Vatican Radio is somewhere I had never expected to find myself and, after almost two years, it is still a wonderful privilege to find myself there. As a Franciscan Missionary of the Divine Motherhood since 1973, my route has been varied, crossing England, Rome, Nigeria, Australia, Zambia and now back to Rome, filling my time with teaching, nursing, midwifery and now, broadcasting. I'm certainly never bored!

That wide range of experience has given me a wonderful background to my current work at Vatican Radio, precisely because I've had the opportunity to be in so many places, doing different things whilst living and working with widely differing cultures. That's very useful when Vatican Radio personnel represent 60 nationalities, broadcasting in 40 languages throughout the world, not only to Catholics, but also to a huge range of religious believers and non-believers.

My own work on Vatican Radio's English Programme is very varied. I have the responsibility of the Sunday half-hour broadcast, containing two 15-minute features that are picked up by Catholic radio stations mainly in the US. Much of my time is spent on the Internet, partly in outreach to Catholic media and other organisations, Bishops' Conferences and individuals across the English-speaking world. I copy every prayer request to Vatican Radio to our website, enabling people throughout the world to be united in prayer for the same intentions. I also place every prayer request on our Vatican Radio altar, where it will remain for the year, through approximately 40 Masses per week.

My responsibilities encompass the Catholic news worldwide, so I daily scan the Church headlines for our website, thereby bringing to people's attention items that might otherwise have been overlooked. It gives me an incredible sense of the Church family world - wide, one of the most precious aspects of my work with Vatican Radio. In fact I see our prayer board and this news aspect as two of the most vital aspects of the radio station’s outreach, deliberately bringing people into contact with each other. I believe that our role is to be, not only at the heart of the Church, but to also be its arms, reaching out to give a hug of encouragement to everyone who is experiencing joy or pain, success or failure. That is also why there is such a large element of Justice and Peace issues in our programme schedule.

A further aspect of my own work is the daily e-mail, currently sent out to about 2,000 addresses worldwide. This includes a preview of the website content, but also a daily reflection, which I write and has proved to be useful to a wider audience than I ever imagined possible.

Vatican Radio can be heard on short wave or the Internet (105live.vaticanradio.org). For those with an iPod or an mp3 player, our programmes can be downloaded daily. For those who receive EWTN, the commentary on all Papal ceremonies on radio and television is done by Vatican Radio and then carried by EWTN to places where there might be difficulty in hearing Vatican Radio.