St. Al’s in the ‘hood’ gets neighbourly

Reported by Chris Miller of the Western Catholic Reporter.

Link to the actual article here

Edmonton’s 118th Avenue is one of the city’s oldest streets, with a reputation for being one of its toughest neighbourhoods.

So when two Basilian priests, Fathers Bob Kasun and Mark Gazin, came to Edmonton three years ago, they took on the task of sparking stewardship in the inner-city parish.

“Stewardship was already existing in St. Al’s, and we developed what was already there. We initiated stewardship at St. Clare’s,” said Kasun.

The majority of the St. Alphonsus parishioners do not live in the neighbourhood, but choose to travel there for Mass. Most of these commuter parishioners want to belong to the parish because of this revitalized focus on stewardship and helping the poor.

St. Alphonsus Parish has forged a link with the Edmonton Inner City Housing Society (ICHS) after the group opened a small apartment building nearby. Kasun was eager to work with the stewardship committee to hold welcoming activities aimed at integrating new residents into the neighbourhood.

“We recognized that some of the people moving into that apartment have been homeless or come from substandard housing conditions or struggling with a variety of personal issues,” said Kasun.

The parish hosted free shopping days, in which parishioners contributed good quality household items that were made available to new residents. Those residents came by and chose whatever they required, including dishes, glassware, small electronics, bedding, kitchen items and small appliances.

“The number one priority of the Church is evangelization. The number one priority of the archdiocese is evangelization. Now we’re using the term ‘new evangelization.’

“That’s how we see ourselves fitting into the mission of the archdiocese and of the universal Church, that this is a doable way for us to be an evangelizing presence in the inner city,” said Kasun.

The last two years they have held a street barbecue in the summer, and a hot dinner in the winter. Word is spreading about the events, as attendance increased for both in the second year.

STREET BARBEQUE

“The street barbecue has been held for the neighbourhood, with a special invitation to residents of the ICHS housing projects. The hot dinner (recently held Feb. 11) was for the ICHS residents as well,” said Kasun.

Families are welcomed to the church for a meal, and the children receive candy and gifts. The room is made beautiful to receive them, and they are treated with utmost dignity. Kasun can already sense that there are some bonds of recognition and familiarity being built. The residents who have attended are appreciative and gracious.

“The idea is that we’re not trying to win converts, although that would be nice, but we’re trying to assist the poor,” said Kasun.

“Since we are an inner-city parish, this is one way for us to evangelize, by being a hospitable and welcoming presence.”

Gazin said the events help not only in reaching out to ICHS residents, but also to the wider neighbourhood.

“We’ve recognized in the three years we’ve been here that there’s a need to reach out to this neighbourhood. There are all kinds of social difficulties and issues here,” said Gazin.

With this revamped outreach to the poor, the parish is now in the process of rewriting its mission statement. The refocusing is aimed at giving it a more specific task in helping the low-income people of the 118th Avenue area.

“It’s interesting that some of our parishioners have grown up in this area call it the ‘hood. We’ve started calling ourselves St. Al’s in the ‘hood,” said Gazin.

St. Al’s has declined over the years in its number of parishioners, and supporting themselves through collective donations is next to impossible.

“Being an inner-city parish also means we’re poor. We’re poor because the parish is very small,” said Kasun. “It used to be a huge parish, but the demographics have changed and now it’s small. Fundraising for the parish is important for our survival.”

To offset costs, they host a concession at Commonwealth Stadium. They sell items at football games and concerts, with all profits going to the parish. Gazin said the concession has been a gentle way of attracting non-churchgoers into community life and the Church.

“The really beautiful thing is how it’s built community in the parish. It’s multigenerational, so you’ve got 70-year-olds and you’ve got 16-year-olds, the whole gamut, working together to keep St. Alphonsus viable because its parishioner count alone wouldn’t do it,” said Carla Smiley, a St. Clare parishioner who directs the archdiocesan stewardship program.

St. Clare’s Church established a stewardship committee with eight enthusiastic members, including two youth. The parish has forged a link with Boyle Street Community Services, which manages a 62-unit apartment block in Abbotsfield for low-income people, many of whom were previously homeless.

