A voice for Christians in Middle East: Vatican Radio’s Arabic Program

(Vatican Radio) As Pope Benedict travels to Lebanon to present the conclusions of the 2010 Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, Tracey McClure looks at how the Pope’s message is transmitted to the region by Vatican Radio.

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Ever wonder how many languages we broadcast in here at Vatican Radio? Well a glance at our web pages will give you an idea: some 40 languages that reach the ears, and now with the internet, the eyes of people across the globe so that the voice and the teachings of the Pope can reach the four corners. That’s a far cry from the less than handful of languages with which the Radio began back in 1931.

Vatican Radio’s Arabic program is headed by Lebanese father Jean Pierre Yammine of the Mariamite order, a monastic order in the Catholic Maronite Church. He will be in Beirut for Pope Benedict XVI’s weekend visit to Lebanon September 14-16th. Fr. Jean Pierre says “the Pope’s visit to Lebanon is a visit of hope, not only for Catholics, but for all the Lebanese, whether they be Christian or Muslim, and for the whole Middle East, it’s a message of peace and love.”

Vatican Radio has had an Arabic program ever since 1949 - the year the Arab-Israeli war ended, leaving hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced across the region. Fr. Jean Pierre says at first, the broadcasts to the Middle East and North Africa were weekly, but by 1954 they had become a daily feature, especially on the radios and transistors of Christians throughout the region. In this interview from our archives, Fr. Jean Pierre had just taken over as head of the Arabic program at a time when the Pope was going to Benin to hand to the bishops of the African continent the conclusions of their synod of 2009.