ITN news presenter Julie Etchingham

The Bishops Conference of England and Wales website carries a news release about an awards ceremony for the diocesan media officers who went to Sydney for World Youth Day. The awards were presented by Julie Etchingham, a presenter of ITN's News at Ten. The most interesting part of the release is the part that refers to Julie Etchingham's own experience:

Ms Etchingham felt a particular affinity with the young Communications Officers because she had been invited by her bishop 17 years earlier to serve as a Media Officer at World Youth Day in Czestochowa for her home diocese of Nottingham:
“It was a very far cry from all the amazing kit that is available to you. I simply kept a written diary as we were trudging through fields and making our way through Eastern Europe on a bus, across cobbled motorways. We didn’t have Facebook; we didn’t have Bebo, we weren’t communicating on mobile phones. It was out of the ark when I was there.

“That WYD was a very special one – it was in Pope John Paul II’s home country and it was a big homecoming for him and it was just after the Berlin Wall had come down so a very visual barrier had been removed in terms of communication. There was an extraordinary spirit at the time of young people wanting to get to know each other from across that very concrete divide.

The experience helped affirm her desire to pursue journalism as a career: “I think as a Catholic it can be quite a noble profession. In its best moments, it speaks rofoundly human being to human being about the truth of the world that we live in, the challenges that we all face, it allows us to be a witness. And it is a very privileged position to be in, to witness some of the dreadful things in life, but to communicate them compassionately and also to witness some of the glorious things in life and make sure that we provide a window on the world and with all these extraordinary facilities that you all have now…it is something to be embraced.”