The church held a drive for household items for those tenants. Parishioners donated so much stuff that Boyle Street Community Services rented storage space to store the excess.

“They will have enough gently used household items for many years to come,” said Kasun.

CRAFTS, COOKING CLASSES

The parishioners also plan to have a strong Catholic presence in the apartment building. They want to teach crafts and cooking classes, drive tenants for appointments and do pastoral visits.

Also ongoing at St. Clare’s Parish is assisting Edmonton Catholic Schools’ Our Lady of Grace Crib Program. Parishioners contribute baby items for young mothers still in high school who have chosen to keep their babies rather than abort them.

“We have been told there are over 80 single moms in the Catholic high schools of Edmonton. Those girls would receive varying degrees of support,” said Kasun.

Forging friendships with former street people has been a difficult undertaking. Kasun said making these connections has been uphill work. But all in all, he has not lost hope.

“Perhaps the struggle is more important than the achievement of results. We’re trying to think long term,” concluded Kasun.

Detroit Cristo Rey: Education Innovation

 

myFOXdetroit.com Staff

DETROIT (WJBK) - Detroit’s Cristo Rey High School now has its first senior class. Since its first year 2008-2009, Cristo Rey has challenged students to strive for excellence beyond the classroom.

Every student works to help cover tuition costs, but they aren’t holding down regular teenage jobs. These students are working for some of the top companies Detroit has to offer. Students don’t take home cash from their jobs, instead the money is funneled straight into the school. “This year our students will earn about $1.1 million. Eventually they will fund about 60% of our expenses on an annual basis,” said Detroit Cristo Rey President Michael Khoury. Students told Fox 2 the deal works out well, “Working is fun, when you’re among adults and you get the type of work that they do. A lot of people say you don’t get paid, but it goes toward your tuition, so it is paying something for you,” said Celina Ortiz, who attends Cristo Rey.

Detroit Cristo Rey is located in the old Holy Redeemer High School on the city’s southwest side. It is one of 24 Cristo Rey schools in large, urban areas across the country. The first was founded in a Hispanic neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. “The Cristo Rey model is to provide Catholic, co-ed, college prep education to students who normally could not attend a private school,” said Khoury.

Click here to visit the school’s website.

New Priest Looks to Future with Hope

As seen in the Windsor Star here

August 4, 2001

by Marty Gervais, Windsor Star

It would be a lie to say an angel tapped him on the shoulder, whispered in his ear and told him that he would become a priest.

That’s just not the way it happens in the real world.

Yet somehow Matthew Durham, a 27-year-old west-ender, who will be ordained as a Basilian at Assumption Church Saturday, always knew he would become a priest.

At least since he was 11 years old.

But don’t expect him to tell you a tale about some sudden revelation. There was no blinding light. No angels. Really his story is really pretty ordinary in the grand scheme of spiritual revelations.

“I do not have a moment of clarity. It was no falling off the horse moment — it was just something I’ve known my whole. It is like trying to explain why the sky is blue.” said Durham.

Yet it makes sense. Assumption was the church he grew up in. It was where he served mass as an altar boy. It’s where his mother has worked for two decades or more, and the Basilian priests who manage the church frequented his childhood home, and often stayed for dinner.

Such familiarity didn’t go unnoticed to the impressionable Durham.

By the time he was in high school, it was clear that becoming a Basilian priest dominated his thoughts. Then the pastor at Assumption one day asked if he had ever considered the priesthood.

“I guess that planted the seed,” said Durham.

But it wasn’t a push, or a shove — it was merely a gentle urging.

Later, another Basilian — the charismatic Father Daniel Zorzi — inspired him to pursue this more seriously. And Zorzi became Durham’s mentor. He was “the cool priest.” As Durham described, here was Basilian priest who played hockey, and buzzed about on rollerblades, and he was young.

And when it came time to go to university, Durham was torn because he felt compelled to take philosophy if he was ever going to enter the seminary, but he gravitated to fine art.

It was Zorzi who told him, “Do what you love? Do what brings you alive?”

That’s what prompted Durham to take fine art at the University of Windsor. It was there he painted and drew, and let his imagination run its course on canvases.

