austraLasia 989
(apologies for displaced headline in #988 - we had trouble
converting a file that had been sent from the news source)
Korea: CSM publishing venture moving to new
centre
SEOUL: 8th January 2005 -- The Charity Sisters of Miyazaki,
the largest membership group of consecrated women in the Salesian Family after
the Salesian Sisters, has been managing a large publishing venture in Seoul,
Korea, since 1983. It is the Bible and Life Magazine.
On 12 January they will be moving lock,
stock and barrel to new headquarters in Seoul, Kang Buk Byong 2 Dong
Ophe-San. There is an excellent website www.biblelife.co.kr but you will need
Korean to read it!
Bible and Life's editor is a layman,
formally a Salesian, backed by a team of 4 CSM Sisters and 2 lay journalists -
who in turn are backed by a larger community of 20 CSM Sisters. They are
all located together in the same building as the publishing house and undertake
administration, publishing, distribution of catechetical books and audiovisual
aids as well as the magazine. Because of the high rate of professionally
trained Sisters they are able to keep costs of the Magazine down to a
minimum.
Bible and Life comes out monthly, 25,000
copies per edition which makes it up till now the largest religious magazine in
the nation, with more copies even than the quite large Protestant and Buddhist
religious mags.
The aim of the magazine, founded during the
bicentennial celebration of Evangelisation in Japan in 1984 (in fact they
started late 1983) is to spread the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in order
to meet one of the main challenges of the Korean Catholic Church - bridging the
Faith-daily life gap.
The magazine's editorial policy achieves
this through a daily meditation on the Word of God, ecumenical and
inter-religious dialogue, spirituality for laity and biblical materials of
greater depth. They have some of Korea's best writers amongst their
contributors and see the effort also as a first evangelisation in a secular
environment. B&L is distributed f,o,c, to prisons, social welfare
institutions, army camps. There are one million soldiers under arms in
Korea.
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