CEO, Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation
114 Richmond Street E.
Toronto, Ontario, M5C 1P1 CANADA
Dear Fr. Thomas Rosica,
Congratulations and best wishes to you and all at Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation as you begin the celebrations of your 10th anniversary. The Bishops of Canada are most appreciative of the balanced information and faith-inspired insights that Salt + Light Catholic Television provides, as well as deeply grateful for your generous collaboration with, and assistance to, the Canadian Catholic Conference of Catholic Bishops as the assembly of the Bishops of Canada, and individual dioceses across our country.
Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation was born on the wings of World Youth Day 2002, ten years ago. World Youth Days have a special mission and charism for showing how the Church is "alive and young". This too is an underlying theme that inspires and guides the Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation.
Over the past decade, Salt + Light has become a multi-platformed communications service and agency, continually finding new and more effective ways to reach out not only to Canada but also the universal Church. Your message remains one of hope and witness, showing readers and viewers, as well as other media, how the teachings of the Church and its witness are themselves "alive and young". Your catechetical programs, especially your multi-lingual documentaries on the new Saints and Blesseds, make a significant contribution to the Church around the world, helping form a new generation of the faithful while also keeping older generations inspired and rejuvenated. You continue to employ and encourage young adults from Canada and other countries who take to heart the Holy Father's invitation to announce the Gospel through all modern means of communications. You partner with other Catholic media throughout the world, sharing programs and co-sponsoring programs and series, not only in North America, but also in the Global South where Salt + Light contributes programming and assists media projects in areas where the Church has less access to new forms of communications.
Your 10th anniversary celebrations officially begin this coming December 6, with a concert in Toronto featuring "The Priests" of Ireland. I join my brother Bishops across Canada in wishing you and all at Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation a great concert, a happy anniversary and many more anniversaries to come. It is not just a coincidence that your anniversary comes at a moment when the Church is discussing the New Evangelization.
May Salt + Light remain a witness and agent of this New Evangelization. Blessed John Paul II, when visiting the "New World" in 1983, reminded us to "Look to the future with commitment to a New Evangelization, one that is new in its ardour, new in its methods, and new in its means of expression." May Salt and Light Catholic Media Foundation continue to spark in all of us new ardour, inspiring in us the confidence to try new methods and also means of expression.
We pray that God strengthen you and all involved with the Foundation as by your ministry you help keep the Church itself "alive and young"!
Fraternally in Our Lord,
Richard W. Smith
Archbishop of Edmonton
President of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops