February 4, 2008

During their stay in Rome, members of the Congregation can take the opportunity of the time spent in the “Eternal City” to better know some Jesuit institutions. One of them, Vatican Radio, is organizing linguistic visits.

On Sunday, February 3, a French speaking group spent three hours at the famous broadcasting organization – that has been put under Jesuit leadership by Pope Pius XI. Marconi himself, inventor of the radio, was part of the early team.

The Director of Programming, Fr. Andrej Koprowski, welcomed the group and Joseph Ballong, responsible of the francophone programme for Africa, took charge of the visit. Some numbers are impressive: close to 380 professionals work in 40 production groups in 36 languages. Because of the importance that has taken the web page and the internet, they now use 14 alphabets! Every day RV is on the air for 54 hours (according to the various time zones) and produces more than 20 hours of original programming.

The visitors also had the opportunity to spend some quality time with the Director (who is also, by the way, a member of the Congregation), Fr. Federico Lombardi. To conclude, Fr. Koprowski mentioned the challenges he is facing. He said how much he hopes that more Jesuits, from around the world, could work with RV so that the broadcasting unit could reflect the reality of today’s Catholic world.

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