Vatican Radio, eighty years on: a sound picture

Vatican Radio's feast day falls each year on 29th September to coincide with the Feast of Saint Gabriel, Patron Saint of Communications.

And this year given it's our eightieth anniversary, we're having special celebrations, with Holy Mass in the Vatican Gardens presided over by the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

In the very place where Pope Pius XI first entrusted Guglielmo Marconi with the setting up of a Vatican radio station .

In this programme presented and produced by Veronica Scarisbrick you can hear a sound picture of that special day, with the voices of this Pope, of Marconi, his daughter Elettra Marconi as well the crackly sound of that very first historic broadcast.

By the way this is one of the programmes we downloaded on to Benedict XVI's i Pod when he came to visit us here at the beginning of his pontificate.


Listen: