Salt and Light celebrates 10 year anniversary

(Vatican Radio) Canada’s Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation and Salt + Light Television, Canada’s first Catholic television network, will begin celebrations of its 10th anniversary in December.

Founded in the days and months following World Youth Day in 2002, Salt and Light is one of the world’s premier Catholic media outlets.

Basilian Father Thomas Rosica is the founder and CEO of the Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation. He spoke with Vatican Radio about the impetus received from World Youth Day: “We built on the momentum of World Youth Day – I always say that World Youth Day was the wind under our wings – and having had a lot to do a lot with television through the World Youth Day, with the media, with the appearances, and whatever, I said, ‘Let’s use this as a teaching opportunity.’ And I wanted also to incorporate young people into the mission.”

The role of young people is one of the most significant achievements of Salt and Light; Father Rosica notes that he is the only priest on staff that includes 30 young adults from Canada and around the world.

Father Rosica spoke about the “privilege of working with the Holy See” in making the most of the new means of communication, and in bringing events throughout the worldwide Church to a vast country. “So there’s the universal dimension, which has been so necessary, stories of hope and testimony.” He also spoke about the challenges they’ve faced. “One of the big challenges we wanted to avoid – to really embrace and also to avoid, is to become sectarian, and to become so funnelled and channelled in on ourselves, that we would forget the bigger picture. In many cases, religious broadcasting, rather than inspiring people and giving them hope, is a mechanism for depression and it causes people to become angry and isolated. And I said, ‘We cannot do that.’ And one of the best ways to avoid that, is by using young adults as the vanguard; because they have a different way of looking at things and communicating the message of the Church.”

Salt and Light’s ten year anniversary has brought congratulations not only from the Church in Canada – including a message from Archbishop Richard Smith of Edmonton, the President of the Canadian Bishops’ Conference – but also accolades from distinguished prelates such as Cardinal Timothy Dolan in New York, and from the head of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Archbishop Claudio Celli.

After ten years, Salt and Light has become and enduring legacy of World Youth Day 2002. “Cardinal Stafford has told me that the most beautiful legacy of any of the World Youth Days, since 1985, has been the establishment of Salt and Light television,” said Father Rosica. And so, he says, Salt and Light “has become a really beautiful instrument of the New Evangelisation.”

Father Rosica discusses the foundation of Salt and Light, the highlights of the past ten years, and Salt and Light’s plans for the future in the full interview with Christopher Wells, which you can listen to here: