Premiering on Salt + Light TV Oct. 16, the episode is dedicated to Lives Lived for Life and takes a closer look at four champions of the pro-life message highlighted in the Register’s latest magazine offering.
Behold keeps the intended spirit of the series alive as it delves into each uplifting pro-life chronicle.
“As one of our flagship shows, Behold is a program that has always been dedicated to featuring good news stories and stories that feature the beauty, goodness and truth of the Catholic Church,” said Deacon Pedro Guevara-Mann, a senior producer at Salt + Light Media. “We often get caught up too much in the truth and with things like justice, and while those things are important, with television we love and are able to tell visual stories of goodness and beauty.”
Of the 12 stories highlighted in Lives Lived for Life, four will be featured in Salt + Light’s upcoming show: Deacon George and Susan Jurenas, Paula Celani, Katie Somers and Jim Hughes.
The Jurenas’ story will examine adoption through their four daughters while street outreach challenges and triumphs are explored with Somers as the director of outreach at Toronto Right to Life. Viewers will also get a closer look at Celani’s work with individuals nearing end-of-life before being treated to a sit-down interview with Hughes, the former national president of Campaign Life Coalition, who will discuss his decades-spanning career as a leading figure in the pro-life movement.
“Salt + Light Media is dedicated to telling visual stories that inspire and give hope. We wanted to bring to life the work of some of these individuals by telling their stories in a visual way to showcase individuals who live up to the Gospel values in practical and meaningful ways,” said Alexander Du, chief operating officer and interim CEO of Salt + Light Media, when asked about the approach his organization took when tackling the project.
Guevara-Mann spoke more about the practical formatting of the special episode and the idea behind selecting stories that make for the best, most compelling television experience.
“Not only do the magazine stories and mini-documentary-style articles fit well into the Behold format, but every episode also has the sit-down interview because there are some topics that may not necessarily be very visually interesting, but they are nonetheless important,” he explained. “Hughes is a 50-year legend in the field, but you need a lot of photos to tell a story that big, so instead we are running a three-camera shoot interview whereas the other three stories are ones that we knew we could produce faster and illustrate more visually.”
The upcoming episode acts as the capstone to an ongoing collaboration between the three institutional Catholic media organizations of The Catholic Register, Daily TV Mass (National Catholic Broadcasting Council) and Salt + Light Media. Together, the three have been amplifying each other’s voices in a joint effort to spread the message of life across multiple platforms and mediums.
Daily TV Mass is hosting a Week of Masses for Prayers for Life with the release of Lives Lived for Life on Oct. 6 and running through Oct. 12. Less than a week later, Salt + Life TV will air its Lives Lived for Life special.
While it may appear on the surface that the same stories are being shared among the three media entities, Guevara-Mann emphasized the natural synergy the group project is looking to create and how more Catholics will benefit as a result.
“I am at the Bishop’s Plenary Assembly and during a homily this morning, a bishop said that somebody once taught him that when we preach, we preach to the mind, the heart and the hands. We learn that more intellectual people often find truth as important, those more emotional sometimes find goodness appealing and others may be moved by physical beauty,” he said.
“(The three organizations) are doing what they do best, whether it be print, visual, audio or actively praying — that is how we are touching minds, touching hearts and hopefully inspiring hands so that people can go do similar work to what they see and read.”
Guevara-Mann hopes that his viewers will feel inclined to read the full stories of other subjects in the magazine the same way that avid fans of Daily TV Mass may be interested in tuning into Salt + Light’s Behold.
Guevara-Mann also spoke on behalf of the team about the simultaneous excitement and comfort staff feels as the inaugural Lives Lived for Life episode debut draws closer.
“For me personally, you can not be Catholic and not be pro-life and being pro-life is not just being anti-abortion. It was exciting for me to highlight stories about people who work at promoting the beginning of life, but also to find stories of people who are defending life all the way through to the end,” he said.
With support for the pro-life message remaining a constant shared vision of each organization, there is already hope that Lives Lived for Life could lead to continued collaboration for years to come.
“Hopefully this can become something that is sustained every year and we can be a part of a program where The Catholic Register, the National Catholic Broadcasting Council and ourselves can find a month to focus on these kinds of stories,” said Du.