The Diocese of Rochester’s 150th-anniversary Mass Sept. 22 not only marked the beginning of the diocese’s sesquicentennial celebration but also a new beginning for the Catholic Courier.
A few months prior to the Mass, the diocese asked the Courier to live stream the liturgy. Although we do not have much experience with streaming, we looked at this request as an opportunity to go beyond the realm of our traditional platforms. So we purchased some new equipment and began testing it last month.
With every new venture there is, of course, the fear of the unknown. While Staff Photographer Jeff Witherow was very confident that everything was going to work out just fine, I felt the complete opposite. I knew there were many people anticipating the stream and I was afraid that we may have gotten ourselves in a little over our heads.
However, on the morning of Sept. 22, I put away those fears, said a few prayers and put it all in God’s hands. I’m happy to say everything went off without a hitch. We were pretty happy with how the live stream turned out, and we hope people were able to take advantage of its availability and enjoy the Mass with New York Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan.
Although the sesquicentennial Mass is over, our streaming offerings are not. In fact, we will be streaming the Oct. 5 Catholic Courier Lecture with Brother Guy Consolmagno, SJ, director of the Vatican Observatory. Plus, we also hope to do some streaming when Jeff and I cover the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis in November.
So it really is a new beginning for us — a new way of sharing the events of our diocese.
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EDITOR’S NOTE: To see the full video from the Mass, click here.
To see our multimedia project with photos and videos from the Mass, click here.