But why the Basilians? “It’s because I knew them — that simple.”

Durham wound up studying theology at St. Michael’s in Toronto, and currently works as the campus chaplain and theology lecturer at the University of Alberta. He will return to its St. Joseph’s College as director of campus ministry. His goal, however, is to return to work with palliative and hospice care, which was the subject of his graduate thesis.

But in interviewing Durham, I couldn’t let the credibility question pass about how he approached his future as a new priest when the Catholic Church has been rocked by sexual abuse scandals.

This fair-haired young man, who went to St. Francis Elementary in the west end, knows it’s a dilemma plaguing every aspiring being a priest today — and there aren’t many entering the seminaries.

He knows, too, it’s a challenge never faced by generations of clergy before him because such abuse persisted under a heavy veil of silence.

Durham fully acknowledges the mistakes of the past, but maintains, “I want to be a part of the new generation — and to serve the people of God, as simple as that might sound.”

That means building trust, something that was sadly broken in the past.

Durham is optimistic, and believes what he learned from growing up is that it is essential “to earn people’s respect.” He counts that as the challenge in becoming a priest today.

Pushing him a little harder, I asked what will make the difference in his vocation.

Durham was quick to reply: “Hope is the shortest answer.”

And he’s right.

Without hope, there is little point in talking about the future.

St. Thérèse Inspired Fr. Inglis’ Vocation

As Appeared in The Western Catholic Reporter HERE

July 4, 2011

RAMON GONZALEZ
WESTERN CATHOLIC REPORTER

HINTON — After he read the works of St. Thérèse de Lisieux as a teenager, Brian Inglis knew he wanted to dedicate his life to serving the Lord.

So he joined the Basilian Fathers right out of high school and was ordained a priest for this teaching community of men in 1961.

He taught philosophy for almost 30 years, more than 20 of them at St. Joseph’s College at the University of Alberta. And when he reached the retirement age of 65, he decided to stay in Alberta and serve as a pastor.

Inglis, now 78, has been pastor at Our Lady of the Foothills Parish in Hinton for the last 13 years.

On June 29, he will mark 50 years of his ordination to the Basilian priesthood, a vocation he describes as a blessing. “It’s been a good life,” he says.

Born in Toronto the youngest of two, Inglis attended a Catholic high school when his parents made sacrifices to pay the $75 annual tuition.

From early on, Inglis had been drawn to the Church to serve Mass and to sing in the children’s choir. “I loved the Mass, the music, the Gothic architecture and I would gaze at the stained glass windows with scenes depicting Jesus, Mary and some saints,” he recalls.

He learned in Grade 1 why God had made him: “To know, love and serve God in this world and to be happy with him in the next.” He accepted that premise and decided to dedicate his life to it.

When he was in Grade 10 he had to write a book report on St. Thérèse of Lisieux who had the same idea about the meaning of life and who entered a religious order in her teens.

“From reading her story, I saw religious life as a life focused on God and works of service.”

St. Michael’s High, the high school that Inglis attended, was run by the Basilian Fathers who served the Church primarily as teachers and ran schools in Canada and the United States. So the summer he graduated he joined the Basilians at the age of 18.

The young man wasn’t too interested in teaching but understood that “teaching was part of the deal” if he wanted to be a member of the Basilian community.

“I was looking for a religious community to join and they happened to be the ones there,” Inglis said. “I was very happy with the simple, focused life they led.”

His parents were disappointed because by joining the Basilians, Inglis wouldn’t stay in Toronto. “They were happy I would be a priest but they were sorry I wasn’t a diocesan priest because that would have kept me in Toronto.”

After graduating from university, Inglis taught high school in Toronto for two years and then began studies for the priesthood at St. Basil’s Seminary. On June 29, 1961, the feast of St. Peter and Paul, he was ordained in Toronto.

ST. JOSPEH’S COLLEGE

The community moved him around in the early years and he taught in Toronto, Saskatoon and Houston, Texas, and then for 23 years, at St. Joseph’s College in Edmonton.

Inglis said he found teaching a challenge because he was not temperamentally cut out for it. But he admitted to having learned a lot in the process.

