RADIOMESSAGGIO DI SUA SANTITÀ PIO PP. XII
PER IL XXV DELLA «CATHOLIC HOUR» NEGLI STATI UNITI*

Domenica, 4 dicembre 1955

Your Catholic Hour, dearly beloved of Christ, began to broadcast its weekly message of faith and fellowship just as the Vatican Radio, which carries to you Our cordial Anniversary greeting and paternal Blessing, was being readied here at Rome for the use of the Pope in his world-wide ministry to souls.

Fond memory recalls the prayerful planning of those dramatic days. The ever-benign providence of God, reflected once more in human inventive genius, had placed in the hands of men an astounding new instrument of communication with his fellows in the human family, near or afar. One had but to adjust voice and ear to the sensitive drum of microphone and loud-speaker to enable human minds really to meet, and human hearts really to beat as one. Only the wilfully perverse could make of the radio another channel for error and deceit, another accomplice in the guilty designs of individual or collective pride and passion.

Twenty-five years later, how heartening it is to measure the distance you have covered since those « pioneering » days, in terms of the vast treasure of good will and grace dispensed over the air-waves to your country, your homes and schools and churches! Grace and good will for which family, Church and State have been so sorely athirst during this fateful quarter-century of wars and rumours of war (cfr. Matth, 24, 6), of struggle with the perverse powers of darkness and hate (cfr. Eph. 6, 12)!

For the generous Christian role your country has continued to play in that titanic struggle, you are justly grateful to-day to such dedicated groups as your National Council of Catholic Men. Thanks to their alertness and unflinching zeal you have been reminded, Sunday after Sunday, in season and out of season, of the abiding maternal presence of the Church of Jesus Christ in your midst. It was reassuring to realize that She had made your problems her very own, that She shared your hopes and fears, that She was constantly ready with the Divine Master's answer to your questionings, the Divine Redeemer's strength and sustenance for your hour of need. Here indeed was a « give-away program >> wherein no one need be a loser!

Who, then, shall calculate your spiritual debt to this holy alliance of clergy and laity, honouring the best traditions of Catholic Action as they bend to the task of keeping your hearts always attuned to the single eternal objective of the Prince of Peace: not a cold and cowering coexistence of rival neighbours and nations, but a communion, in truth, justice and Christian love, of brothers under God?

The sponsors and speakers of the Catholic Hour have wisely left to other competence the debates and disputes of political power and worldly success. But for twenty-five fruitful years they have rendered you the most precious of social services, in sharing with you and your children the redemptive message of the living Christ, in the full majesty of its human appeal, its healing power, its terrible urgency for a world confused and affrighted before the specter of spiritual disaster amid the unfolding marvels of the Lord's great universe of truth and goodness and beauty.

The Catholic minutes and hours you spend listening to the Radio, as We have such plentiful reason to know, can help immensely to dispel that awful specter, to avert that sorry disaster. May the vital and challenging message of Christ, which they relay to your generous souls, continue to comfort, inspire and sustain you all, speakers and listeners alike, through the years the Father has still in store for you—that in His Son you may have life, and have it more abundantly (Io. 10, 10). As a pledge of this and countless other heavenly graces and a token of Our grateful affection, We impart to the National Council of Catholic Men and the members of the Hierarchy, whose pastoral zeal they have so magnanimously seconded, Our Apostolic Benediction.

*Discorsi e Radiomessaggi di Sua Santità Pio XII, XVII,
 Diciassettesimo anno di Pontificato, 2 marzo 1955 - 1° marzo 1956, pp. 419 - 420
 Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana