Charles Osgood, an immensely talented alumnus of Catholic schooling and brilliantly effective purveyor of a “Catholic imagination,” died Jan. 23 at age 91, leaving an upbeat legacy in secular American journalism.

Osgood played a role in inspiring my own study of communications at Fordham University, from which he graduated in 1954. As I traversed my teen years in the 1970s, I was drawn to his knack for wit and rhyme and his enduring ability to integrate personality—and a certain spirit—into radio news.

He said radio was his favorite medium because it offered a “theater of the mind.” According to The New York Times, he continued his “Osgood File” audio broadcasts for decades, but his fame grew when he anchored the “CBS Sunday Night News,” the “CBS Morning News,” and “CBS Sunday Morning.”

Osgood celebrated his sunrise news duties in the book, Nothing Could Be Finer than a Crisis that is Minor in the Morning. One could also sense his good cheer from his signature closing for many broadcasts: “See you on the radio.”

He compiled many formative adventures from his 1940s Catholic parish life and education with the Sisters of Charity in Baltimore. Those went into another book, Defending Baltimore from Enemy Attack.

Not having officially studied journalism, his style was consistently unconventional.

He didn’t tell jokes, but he found opportunities to express the light-heartedness found in real-life occurrences. He didn’t write poetry, but he composed many memorable rhymes, harking back to books from childhood—as in this lyrical foreword: “To Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss)/Who gave me a new way to look at the neuss.”

On some programs later in his life, audiences heard Osgood display his talent on the organ, piano, or banjo. According to a 2004 article by George P. Matysek Jr. in the Archdiocese of Baltimore newspaper Catholic Review, he occasionally played for his teachers and later retained his mastery of Tantum Ergo and O Salutaris.

But he also was a serious journalist who cared about the news because it affected the lives of average people.

That’s why I speak of his Catholic imagination, defined by Jessica Hooten Wilson in National Catholic Register as a worldview which “emphasizes that the things of this world have spiritual meaning, as well as physical.” Through a larger lens of hope, “there is no unholy place, no image so broken it cannot be healed, no sin too gritty that it can’t be written about.”

With help from Osgood’s big-perspective professionalism, I came to think of journalism as a friendly place for Catholics, or at least for the Catholic imagination I sought to cultivate. He prompted pursuit of a curiosity which seeks truth but accepts mystery, using both faith and reason to interpret the world.

Religion was not on his beat, but he allowed the heroism, sorrows, foibles, and silliness in the world to make his coverage multi-dimensional, not merely multi-media.

After all, our faith is a driving force behind journalism, as well as modern science, because we believe the world embodies godly laws and a basic orderliness, challenging and allowing us to explore everything with a sense of adventure.

I send my thanks and prayers to Osgood as an adventurer who helped to launch many journalistic careers with a contrarian energy—not reliant on pride, greed, influence, or raw ambition. As he said in his remarks regarding his retirement from CBS News in 2016, he was reluctant to leave the work. A Baltimore Banner obituary quoted his words: “It’s just that it’s been such a joy doing it!”