“I was blessed to teach philosophy, and for 29 years to immerse myself in the thoughts of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, the history of Christian philosophy, ethics and other subjects,” he said.

“It was my privilege to introduce (U of A students) to great thinkers as I tried to understand their thought myself. In fact, I found that in trying to share these thoughts with the students I came to understand them myself. It’s in giving that we receive.”

When Inglis turned 65 and had to retire, Archbishop Joseph MacNeil asked him to consider helping out at Our Lady of the Foothills Parish. He hesitated because he had little knowledge of parish life, but in the end he agreed.

“It has been a great blessing to me to serve the parish in Hinton,” he says. “There are so many good and deeply faithful people in the parish. I’m constantly urged, out of regard for them, to be faithful to Christ and to the teaching of the Church.”

Inglis is not thinking of retirement yet. But when it comes, he will move to the Basilian retirement home in Toronto.

New Assumption President Has Big Ambitions

As appeared in the Windsor Star HERE

by Marty Gervais, July 19, 2011

It was in this part of Southwestern Ontario that he started, serving at a small Amherstburg parish, first as a deacon, then as a priest.

He never forgot that time, and never forgot what he learned at the grassroots.

But since then, Rev. Thomas Rosica has gone on to teach at seminaries, lecture on sacred scripture, write a column for the Toronto Sun, organize World Youth Day and manage Salt and Light Television, Canada’s first national Catholic television network.

Now he’s taking over Assumption University, having been appointed its new president. He begins that job in December.

When I spoke to him by phone, he said it wasn’t a job he went after.

“You’d have to have rocks in your head to want a job like that,” he said with amusement.

But he agreed to take the position because not only would it be a challenge, but he was certain he could “breathe new life” into an old institution.

He also acknowledged it wouldn’t be easy because like so many other Catholic colleges attached to universities in North America, Assumption has somehow lost touch.

Under the direction of the retiring president, Rev. Paul Rennick, there was a move to rectify that, said Rosica, but “the time is ripe for change,” and what’s needed is a far more aggressive approach.

“I can tell you now, we can’t live on the laurels of the past,” the 52-year-old Basilian priest said, pointing out that while Assumption may have a rich history with the likes of such intellectual giants as Marshall McLuhan, Wyndham Lewis and Rev. Stan Murphy, it must find a more inventive way to connect with the community.

“When I think of Assumption,” Rosica said, “I think of where it is, located right there under the (Ambassador) bridge. That’s an enormously important symbol.”

For him, that symbol prompts him to think of “building bridges with the community.”

This means finding a way “to reinvent itself,” Rosica said. And that’s easier said than done, remarked the former cleric of Amherstburg’s St. John the Baptist parish.

Rosica views his role as creating a greater presence for Assumption both on the campus at the University of Windsor and in the community outside the academic halls.

“We need to build those bridges,” he said.

With his extensive background and work with the media, Rosica hopes to transform the profile of Assumption into a Catholic school that adopts a leading role not only in the Windsor-area community but also on a provincial and national level.

He believes this might include engaging in discussions around dealing openly with the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests.

Rosica maintains that the unwavering and persistent efforts of London diocese Bishop Ronald Fabbro to remedy these wrongdoings sets an example for the church at large. And if there is a way in which Assumption can contribute, Rosica will be sure to make that happen.

The other area that needs change is with the Christian Culture Series, something that Murphy started during the Depression years. Rosica says it was one of the most significant actions ever taken by the school when it was introduced.

Rosica says the school has to find better ways “to reach out to the community,” pointing out his plan is to use the advanced technology of Salt and Light Television to introduce the best of Assumption to a greater audience.

“I want to seize upon this and let what we’re doing here be known to the whole country,” Rosica said.

Assumption will also find a way of teaming up with other Catholic institutions to share resources.

“We have to begin working together and thinking about how we can help each other” he said, pointing out, for example, that he foresees Assumption and St. Peter’s Seminary in London sharing programs.

As Rosica speaks about this over the phone, his enthusiasm is evident. So is his respect for the history of Assumption. But he reiterates the need for a change in direction, quoting from the New Testament about the master of the house bringing out “what is new and what is old.”

