Images, faith, culture” “

“TV not as a tool but as a living environment in which to perform the Church’s mission of evangelization”: the point was made by Msgr. Giuseppe Betori, general secretary of the Italian Episcopal Conference, in his welcoming address to the participants in the seminar “Catholic television initiatives in the European countries: realities and prospects” Held in Rome on 18 September, the meeting was organized by the European Episcopal Commission for the media (CEEM) of the Council of the Episcopal Conferences of Europe (CCEE) in collaboration with the Communication and Culture Foundation of the Italian Episcopal Conference (see SIR no. 60/2003). The seminar reviewed the situation of Catholic television broadcasting in Europe, where – it was explained – TV channels can be subdivided between those that work in the field of the public service and those in the private commercial sector. Some countries, in particular Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Ireland and Malta, regard themselves as Catholic and consider national television part of their own culture. That is not the case in the rest of Europe. Below we present a brief review of Catholic television channels in Europe. Spain. Catholic programmes are transmitted on the second channel of TVE, the public broadcasting corporation, and on public regional channels in Andalusia, Catalonia, Galizia and in the Basque region. Some dioceses have established centres for the production of religious programmes for their own local stations. The monastic television centre (CeTelMon) (www.fmdelapaz.org) is operative in the province of Alicante. Portugal. The Church runs its own channel, TV Independent (www.tvi.iol.pt). Poland. It’s the country in which the Catholic broadcasting media are most developed. In 1990 Polish state television, TVP, established its own Catholic editorial departments (www.tvp.com.pl/katolik). The Jesuits run religious programming on two main terrestrial channels and on the international satellite channel TV Poland. The Franciscans, supported by the Catholic film association, opened TV Niepokalanov in 1997. Now they possess two other channels: Telewizja Puls, www.tvpuls.pl, a terrestrial, satellite and cable channel run in association with seven large companies that cover 15% of Polish territory, and Tewizja Niepokalanov II, (www.tn2.com.pl), a religious channel that transmits by digital, satellite and also cable pay-as-you-view systems. Video Studio Gdansk and other Catholic production companies provide programmes to public television and also to the major commercial broadcasters Polsat and TVN. Czech Republic. Various Catholic production companies exist. Telepace Ostrava (www.telepace.cz) produces a weekly religious programme for regional TV. Imago is mainly a distribution company. Slovakia. Lux media (www.lux.sk) furnishes material to the national television corporation and to small Catholic television stations in Lithuania, Russia and Siberia. Russia. There are two television studios in St. Petersburg (Orthodox/Catholic), Blagovest Media (www.blagovestmedia.com) and another at Novosibirsk, while TV Kana covers Siberia. Catholic radio stations include “Radio Blagovest”, the “Christian Channel” run by the faculty of journalism at the State University in Moscow, and “Radio Voskresynna” in Ukraine. Latvia. A Catholic television centre, the Emmanuel Studio, is active. Each week public television transmits one of its 30-minute programmes. Another production studio is active in the Greco-Catholic Church at Lvov (Ukraine); it also produces a weekly programme broadcast on state TV. Slovenia. State television dedicates 45 minutes per week to religious programmes and sometimes transmits Mass. Religious and private channels transmit approximately an hour of religious programmes per week. Lithuania. The Lithuanian Church did not have a legally recognised channel of social communication of its own till 1988. The first to appear (in 1989) was a Catholic periodical (www.catholic.lt). A total of 50,000 copies of Catholic papers and magazines now circulate in the country. Twelve publishing houses specialised in religious and spiritual texts publish roughly a hundred different titles each year. Part of this output is printed at Kaišiadorys, at the print works of the Lithuanian Episcopal Conference. Radio is also developed: Catholic Radio Mažoji Studija (Little Studio) is the most influential Catholic means of communication. Each morning a passage of the Bible is read out and a homily pronounced, and there are two other weekly broadcasts for a total of six hours. The Catholic television studio, equipped with excellent technical facilities, regularly produces a short programme of church news, “Bažnyeios žinios”, which is transmitted by state television. Italy. The first programmes of Sat 2000 (www.sat2000.it), the satellite television channel of Italian Catholics, promoted by the Italian Episcopal Conference, went on the air on 9 February 1998. They include a mix of news, current affairs, cultural documentaries, and religion. In Italy, moreover, there is close collaboration between the RAI (public broadcaster) and the Church, in particular as far as the events linked to the Pope’s activity is concerned. The Holy See, too, has its own TV centre, the Vatican Television Centre. Ireland. Irish state television, RTE, includes religious programming in its regular schedules, even though it does not transmit specifically Catholic programmes. A religious production company, Kairos, based at Maynooth, sells documentaries and programmes to the RTE. France. The religious programmes on state television are produced by various religious communities. The Catholic association CFRT produces the programme Le Jour du Seigneur, which is transmitted on France 2 each Sunday; it lasts an hour and a half and includes Mass. A new Catholic television channel was inaugurated in Paris in 1999; it is called KTO (www.ktotv.com). United Kingdom. No Catholic television channel and no confessional programme exist in the UK. The BBC and the commercial channels, ITV and Channel 4, transmit a range of non-specifically Catholic religious programmes. Mass is occasionally transmitted by outside broadcasts. ITV in Scotland regularly transmits Mass. Netherlands. The Catholic channel KRO (www.kro.nl) transmits in the framework of the public television service, as also does KTRO in Belgium . Germany. The Catholic Church runs its own editorial units that work in close collaboration with the state broadcasters ARD and ZDF. They also collaborate with the satellite television channels RTL, Sat1 and the KinderKanal (children’s channel), (www.kirche.tv). A Catholic radio station, Dom Radio, exists in Cologne. Austria . A department for religious programmes exists within the ORF, Austrian state television. Switzerland. Catholic television programmes for the public broadcasting corporation SSR are produced in French by the Catholic Centre for Radio and Television (CCRT) (www.ccrt.ch). Catholic programmes are also produced in Italian. Lastly, the state broadcasting corporations in Croatia, Hungary and Romania all transmit religious programmes. An independent ecumenical television channel also exists in Hungary, Pax TV, with the involvement of Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox and Jews. In the Scandinavian countries the religious programmes transmitted by public television only occasionally tackle Catholic themes.