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Starting next year, Bishop John Wester of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City will lead the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Communications.
During the USCCB's meeting this week in Baltimore, Wester was selected as "chair-elect" of the committee, which means he will observe his predecessor before taking over. The Utah bishop beat out Archbishop Thomas Rodi of Mobile, Ala., for the position in a 129-108 vote.
The committee's assignment is to figure out "how best to communicate the bishops' message and especially how to reach younger people," Wester said in a phone interview from Baltimore.
For example, he said, he would be responsible to help journalists get to the right bishop with a question about a particular issue and he would moderate the news conferences after the annual bishops meeting.
Basically, the committee "seeks to support the work of evangelization and faith formation through a comprehensive approach to media," according to the bishops' website. "That includes media relations, media production and programming, policy, review of entertainment media, publishing, distribution, and licensing with sensitivity towards culturally diverse communities."
One recent media effort has been the "Catholics Come Home" ad campaign, which is about to get more national exposure on prime-time television.
"Beginning Dec. 16 and running through the feast of the Epiphany, Jan. 8, the ads will air more than 400 times, reaching more than 250 million television viewers in over 10,000 U.S. cities and every diocese," the National Catholic Register reported this week.
The ads were produced by former advertising executive Tom Peterson, the Register reported, and have been seen in 30 dioceses since 2008.
These are the kinds of professional efforts Wester's committee will oversee. It also relies on full-time staffers to manage the bishops' day-to-day communications.
In fact, Wester said, this committee has only three meetings a year, two of them via Skype, a visual conference call via the Internet.
"The key is to realize that media is an important part of society," Wester said. "It is important to use it well."
The Catholic bishops, he said, "want to be a positive factor."