Deacon Greg Kandra is the Multimedia Editor of Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA), a pontifical society founded by Pope Pius XI in 1926. He oversees all online content for the agency and edits its award-winning quarterly magazine, ONE. Deacon Greg is also the author of the popular blog “The Deacon’s Bench,” carried on the spiritual website Patheos.
Before joining CNEWA, Deacon Greg spent nearly three decades in broadcast journalism, most of that time at CBS News, where he was a writer and producer for a variety of programs, including 48 Hours, 60 Minutes II, Sunday Morning and The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. He was also the founding editor of “Couric & Co.,” Katie Couric’s blog at CBSNews.com. In addition to his work with CBS News, from 2000 to 2004 he also served as a writer and producer on the live finales of the hit reality series Survivor.
In 2002, he co-wrote the acclaimed CBS documentary “9/11,” hosted by Robert DeNiro, which told the story of firefighters on September 11, 2001. The film showed the only footage shot inside the World Trade Center that day, and featured the last images of Fr. Mychal Judge, moments before he became the first official fatality of the attacks.
In print, Deacon Greg’s radio essays were featured in Dan Rather’s best-selling book Deadlines and Datelines. His spiritual writing has been published in America, U.S. Catholic, Catholic Digest, Reality and The Brooklyn Tablet. He contributes homiletic reflections to Connect!, the award-winning parish resource published by Liturgical Publications, and writes spiritual reflections for the monthly prayer guide Give Us This Day.
Deacon Greg has received every major award in broadcasting, including two Emmys, two Peabody Awards and four awards from the Writer’s Guild of America. He has been honored three times by the Catholic Press Association.
A Maryland native, Deacon Greg graduated from the University of Maryland with a B.A. in English. He was ordained a deacon for the Diocese of Brooklyn in 2007. He and his wife live in Forest Hills, New York, where he serves at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs parish.