Vatican Radio Broadcasts Word in 34 Languages

On the airwaves in Albania or Zambia, its trademark sounds are the same: the distinctive musical signature, Christus Vincit --Christ conquers--and the familiar Latin call sign, Laudetur Iesus Christus --Let Jesus Christ be praised.

Vatican Radio has been delivering the message of the Roman Catholic Church to the world for 61 years. It has been jammed but never silenced, even in war.

Vatican Radio was inaugurated in 1931 shortly after the creation of the modern, independent state of Vatican City. Speaking in Latin, Pope Pius XI said over the static of the first broadcast: “Hear this all nations. Pay attention all who live on Earth.”

Today, in 34 languages, Vatican Radio’s words and music go out via AM and FM to Rome and parts of Europe and worldwide over 31 shortwave frequencies. The Rev. Pasquale Borgomeo, the Jesuit director general of the radio, estimates the weekly audience at 10 million listeners.

Before the Iron Curtain crumbled, the long-suppressed Roman Catholics of officially atheistic Eastern Europe, Ukraine and the Baltic states huddled around their shortwave sets to hear Vatican Radio.

Now, in 15 languages, the radio broadcasts openly to the new nations of the former Soviet Union and to its former satellites. Not long ago, a clandestine Soviet listener faced possible imprisonment.

During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Vatican Radio raised hackles among the Western allies by giving a voice to anti-war clergy in Iraq.

When murderer Robert Alton Harris was executed in California in April, Vatican Radio commented: “We think that the death penalty is a very primitive way of doing justice on the part of a society.”

The radio is expected to reflect the views of the Pope. “If you disagree with the positions of the Holy Father, you can work elsewhere,” Borgomeo says.

Vatican Radio has a staff of more than 400, including about 200 journalists who glean wire services and edit reports of more than 100 widely scattered part-time correspondents.

The operation is run mostly by Catholic lay people and led by Jesuits, whose liberal, intellectual approach occasionally puts them at odds with positions of the church hierarchy.

“It is for us a challenge and a responsibility to interpret the Pope’s mind, even when he has not spoken explicitly about a given event,” Borgomeo said.

World War II engulfed Europe a few years after Vatican Radio went on the air. Although the Catholic Church remained neutral, it came under attack both from fascists and communists. Josef Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s minister of propaganda, reportedly said in 1941: “Vatican Radio must be silenced.”

During World War II, Jesuit broadcasters transmitted more than 1.2 million shortwave messages about prisoners of war and missing persons.

Every pope since Pius XI has expanded Vatican Radio. John Paul II is the most globally traveled of all popes and a natural for radio and television appearances.

“Vatican Radio is his constant companion,” said the Rev. Vincent O’Keefe of New York’s Fordham University, a Jesuit with broadcasting experience. “Wherever he goes, it goes.”

Although religious ceremonies remain integral to the radio’s mission, programming has broadened in recent years, reaching out to non-Catholics as well as Catholics with news, interviews and music, from rock to classical.

“The less we preach, the more effective we are in our task,” said Borgomeo.

Vatican Radio’s first equipment was designed by Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless telegraphy and “the father of radio.” The service’s first studios were in Vatican City. Since 1970, its production center has been at Palazzo Pio, a five-story building just outside Vatican City.

Powerful shortwave transmitters and two of the world’s largest rotating antennas are the heart of the transmission center in rolling farmland 12 miles north of Rome.

Vatican Radio, whose 1991 budget was about $28 million, consistently operates in the red. It counts on listeners’ contributions, and a few years ago started marketing compact discs and cassettes. But the radio remains a steady drain on the Vatican treasury.

Among its international services is “Dial-a-Pope,” enabling people to phone in for recorded messages from John Paul II.

Borgomeo, the radio’s director for more than seven years, said one of his main goals is “freeing Vatican Radio from the restrictions of shortwave.”

Reaching out for more listeners is consistent with the mission of Christianity’s early apostles. O’Keefe paraphrases Pope John Paul I, who said in 1978:

“If St. Paul were alive today, he’d be a journalist. He’d be using radio and TV. He’d be buying time on Italian television.”