By Jose Kavi
New Delhi, June 26, 2020: Church groups in Asia, including the federation of the region’s Catholic bishops, on June 26 mourned the death of Maryknoll Father Robert Astorino. The pioneer in Church media in Asia was 77 and a priest for 50 years.
Father Astorino, popularly known as Father Bob, was ailing for some months and died on June 25 in a New York hospital. He had returned to the United States in 2019 after nearly 50 years of missionary works, mostly in communication, in Asia, based in Hong Kong.
“With his expertise in the field of communication, he contributed valuably with his advice and concrete service,” says a press note from the Hong Kong-based central secretariat of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC). Father Astorino had served as a consultant of the FABC Central Secretariat for several years and attended several plenary assemblies of the federation, the last one in Colombo, Sri Lanka in November 2016.
The Indian Catholic Press Association mourned the death of “a great teacher and practitioner of journalism in Asia. “The Teacher passes away. But the lessons outlive,” says a condolence message from the association’s president Ignatius Gonsalves, who recalls being taught by Father Astorino to report for an international audience.
Father Astorino was the founder editor and first executive director of the Union of Catholic Asian News (UCA News), which he started in 1979. He launched the agency mainly to help Churches in Asian countries understand and appreciate each other. He defined its aim was to help Asians, divided into “chopstick” and “hand” cultures, to understand and appreciation each other.
He was also convinced that the Church in Asia must communicate to the world through Asian journalists.
Over the past 41 years, the agency became Asia’s largest Church news agency with bureaus in 22 countries and reporters in all countries in the region and in Rome. He handed over the agency’s reins in 2009 to Father Michael Kelly, an Australian Jesuit.
Father Astorino trained hundreds of Asians to become professional journalists. He defined UCAN’s aim was to help Asians report about their region and their people for those interested in Asia.
Christopher Khoo of Singapore, a former UCAN editor, considers Father Astorino as “one of Asia’s great missionaries, blazing the path for Asian Church journalism.”
He recalled his first meeting with Father Astorino in the Singapore’s Catholic News office when he worked in the 1990s. “I was impressed with Fr Bob’s passion for Asian Church journalism and when he invited me to work with the Union of Catholic Asian News, I took up the offer,” he told Matters India.
Khoo, who now a freelance educator and journalist, recalled being “very impressed with the way he upheld rigorous journalistic standards and how he treated staff as family. He made it a point to celebrate birthdays and organized barbecues for greater bonding during meetings with colleagues from different countries.”
UCA news had limited its reporting area to East and South East Asia until 1988. That year, it opened its first South Asia office in New Delhi and set up a reporters’ network a year later.
One of the network members was Michael Gonsalves, a veteran Indian journalist and the lay president of the ICPA. He says Father Astorino’s training sessions were insightful, delightful and fun. “He taught us international reporting and how to be neutral while gathering news and reporting,” Gonsalves wrote on a Facebook page.
Salesian Father C M Paul, former editor of The Herald weekly of Calcutta and an occasional UCAN reporter, says Father Astorino was a guru to many journalists in India.
“He was my inspiration more than 30 years, from 1989,” he told Matters India. Father Paul helped organize UCAN’s second reporters’ training program in India at Calcutta in 1990.
“Bob was a professional journalist who could infuse professionalism among Church journalists. He would insist on telling the truth with proper attribution. He would say, “Don’t tell me, show it,” recalls Father Paul, a former director of Salesian News Agency in Rome, and founder head of Journalism and Mass Communication at Don Bosco University Guwahati.
Father Paul, who is currently founder director of Radio Salesian 90.8 FM and founder head of the department of Mass Communication at Salesian College Sonada, acknowledges that Father Astorino had inspired him to “pursue my career as a priest journalist,” he added.
Philip Mathew, a veteran journalist based in Bengaluru, hails Father Astorino as an outstanding Church leader, communicator and journalist and his death is a great loss to the Church media and communications. “He was a great organizer with a vision and a fundraiser. Such leaders are few and far between in the Church,” he told Matters India.
George Kommattathil, another former UCAN reporter, says Father Astorino was “a great communicator of God who taught us to spread Gospel values through truthful, neutral reporting. I think those were the golden years of UCA News. May his soul rest in peace.”
Father Astorino was born in New York City on May 27, 1943. He was ordained a priest of the Maryknoll missionary institute in 1970. He was sent to Hong Kong immediately after the ordination where he worked among young people.
He entered the Church communication scene in Asia in 1974. In early 1980s, he went for master’s degree in journalism from Colombia University, New York.
He helped launch the Hong Kong Catholic Social Communications Office and became its assistant director while helping international Catholic media organizations gain a foothold in the region. From 1975 to 1977, Father Astorino taught journalism at The Chinese University of Hong Kong while helping the East Asia Catholic Press Association.