New Catholic Media Center to open in Middle East

(Oct 27,2010) . A new Catholic media center in the Middle East will house two Catholic television stations, three radio stations, a newspaper and a magazine, the Vatican announced. During the Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops, which concluded Sunday, the Vatican press office highlighted the project, which is a joint effort of two major Middle Eastern Catholic television networks: “Tele Lumiere” (TV of Light), and its satellite television counterpart, “NourSat.” The Catholic media center will be the new home of both networks, and also the headquarters for several Internet Web sites. The new structure will be built on 27 square kilometers of land donated by the Maronite Church.
Both Tele Lumiere and NourSat broadcast in Arabic, the language of Middle Eastern Catholics. However, in order to appeal to the growing population of Catholics in the region, a new project is under way to begin incorporating other languages into their broadcast spectrum. These include English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Syriac and Greek. Initiated in the late 1990s by a group of Catholic laypeople committed to serving the Church, both Tele Lumiere and NourSat are non-profit organizations