A noted Indian Jesuit and media expert has been appointed as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Divyavani TV, run by the Telugu Catholic Bishops’ Council (TCBC).
Jesuit Father Lourduraj Ignacimuthu is the Head of the Department of Visual Communication and Vice Principal at Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada, in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.
TCBC is the channel owner of Divyavani TV. Bishop Udumala Bala of Warangal is the chairman of Divyavani TV.
"The Telugu Bishops have trusted me to run this Catholic TV channel. I will have to inject both theory and practice into my responsibility to bring in a certain professionalism. I never expected this to happen. The credit goes to Cardinal Anthony Poola, President of TCBC, and the Bishops of TCBC, and I am told to take charge by May 31," said the 59-year-old Father Ignacimuthu, a member of the Andhra Jesuit Province.
"It is a big responsibility. I need the good wishes and prayers of every Telugu Catholic. Please pray for me," he added.
The priest obtained his MA in broadcast communication from the University of the Philippines, Diliman.
He founded the Department of Mass Communication at Loyola Academy, Secunderabad, in 2004 and established the Lievens’ Institute of Film and Electronic Media (LIFE), Ranchi, the capital of the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand.
He was the professor and founding dean of the School of Communication at the Jesuit-run XIM University in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, in eastern India.
Since his priestly ordination in 1993, he has worked in the Telugu region, Jharkhand, Odisha states, and other parts of India as a media professional and missionary. The late Jesuit Father Gaston Roberge, a renowned film critic, trained him.
Last January, Father Ignacimuthu obtained his Ph.D. from the Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, south India.
His Ph.D. dissertation was titled "Learners' Perception of Social Media in the Context of Social, Cognitive, and Teaching Presence in Select Undergraduate Colleges of Krishna and NTR Districts, Andhra Pradesh, India."
As many as 85% of Indian homes have television connectivity. Thus, television has become the favored medium and the best vehicle to reach the masses.
After Hindi, Telugu is the most widely spoken language in India. In view of reaching out to Telugu-speaking audiences in India and beyond, the Telugu Catholic Bishops’ Council started Divyavani (Word of God) TV in 2014.
Its vision is "Gospel to every family."
It has a seven-fold objective: evangelization, faith formation, bringing back the fallen-away Catholics, fostering relationships and building up families, connecting to the Universal Church in fellowship, building the Kingdom of God, and creating a forum for unity.
The other TV channels the Catholic Church runs in India include Prarthana Bhavan TV, Shalom TV, Goodness TV, and Madha TV—all in Hindi, Malayalam, and Tamil.
Christians make up 2.3 percent of India’s 1.4 billion population.
Telugu Christians form the third-largest religious minority in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Christians make up 2.5% of the population in the Telugu-speaking region.
Radio Veritas Asia (RVA), a media platform of the Catholic Church, aims to share Christ. RVA started in 1969 as a continental Catholic radio station to serve Asian countries in their respective local language, thus earning the tag “the Voice of Asian Christianity.” Responding to the emerging context, RVA embraced media platforms to connect with the global Asian audience via its 21 language websites and various social media platforms.
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