Behind the Catholic Radio & Television Network (CRTN) is a modern production studio specialising in reports and documentaries on the Catholic Church in remote areas. The broadcasts primarily serve to support evangelisation efforts and promote solidarity with the suffering Church. Additionally, they further publicise the work of Aid to the Church in Need. Through our network, we provide our productions to TV stations around the world. In 2022, the studio produced a total of 190 TV programmes in all language versions, which were then broadcast on 184 channels.
In 2022, we produced 190 TV broadcasts to spread the faith.
Mark von Riedemann, Director of Public Affairs and Religious Freedom
In addition to documentaries and interview programmes such as “Where God Weeps” and “Donde Dios Llora”, we were able to produce a significant number of short films for special ACN fundraising events.
Spreading the Gospel through radio and television takes on an important role, especially in non-Christian areas. The best example of this is the Middle East, where there are more than 600 Muslim television stations, but only two Christian ones. Aid to the Church in Need oversees the establishment of Catholic radio and television stations here and supports the required training of staff members, thereby ensuring that they are professionally qualified.
CRTN is a production and media service that is globally unique in the Church.
CRTN achieved record distribution in 2022 with documentaries alone, that were broadcast on 184 television channels worldwide.
Every day, broadcasts reach tens of millions worldwide. In addition to production and distribution, CRTN also supports a number of worldwide TV distribution initiatives through consulting and programming services. What’s more, CRTN established the global Catholic television resource network crtn.org, 20 years ago, which gives Catholic producers and television stations the opportunity to facilitate the presentation, exchange and distribution of Catholic programmes worldwide.
In addition, we have compiled a web catalogue containing 541 productions. 320 producers and 175 television stations used this service, which is unique in the Church, in 2022. A CRTN newsletter, a CRTN Facebook page and the CRTN YouTube channel with 14,700 followers round out our media service.