50 years ago the Archdiocese of Louisville began broadcasting a televised mass each Sunday for people who could not travel to their parish church. I was part of that early initiative, helping to provide sign language interpretation for the televised masses and also occasionally being the priest presider. Last night I went to the taping of two masses to be shown in June, to see how the project has developed in the four decades I was out of Louisville.
Before the taping, Fr. Joe Graffis met with the lector while the musicians got ready.The masses are taped in the chapel of what was the mother house of the Ursuline Sisters of Louisville. The mother house and chapel have now been turned over to the schools that the sisters started on the campus, but the agreement allows for Mass of the Air to continue to use the chapel.Fr. Graffis is a veteran with Mass of the Air and knows how to follow the signals of the producer and especially to keep the mass to its 28.5 minutes limit.A core of dedicated volunteers has stayed with Mass of the Air over its 50-year run. Mass of the Air is professionally produced and other dioceses use the Louisville tape each week because they don’t have the expertise or resources to do their own televised mass.
