By Sarah Mac Donald - 02 September, 2016
This weekend Church Services TV is involved in a two-day online celebration of the life of Blessed Mother Teresa to coincide with her canonisation in Rome on Sunday 4 September.
www.churchservices.tv and www.catholicireland.net are partners and they provide a daily live streaming facility to many churches in Ireland and have been doing this since 2005.
Church Services TV and Heavens Road FM radio station in the UK will be joining forces in order to stream Masses, choirs, and guests all focusing on the life and legacy of Mother Teresa from over 20 different Catholic cathedrals and parish locations throughout the UK and Ireland.
Broadcasts will be available on any mobile device (and there is no need for an App) as well as the normal PC or laptop.
This will be the launch of Heaven’s Road Catholic Online Radio’s own TV Channel.
Bishops, priests and special guests who met Mother Teresa in their lives will be inviting viewers to share those very special memories.
Catholic and Christian choirs, songwriters and poets will be performing live in different locations and Mass will be celebrated in the morning, afternoon and evening.
As part of this initiative, Churches will be encouraged to create new food banks and hold special lunches for their local deserving less fortunate.
Founded in 2014, Heaven’s Road Catholic Online Radio has listeners in over 170 countries worldwide and has been showing over 200 live Masses every week primarily for the housebound in partnership with Church Services TV.
Mother Teresa entered her religious life in Ireland at Loreto Abbey Rathfarnham and Rathfarnham parish is involved along with a number of other Irish cathedrals and churches including St Aidan’s in Enniscorthy and Sligo Cathedral
Tony Bolger, MD of Church Services TV told CatholicIreland.net that Heavens Road FM approached CSTV about two years ago to ask permission to stream the audio of live Masses from some of its parish partners in Ireland and the UK. He said the initiative has been “a great success”.
Gerry Coates is a Catholic singer/songwriter/artist/writer who is also the director and energy behind Heaven’s Road FM.
When the idea of a special event for Blessed Teresa was mooted, some bishops and many churches and organisations expressed interested in being involved and offered facilities and encouragement.
“CSTV were approached to supply the technology and the live streams from the participating churches where cameras are located,” Tony Bolger said.
“As CSTV had developed ‘Parish TV’ which will allow any parish to operate a similar operation for their own community, it was decided to get involved as a final trial before launch. For CSTV this project will test the latest and as far as we know the world’s first on-line parish TV concept.”
“Parish TV allows a parish to live stream from their fixed camera, record these services, upload video/film and live stream ‘Outside Broadcasts’ from mobile phones all to a player or screen on their parish website.”
Internet radio is built on sound only but with the assistance of CSTV, a player has been installed on the Heaven’s Road FM website – http://www.heavensroadfm.com/mtc/ which will carry vision as well as sound, Mr Bolger explained.
He added that the facility will enable people to have normal radio audio plus video/audio and pics on the player/screen on their website.
He said there are plans to record the event for reviewing after editing and uploading sometime next week.
Asked if the venture is the first of its kind, Tony Bolger told catholicireland.net, “We believe this is a first in many ways but certainly we believe it is a first in Catholic church terms that two countries united in one mission would collaborate on-line in such a programme.”
