Corpus Christi Cathedral Midnight Mass will be seen live on World Wide Web

Marty Wind, executive vice president and general manager of the Diocesan Telecommunications Corporation says that a live stream of the Cathedral's Midnight Mass is planned to be Web cast on the World Wide Web.

Dayna Mazzei Worchel
for South Texas Catholic

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Helping ill or disabled Catholics who cannot be at Mass in person because they are homebound, living in a nursing home or in prison is a mission those responsible for the weekly Cathedral Sunday Mass TV broadcast take very seriously. And they will celebrate their 30th year of continuous Sunday broadcasts in 2015.

It is all about being a part of a large Catholic family and not letting anyone feel isolated say those who broadcast the Corpus Christi Cathedral's Sunday Mass each week.

"Our primary audience are the disabled and shut-ins," said Marty Wind, executive vice president and general manager of the Diocesan Telecommunications Corporation that produces the Mass for distribution.

"We are conveying the spirituality of the Mass. No matter where they are, we don't want them to feel alone," Richard Luna, who has produced and directed the broadcast since the early 1990s, said.

Come Christmas, that Catholic family of watchers will grow when a live stream of the Cathedral's Midnight Mass is planned to be webcast on the World Wide Web. Although the goal is to make the live stream available for the Midnight Mass, it is possible the live webcasts may not be available until 2016, Wind said.

After the Christmas live stream debut, the 9:30 a.m. Sunday Mass will also be broadcast live weekly on the Web, accessible through links to be available on the Catholic Communications Network Web site at www.goccn.org. They are now testing the links and preparing the equipment to make sure the webcast will work properly, Wind said.

The audience for the televised Mass currently numbers about 2,000-3,000 households each week. It can be seen live at 9:30 a.m. Sundays on public access television station KDF. About 50 to 100 people per week download the video broadcast, Wind said.

And the audience may now listen to live audio of the Sunday Mass on radio station KLUX. The Sunday Masses in Spanish and English are also recorded and, beginning on Dec. 7, they will be broadcast on KLUX throughout the week. The English Mass can be heard at 7 p.m. on Wednesdays and at 10 a.m. on Thursdays. The Spanish Mass will be on at 7 p.m. on Tuesdays and at 10 a.m. on Wednesdays.

The telecast, complete with closed captioning, is the only church service in the Coastal Bend to be shown live, Wind said.

He said non-Catholics who watch are curious about the Church and the Mass. It is also a great evangelization tool, he said.

"This gives them a front line view of what goes on," Wind said.

Another plan in the works for 2015 is for the Masses to be broadcast in high definition. They are now broadcast in standard definition, Wind said.

Before the HDTV broadcasts begin, replacing infrastructure inside the cathedral must take place. Two new high definition cameras will be added and the control room at the cathedral will be renovated. The $50,000 cost will be funded from grants, but Wind is also hopeful that viewers will donate.

Currently, four cameras operate in the cathedral sanctuary, with Luna operating one from the control room. One is a fixed camera behind the altar with no operator, and individuals operate two more. Wind said he hopes to replace two of the cameras with the HDTV cameras.

Funding for the operating budget to provide the TV ministry telecasts is covered, in part, by grants from the John G. and Marie Stella Kenedy Memorial Foundation and the Dr. and Mrs. Hugh A. Kennedy Foundation. The Christus Spohn Health System also provides funding for the telecast's $40,000 annual operations budget, Wind said.

"This includes production supplies, airtime, contract labor for five people, Internet maintenance and Internet bandwidth," he said. It does not cover the salary and benefits for Luna, who edits, directs and delivers the final product to the public access channel each week as part of his normal workload.

As a part of the move to make the telecast available worldwide, Christus Spohn will fund the digitizing program needed to send it to the server so that anyone with a computer can watch the Sunday Mass from anywhere in the world, Wind said. Currently, the only place now to get the live Mass is on television station KDF.

To help fund these upgrades to make it possible to provide the Sunday Mass to a wider audience, visit www.goccn.org and click on the "Cathedral TV Mass" tab. Or call (361) 289-6437.