To this, he adds, “We have to find a way to take what is old and what is new and give it meaning.”

Blessed Kateri Celebrates First Year

As seen on YNN; story by Sheba Clarke

Link to Video Story here

It’s been a year of transition for the Catholic community in Irondequoit. Two churches closed last year and five parishes have been consolidated into one.

Parishioners celebrated the first anniversary of the new parish Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha Sunday with an outdoor mass, a picnic and fellowship.

“This is a really beautiful that everyone can get together and meet each other,” said parishioner Janette Masetta.

But getting people from five different parishes and five different traditions to come together as one is far from easy.

“It has been a challenge because each parish has had their own identity and their own personality,” said parishioner Marie Bianchi.

This is the first time members of the Blessed Kateri Church worshipped together under one roof since the churches consolidated five parishes into one.

“In this process you have to have faith,” said parishioner Carolanne Bianchi.

The parish, which has three worship sites, is now made up of more than 5,000 members.

“We see in this a real opportunity to show, especially Irondequoit which is divided in so many ways, how we can really become one community,” said Father Norm Tanck.

More than 1,000 people helped celebrate the parish’s anniversary. Tanck says as the parish establishes new traditions, people are still adjusting.

“There’s still a lot of pain and hurt and loss that needs to be healed,” said Tanck.

Still, it’s a new chapter for Irondequoit parishes.

“This is a year of healing and building as we move forward,” said Tanck.

Forward in a new way to worship.

“We are here to grow,” said Bianchi. “We are here to grow as a big community.”

Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha

Supplemental from the Secretary General:

Approximately 1,300 attended Mass under a huge tent on the Christ the King campus followed by a parish picnic with entertainment, fun and games for the children and the drawing on a Home Make Over Raffle.

Bl Kateri Parish, formed by merging Christ the King with four other parishes in Irondequoit, is now the largest parish in the Diocese of Rochester – approximately 5,000 households. It is presently averaging between 2,500 and 3,000 faithful at our Sunday Masses celebrated at three sites, including Christ the King.

Detroit Cristo Rey makes news again

Moving

The Basilians at St. Michael’s College are consolidating their living space in the two houses, Windel and Phelan. Marty Dimnik was the last one living in the top floor of Brennan Hall, and he has moved to Windel into Bob O’Halloran’s old rooms. We toasted the Queen — or at least said we should toast the Queen — in our new common common room in Phelan last night on Victoria Day. The houses are very comfortable and the grounds are beautiful as always at this time of year. Jim McConica spends time gardening.

I haven’t posted in awhile. I hope that will change.

Ex-soldier marches to St. Joe’s College

As appeared in the Western Catholic Reporter here.

by CHRIS MILLER
WESTERN CATHOLIC REPORTER

Basilian Father Terry Kersch is a walking enigma, previously living the life of a soldier and then another as a man of the Gospel.

“The religious life and the military life, in some fundamental ways, are not all that different,” said Kersch. “In the military life, it’s the mission that takes precedence and part of your identity is putting yourself at the service of an overall mission.

“That’s what you look for in a good military officer. Is this person willing to sacrifice him or herself to the mission? That’s what being a Catholic is all about.”

On July 1 Kersch takes on another mission, that of president of St. Joseph’s College at the University of Alberta. He replaces Father Timothy Scott, who was elected last summer to the general council of the Basilian Fathers.

Kersch, 54, is a cradle Catholic born in Montreal, and was educated in the Catholic school system there. As a child he had wide-ranging interests, including air cadets, photography and serving the Church. He started to explore a vocation to the religious life while at LaSalle Catholic High School.

MILITARY MOSAIC

At that time the religious orders were not accepting vocations fresh out of high school. So for 20 years, from 1973 to 1993, he lived a rich and diverse life, including a long history with the Canadian military, serving in the air force, navy and as an army reservist. His various military employments were at the mercy of his civilian job as a branch manager for a financial institution.

A decade after high school graduation, he left the financial industry and returned to school, intent on becoming a high school teacher, which would allow him to teach during the school year and be involved with the military in the summer.

While attending university in Vancouver, one of his fellow graduate students died and there was a funeral at St. Mark’s College at the University of British Columbia. There he encountered the Basilians.

