The Angelus (Irish broadcast)
The Angelus is an Irish radio and television religious programme, first broadcast in 1950, of the sound of an Angelus bell ringing for one minute. On radio it is broadcast at 12midday and 6pm every day. On television, it is only broadcast at 6pm, immediately before the main evening news. Since 2009, the programme on television no longer includes Catholic imagery and the Angelus prayer itself is never broadcast.
The bells were recorded at St Mary's Pro-Cathedral, although initially broadcast live.
Radio Éireann first broadcast The Angelus on 15 August 1950. The Secretary of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, Leon Ó Broin, and the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, had discussed the original idea in the late 1940s.
The Catholic broadcast has sometimes been challenged, while some non-Catholic faith leaders have called for its continuation, notably the Church of Ireland and the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. Archbishop Eames of the Church of Ireland welcomed the new version in 2009. The secretary of the mosque in Clonskeagh and the Chief Rabbi supported keeping the broadcast.
In 2010 Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland criticised the broadcast of the Angelus on the state-owned broadcaster. He said that his organisation would campaign for a secular state where neither religion nor atheism was promoted by the state.