Origins of Religious Media in "Popes on Air"
Pius XII blessing a microphone. Image Courtesy Fordham Press
If you cover or consume “the news,” you’ve probably heard of the big three formats: print, audio, and video broadcast. But, another major component of that news you might have never thought about is the relationship between a news outlet and the people, places, and things that it covers.
Take a sports league like the National Football League or a university like Fordham. Many institutions across the world have created media outlets to cover themselves and their positioning in global affairs. So, how do these news outlets stay impartial in their broadcasting?
That question is at the heart of Professor Raffaella Perin’s new book, The Popes on Air. The book dives into the history of “Vatican Radio,” which was the Holy See’s official news broadcasting service during the Second World War.
During World War II, Perin describes how many Catholics struggled to figure out whether or not Vatican Radio was the official voice of the pope or an independent news service.
The book also dives deeper into the Church’s relationship with the rise of fascism and Nazism across Europe and explains how the Pope could have done more to help European Jews during the Holocaust.
