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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'austraLasia' is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia-Pacific. It functions also as an agency for ANS, based in Rome. Try also www.bosconet.aust.com and Lexisdb
