Initiatives for the formation
of the lay faithful

Catholic Voices trains Catholics, mostly lay people but sometimes priests and bishops as well, to tell the Church’s story in the media, especially in news programs and debates on TV and radio. Catholic Voices started in 2010 with the training of a first group of lay people in London in preparation for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Britain. Following the success of the initiative, the project has expanded since then to other parts of the UK and to over 20 other countries around the world.

Many Catholics want to communicate what they have in their heart and that which they fervently believe but they often don’t know how to speak about those things in a way that can be clearly understood by others that might be at some distance from themselves. In addition, they don’t know how to break into the world of media and make themselves available for news programmes. This project tries to tackle both of these issues by providing a service to the Church in its training of lay people, and a service to the media by making Catholics available to it.

This project involves the formation of lay people in several areas: learn good ways to communicate the faith so that we can be heard and understood, train the media to get our messages across effectively, etc.

The project was born to prepare lay Catholics to speak during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Britain in September 2010 for the beatification of Cardinal Newman. The visit became controversial after a number of influential people expressed opposition to the event. While some Catholics were a bit frightened by this hostility, we felt that this would create a good opportunity to communicate our messages if there were people prepared to speak, so we selected a group of 25 lay Catholics and trained them to speak in news programmes.

It benefits the laity at a national level in several nations now. It gives the laity the preparation they need to speak about controversial issues of the Church or of moral issues, in a way that connects with listeners and helps them to understand the message.

Catholic Voices is funded by donations of individuals and Catholic institutions in the countries where it has been set up. Each country group is financially independent. Some groups offer talks in parishes and schools and make a charge for these activities. This also adds to the income for the group.

They can visit the website, contact the local coordinator in their country, or contact Jack Valero, global coordinator for countries where there is as yet no group established.

English: UK, Ireland, USA, Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, Malta Spanish: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Dominican Republic Other languages: France, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Sweden If possible, we kindly ask that you provide a brief report on the initiative’s progress, statistics, accomplishments, and any other information worth noting, as well as any photos representing the initiative.

It first needs a group of 2 or 3 interested people who can set up the project in their city. They should between them cover the areas of management, finance and fundraising, access to Church groups and the hierarchy, and access to media. There are then 3 conditions to be able to start the process: to have the permission of the local bishop or bishops conference, to have a positive view of the media and the Church, and to include people from many different spiritualities and approaches in the Church. The interested people should make contact with Jack Valero (global coordinator) to discuss next steps.