God goes hi-tech, gets satellite TV

[The Straight Story]

God goes hi-tech, gets satellite TV
17:18 | 27/ 07/ 2005



Moscow. (RIA Novosti political commentator Vladimir Simonov.) The Soviet leader who promised in 1980 to show the last pope on television made a crude mistake in predicting an early victory for atheism over religion.

Now, 25 years later, Russia is set for its first national Orthodox satellite television channel.

The channel, called Spas ("Savior"), will broadcast for 16 hours a day, and cost its backers - a group of anonymous philanthropists under the umbrella of the Russian Consulting Group - an estimated quarter of a million dollars per year.

The idea for an Orthodox channel is popular in Russia. After seven horrible decades during which churches were blown up and monasteries turned into stables, the Russian Orthodox Church is finally staging a comeback revival. According to official statistics, since the late 1980s the number of people in Russia who consider themselves believers has more than trebled, from 16% in 1986 to about 70% today.

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20050727/40984873.html