Chai Brady
Roger Childs The Head of Religious Programming in RTÉ has hailed a new initiative which saw Mass broadcast live on the station for the first time without an outside broadcast crew.
For the first time last Tuesday and again on Sunday, iCatholic.ie delivered “high-quality”, live Mass to RTÉ, which has traditionally been done by media production company Kairos.
Roger Childs told The Irish Catholic: “In recent times we’ve had web streamed content produced by churchservices.tv, which is webcams in churches around the country and that has been very valuable to us during the pandemic crisis.
“The difference is it has been pre-recorded and not necessarily in broadcast quality but it is good enough for people who just want to be connected to Mass.
“iCatholic contacted me to say they thought it was possible to deliver broadcast quality, high-end quality live,” he said.
The Mass live-streamed on Sunday was celebrated by Bishop Denis Nulty of the Diocese of Kildare and Leighlin in Rathangan. Fr Bill Kemmy of iCatholic told The Irish Catholic that he was “delighted” that things went so well. He said he wanted to pay tribute to the fact that Kairos has been delivering liturgies to such a high standard for so long “and now technology makes this more accessible for pariishes around the country.
“I think part of the significance is it’s us working in partnership with churches, using new technology, to deliver quality content to our shared users and audiences.
“We’re both about public services in different ways, we’ve realised there’s a Venn diagram over that set and we’re working together to satisfy people,” Mr Childs added.
iCatholic will once again live-stream Mass for broadcast on RTÉ on July 5.