Friday, March 02, 2007

Notes From Richmond Street

Up in TO, it seems our friends at Salt + Light are working late to wrap up another busy week... and what a week it's been.

On Monday, amidst a media blitz focusing the 27 year-old discovery of a site which, a new documentary claims, is the "burial site" of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, S+L CEO Fr Tom Rosica -- an alum of Jerusalem's École Biblique et Archéologique -- fronted the Canadian response and was swarmed with interview requests.

Video of Rosica's take on the "publicity stunt" can be found on the 26 February edition of the network's daily webcast, Zoom!, after which he joined Italian Archbishop Bruno Forte -- widely tipped as a future papabile -- to offer a scholarly piece-apart on the purported finding for Zenit.

On a programming note, one can only pray the S+L viewership doesn't mind the increased presence of faces from south of the 49th Parallel over the last month.

Your narrator's appearance in the Witness chair was immediately preceded by the debut there of next weekend's host ordinary, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver. And the latest to join the club is the latter's Capuchin classmate, the Bloggin' Eminence Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston, whose new outreach was highlighted as part of a look at the emerging wired church on last night's edition of Focus, the network's newsmagazine.

For the benefit of those of us outside Canada and in the spirit of the new technology, thanks to S+L for posting the show's video on its website. And O'Malley's video podcasts are among many things you can find at the newly (and exceptionally) souped-up website of Boston Catholic Television.

-30-