Radio as an instrument of conversion

WFRM Directors’ Advisor & RM Italy Director

God chooses the simplest tools to reach people. He used a book to communicate his Word and preaching to spread it. Radio lies within the perspective of spreading the word. Certainly, the instrument of the radio bears a voice that, from the mouth of the speaker, reaches the ears of those listening: fides ex auditu, “faith comes from what is heard” (Rom 10:17). Proclaiming the Word of God was the great means used by Jesus Christ and the apostles: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mk 16:15–16). Radio is a simple and effective means for propagating the Gospel. Technological evolution has made it a capillary tool that reaches people wherever they are. By its nature, radio is a missionary instrument. The voice reaches the heart and challenges it. Under the impulse of grace, it becomes an instrument of conversion.

When the Radio Maria adventure began in 1987, no one could have imagined the current panorama, with 81 radios and 19 local language stations planted throughout the continents with a following of around 35 million listeners and 20,000 passionate volunteers. Looking back, those of us who have walked this path from the beginning are amazed and wonder how a project of such magnitude could ever have been accomplished. The wonder is even greater when you think that everything has been accomplished without radio experts and without funding that was not offered by listeners, constantly navigating through troubled waters according to the rule common to all things from God. The spirit of Radio Maria cannot be fully understood if one tries to merely define it

as a religiously-inspired station. To grasp its unmistakable strength and charm it is necessary to say that it is a radio that proclaims conversion. Through Radio Maria, the Virgin wants to give the Church a voice to awaken faith and call our generation—lost in the darkness and shadow of death, of atheism, and of materialism—to conversion.

Proclaiming conversion is Radio Maria’s profound energy. It is our concern with “saving souls” that takes this radio station beyond the enclosure of the fold, where the faithful are safe, to call even the most distant, announcing forgiveness, mercy, and hope to them. The medium of the radio—arriving everywhere that people are and penetrating into all places of desperation where God seems absent—is extraordinarily suitable for this missionary dimension, which is so absolutely urgent and necessary today. A true Radio Maria is not only listened to by the faithful who are fond of it, but also by many of those who are far away, but who carry a nostalgia for God in their hearts. The multiplication of testimonies of listeners who claim to have returned to the faith and to Christian life means that our stations are fulling the task that Mary has entrusted us with well.