Vatican Radio's 70th birthday.

Rome--On February 12, Pope John Paul II met with Vatican Radio's 400 employees, including 200 journalists of 58 different nationalities, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of its inauguration. The Holy Father urged the employees to evangelize through the radio waves, "to offer information that is professionally impeccable, which...becomes a daily catechesis linked to life and hope."

Vatican Radio was born in a turbulent age, when various countries restricted the Church's freedom of expression. After the 1929 signing of the Lateran Pacts between the Church and the Italian government of Mussolini, Pope Pius XI asked Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the wireless, to start up a radio station for the new Vatican City state. A message in Latin from the Pope inaugurated the new station on February 12, 1931.

Vatican Radio now transmits worldwide in 40 languages for over 60 hours each week. In countries such as China, Vietnam and some Arab nations, it is the sole means of contact with the world of Catholicism for persecuted Christians. It previously fulfilled a similar function for Catholics living behind the "iron curtain" during the Cold War.

The station has recently had a technological transformation. Its signal now goes via two dual-channel satellites--INTELSAT 620 Est (Indian) and INTELSAT 325, 50 Est (Atlantic). This enables other broadcasting systems to include Vatican Radio in their transmissions, an initiative which has been particularly successful in Latin America.

Vatican Radio also has three Internet sites, the official one being (http://www.radiovaticana.org). This web page was attacked by hackers during the week of January 26 this year. However, Father Lombardi, station programme director, stated that "all the material had been reserved on backup copies" and that disruption was minimal.

Interestingly, a court case is now pending in Rome in which Vatican Radio transmitters at the edge of the city are alleged to be in violation of Italy's very strict guidelines regarding electromagnetic fields or "electrosmog," as it is now called. The case is expected to test the constitutionality of the Lateran Pact because the 440-hectare site with its forests of antennae north of Rome is considered part of the sovereign Vatican state. One of the defendants is the station's managing director, Fr. Roberto Tucci, recently created a cardinal (Zen it, Tablet, Nat. Post).