Bishop Joseph Galante of the Diocese of Camden was awarded the Bishop John England Award by the Catholic Press Association for his work on behalf of the Catholic press.
The award was given at the 2010 Catholic Media Convention, which was held June 2-4 in New Orleans.
The award is given to Catholic publishers who have exercised and defended First Amendment rights and prerogatives, freedom of the press and/or freedom of religion.
John England (1786 – 1842) was the first Catholic Bishop of Charleston, South Carolina. In the face of anti-Catholic sentiment, he launched the U.S. Catholic Miscellany, the first Catholic newspaper in the United States, in 1922.
Bishop Galante was selected from nominees by a committee composed of Catholic Press Association past presidents.
According to the criteria outlined by the Awards Committee and accepted by the CPA board of directors, nominees for the award should “clearly have acted in their role as publisher; and clearly should have acted in defense of their publication or used their publication, in accordance with its mission, to defend the First Amendment rights of the publisher, the institution owning the publication, and/or the Church as a whole.”
At the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications in Rome in March 2005, Bishop Galante, who also served as chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Communications, stressed the importance of communications for the Church, including the need for diocesan newspapers. He said, “I believe that it is essential to support and sustain a strong Catholic press, particularly at the diocesan level… In my view the diocesan press remains one of the best and most cost-effective means of reaching the Catholic people with news and information about the Church, their diocese, their parish, their faith. It provides opportunities for spiritual enrichment, evangelization, and pastoral instruction.”
He also said at that time that he was hopeful that dioceses would find ways “to expand the circulation of diocesan publications to reach the people who aren’t coming to Mass each week, who aren’t contributing to our parishes, who would benefit from learning more about the good work of the Church and its ongoing witness to Jesus.”
A year later, Bishop Galante initiated a plan in his own diocese to expand the circulation of the Catholic Star Herald to reach key segments of the Catholic population, including donors to the House of Charity-Bishop’s Annual Appeal, Mass-attending parishioners, religious education and Catholic school families, religious educators and school faculties.
The Catholic Star Herald is now the largest Catholic weekly in the tri-state area, serving 70,000 Catholics in Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland, Salem, Gloucester and Camden counties.
Note: Also honored at the CPA convention was Alan M. Dumoff who took second place for Best Sports Photo for a photo that appeared in the Star Herald on April 24, 2009.
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