay City and Midland).
Heard on more than 350 stations and Sirius Satellite, Kresta in the Afternoon looks at all areas of life through the lens of Scripture and the teaching of the Catholic Church.
Kresta engaged in vigorous discussions or debates with nationally known figures from politics, the arts, the Church, academia and business such as Mother Angelica, Jesse Jackson, John McCain, Gloria Steinem, Cuba Gooding Jr., Scott Hahn, Rick Santorum, Judge Robert Bork, Jerry Falwell, Pat Buchanan, Jack Kevorkian, Cardinals John O’Connor and Francis George, Chuck Colson, Archbishop Charles Chaput, George McGovern, C. Everett Koop, George Will, Tim Russert, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Garrison Keillor, and Dion DiMucci.
The Krestas were members of Christ the King, a personal parish founded by the Diocese of Lansing, Michigan, to serve the Charismatic Renewal.
Late life challenge
Kresta’s life and spiritual journey took on a new dimension in February 2003, when he lost his left leg to necrotizing fasciitis, a virulent infection often referred to as the “flesh-eating bacteria.” His extended recovery and eventual return to broadcasting gave him new insights into the realities of suffering and hope.
He was the author of Dangers to the Faith: Recognizing Catholicism’s 21st Century Opponents, Moments of Grace: Inspiring Stories From Well-Known Catholics, Why Are Catholics So Concerned about Sin?: More Answers to Puzzling Questions about the Catholic Church, and Why Do Catholics Genuflect? And Answers to Other Puzzling Questions About the Catholic Faith, published by Servant Books.
In addition to his wife, Sally, Kresta is survived by five of their children. Two children predeceased him.
“Al was a devoted husband and father, as well as an exemplary teacher and preacher of the faith of Jesus Christ,” Ave Maria Radio said. “He was a broadcaster, writer, and author who was, first of all, a missionary. He drew upon his unique faith background to create what was, arguably, the most fascinating — and most spiritually constructive — talk radio program on the radio in its day.”
A funeral will be celebrated at Christ the King Catholic Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on Saturday, June 22.
And today we celebrate...