In 2025, John Sansone made his television debut when he appeared on Fox's reality dating show "Farmer Wants a Wife" as one of the farmers in search of love. Today, he has traded in the television screen for cellphone screens as a Catholic content creator.
Sansone, 27, was born and raised in a Catholic family. He and his five siblings grew up in St. Louis, where their faith played an important role in their daily lives.
"Catholicism was ingrained in just about every aspect of my childhood and my life growing up," Sansone told EWTN News in an interview. "We were taught from a very young age that faith was extremely important. It came right before family and then two before hard work."
He added: "We had a little prayer corner in every house that we've lived in that had a picture of Jesus and then right underneath was a kneeler and then a bunch of little pamphlets — prayer cards or funerals of loved ones, and things like that."
Sansone was taught hard work on his family's 170-acre soy, corn, and wheat farm located on his great-grandfather's land. It was here that he learned about farm life.
Fast forward to 2024 and Sansone's mother and sisters were watching Season 2 of "Farmer Wants a Wife," a reality dating series that follows farmers as they search for love among a group of women willing to leave city life behind for a chance at a relationship and life on the farm. The show combines romance with the realities of rural life, as the farmers and contestants get to know one another with the possibility of building a future together.
"They were constantly telling me to come watch it and see an episode and things like that and I just kept saying, 'No, not interested,'" he recalled.
Then Sansone received a direct message (DM) on Instagram from the creators of the show. After thinking about it and speaking to his family about it, he decided to take part in the show.
"Realistically, the motivation for me to actually entertain that DM and to ultimately go on the show was, hey, this is a fun, random, once in a lifetime thing. I can make the most of it … and perhaps even find a wife," he said.
Despite Sansone not finding a wife on the show, he reflected that it "reinforced his faith."
"There were no Catholics in my group. I was the only one … I think what it really did is reinforced my faith a little bit because we would have these faith-based conversations on the show and we would have conversations about our beliefs and things like that and it kind of forced me to reconcile with myself what I actually did believe. So I would say that in doing that it reinforced my faith," he shared.
Coming off the show and once it aired, Sansone began to gain a following on social media. He explained that he came to the realization one day that he "didn't do anything to earn it."
"All of this kind of fame and publicity, I would say in air quotes, is not something that I earned," he said. "So, my way of paying back that opportunity, that was obviously a gift from God, was to use my platform to promote my faith."
Sansone, who goes by @notjohnsansone on Instagram, has 109,000 followers on the platform and uses his growing social media platform to share approachable Catholic content, often drawing from his own experiences to encourage others in their faith. His posts touch on Catholic teachings, prayer, and the realities of striving for holiness while acknowledging the imperfections and struggles of everyday life.
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"The social media world is not the friendliest spot for that type of thing," he said. "So, my way of doing it and my strategy is more so kind of to subtly incorporate that into everyday things and make it a relatable thing that people who don't understand the faith or maybe didn't grow up in it, it's something for them to relate to."
Thanks to his content creating, Sansone admitted that it has "forced me to improve my faith" and has "strengthened it."
"I've met a lot of interesting people through it [social media]. People who are much stronger in their faith, know a lot more about the Catholic Church and her history," he added. "And in being around them, I think I've forced myself to kind of become better at my faith."
Sansone's content creation recently took him to Peoria, Illinois, ahead of the beatification of Venerable Fulton Sheen alongside a large group of other Catholic content creators. He called the experience "incredible" and that he also "learned a lot about my faith and it kind of made me realize how far I needed to go still."
Reflecting on Sheen's life and how his legacy can inspire Catholic content creators, Sansone said: "I think what was great about him is that a lot of his messages were, yes, based in the Catholic faith, but they were more relatable to an everyday person. You didn't have to be Catholic to utilize his messages and apply them to your own life. I feel like that's one important thing that a lot of Catholic content creators can do. It's what I try to do."
As for what he hopes viewers of his content take away from it, Sansone emphasized that he wants "people to understand Catholicism for what it really is."