ST.AUGUSTINE BECKONS

He wrote his dissertation in international political theory and ethics. His research involved reading St. Augustine and the just war theory.

By encountering the Basilians and through his university research, an old childhood dream was reawakened.

“I discovered through the course of my study and doing my dissertation that the Catholic intellectual tradition was an incredibly deep and sophisticated one,” said Kersch. “Through revisiting an old childhood desire, and discovering the Catholic intellectual tradition, it got me thinking again about being a priest.”

BASILIANS OR OBLATES

Answering the calling was the easy part. The difficulty was making a choice on which order to join because he knew the Oblates in Toronto and the Basilians in Vancouver.

“I was torn between the Oblates and Basilians. I thought I had a better chance of being in a classroom as a Basilian,” he said.

He professed his first vows as a Basilian 14 years ago, followed by his novitiate in Mexico. He now holds a master’s degree in divinity from the University of St. Michael’s College and a doctorate in political science from UBC.

Since becoming a Basilian he has served in Mexico, Colombia, Texas, Toronto and Vancouver. He is currently pastor of Toronto’s St. Basil’s Church, which is both a parish church and the collegiate church of St. Michael’s College.

During his time with the Basilians he has been involved with four Basilian colleges – University of St. Michael’s, St. Mark’s College in Vancouver, Assumption University in Windsor, Ont., and the University of St. Thomas in Houston.

A NEW CHALLENGE

Now he brings his expertise to St. Joseph’s College, where Catholic scholars project a convincing evangelical voice in the heart of a secular university.

“We have credible scholars there, and the more they’re respected by their secular colleagues, the more we can evangelize effectively,” said Kersch.

He has strong views on the value of theology, the arts and the humanities. He believes one of the biggest challenges faced by Catholic colleges, dependent on the funding of larger secular universities and increasingly neo-conservative sensibilities in government, is to develop a language that clearly and convincingly conveys the value of what they do.

Kersch hopes to teach at St. Joe’s, but is uncertain whether he will have the chance to do so, given his other responsibilities.

Today he continues dabbling in such varied pursuits as visual arts and classical guitar.

Let there be (Salt) Light

As Appeared in the Toronto Star February 24, 2011

by Ron Csillag Special to The Star

Call it the little network that could. Maybe with a divine nudge.

In the only-God-knows-how-many-channel universe, Canada’s first homegrown national Catholic television network is that rarity in broadcasting: a success story.

In the nearly seven years it has been on the air, Toronto-based Salt + Light Television has grown to 25 employees, with around-the-clock programming, original productions (37 in-house documentaries to date), a radio station, a Chinese division, a magazine, a website that streams the network to as many as 40 countries, and an annual budget of $3 million. There’s even a satellite office in Montreal.

It’s a far cry from the two-person operation in the cramped downtown Toronto office of World Youth Day that rebroadcast a lone signal from the Vatican.

Back in July 2002, World Youth Day drew nearly 200,000 young Roman Catholic pilgrims from around the world to Toronto for a week of festivities, worship and service projects, all highlighted by Pope John Paul II’s visit. The theme of the event was taken from the book of Matthew: “You are the salt of the earth . . . you are the light of the world.”

The groundswell of Catholic spirituality in the event’s wake led many young people to a variety of commitments, and also to the establishment of Salt + Light Television, the first such effort on the Canadian media landscape.

Initially broadcasting only in the Toronto area, the network is now carried by cable and satellite TV providers across Canada. Programs — in English, French, some Italian, Mandarin and Cantonese — are available to millions of Canadian homes. Some Salt + Light programming also reaches the United States.

In the Toronto area, it is available on Rogers channel 240; 654 on Bell TV, 160 on Shaw, and 185 on Cogeco. There are no hard, Nielson rating-type numbers on viewership, but the network says demand, based on feedback from the cable companies, has been steady.

The growth has been undeniable. And the potential is huge: There are 13 million Roman Catholics in Canada; the Archdiocese of Toronto tallies 1.85 million within its boundaries.

The Pope and youthful enthusiasm may have provided the inspiration for Salt + Light, but the heavy lifting was done by Gaetano Gagliano, an Italian immigrant who started a print shop in his basement 55 years ago and built it into Canada’s largest privately owned communications company.

The founder of St. Joseph Communications, with holdings in magazines, marketing and printing, Gagliano was 86 years old in 2002 when he approached Father Thomas Rosica, then winding down as national director of World Youth Day, to get Salt + Light on the air. A license from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) had been acquired the year before.

“It was always my father’s dream to give Catholics an opportunity to get closer to their faith by telling, through broadcast, positive, hopeful, inspirational stories to give people a better understanding of their faith, a better understanding of their lives and a better opportunity to connect with that faith,” said Gaetano’s son, Tony Gagliano, CEO of St. Joseph Communications.

The network went live on July 1, 2003. “It was me and a man running the machines,” recalled Rosica, the network’s CEO. “We were just taking the Vatican feed from Italy.”

From its current headquarters on Richmond Street East, Salt + Light still broadcasts Vatican goings-on, daily mass and other devotional services. But its most popular programs are Witness, an interview show with religious and civic leaders; Perspectives, a 30-minute discussion on that week’s hot topics; and Catholic Focus, which has tackled such controversial issues as stem cell research, the Church and AIDS, and Catholic-Islamic relations.

Rosica, a tireless Basilian priest who was appointed a consultor to the Vatican’s communications council in 2009, stressed that Salt + Light is not the Vatican’s PR arm and has not shied from thorny issues that continue to rankle Catholics. Programs have also focused on the sex-abuse scandal, euthanasia, abortion and the role of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust.

The May 1 beatification of Pope John Paul is expected to draw the network’s largest audience to date. Also in the works is a three-part documentary on Pope Benedict’s stand on ecology and the environment.

“There’s no involvement from the institutional church and we’re not a good news agency,” Rosica said. “The Church doesn’t have the means, access or capability of doing that kind of stuff. We’re taking stories and going in-depth with them. We never set ourselves up in opposition to something or someone. We’re an alternative to what’s out there on television.

“But the unique thing is, we have the full support of the Church.”

Do some Catholics complain of their proverbial dirty linen being aired in public?

“Oh, yeah, all the time,” Rosica said. “There’s a certain form of Taliban Catholicism out there right now that would like to dictate everything and, really, it doesn’t speak to the future.

“We uphold the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and respectfully differ with those who do not share our views.”

For example, in the pro-life controversy that swirled around U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy’s funeral in 2009, Rosica said Salt + Light refused to allow the network to be “manipulated and hijacked by a radical fringe of people who asked that we join in and lead the condemnation of the cardinal of Boston for hosting Kennedy’s funeral in a Catholic Church.

“There are many people who claim to be Catholic and faithful to Christ and the Church,” Rosica said. “They know little of Christian behaviour.”

A registered charity, Salt + Light is funded by private donations, and 2009 was a banner year: A $1 million gift from the Hilary M. Weston Foundation for Youth, $500,000 from the Knights of Columbus, and $50,000 from the Demarais family and Power Corp. in Montreal. A gala dinner that year raised an additional $300,000.

Another popular Catholic outlet, Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), is also available in Canada. But Bell TV announced recently that it will drop EWTN from its lineup as of Feb. 27. A Bell spokeswoman told the Catholic Register that EWTN “had a low viewership” and Salt + Light is a “strong alternative.”

The resulting uproar prompted Rosica to issue a statement on a Salt + Light blog that Bell’s decision to drop EWTN was “not part of an anti-Catholic conspiracy.”

For years, single-faith television programming in Canada was mired in regulatory roadblocks stemming from concerns that allowing one religion airtime would further such un-Canadian values as intolerance and parochialism.

That changed in 1993 when the CRTC amended its rules to allow the licensing of single-faith services, provided they commit to “balance.” Salt + Light achieves some of its balance through its interfaith programs, Rosica said.

Both Rosica and Gagliano admit to a steep learning curve, as neither had worked in television.

“I have a TV for the first time!” Rosica exclaimed. “(When) the guy came to install the (cable) box, I told him, ‘Can you just set it up for CNN, CBC and Salt + Light?’ ”