By Jay Sorgi • Posted November 25, 2024

Listeners who tune in at particular times on Sunday, Dec. 1 to one of five radio stations in the Delaware Valley, and via a recording on CatholicPhilly, will hear an episode marking a quarter-century of proclaiming Christ’s love over the airwaves.

All of it’s en Español.

Archbishop Nelson Pérez “always says, if there is one person that we touch one day with the show, with a message of hope and a message of Jesus’ love for us, then we’re doing our job,” said Marianela Núñez, the producer and host of La Voz de Dios en las Voces de Nuestros Pueblos, known in short as La Voz.

Núñez, who also serves as director of enrollment and outreach for the Diocese of Camden and South Jersey Catholic Schools, will host an episode of La Voz that will celebrate the work of reaching a large and consistently growing group of Catholics through radio airwaves for 25 years.

“There’s about 500,000 Hispanic Catholics in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia,” she said. “Thinking of my own diocese, here in the Diocese of Camden, we have about that number of Catholics overall. So when you think about that in Philadelphia, it’s a huge amount of people that we’re serving through this ministry.”

Núñez has taken the torch from Jhoselyn Martinez, the show’s longtime producer and host who is now the administrator of the Hispanic Catholic Institute of the Archdiocese.

“The Archdiocese, as part of celebrating its Jubilee Year in 2000, did major initiatives,” said Martinez, who hosted the show until 2023. “Cardinal (Anthony) Bevilacqua wanted an evangelical way to evangelize the Hispanic community, to be present within the Hispanic community. (Leaders) started to think, ‘Where can we meet this population?’”

Martinez said that because a lot of Latino people work in the service industry, many could not come to Mass regularly on Sundays. The Archdiocese instead used Spanish-language mass media to reach them.

“It was this initiative that wanted to meet the people where they were,” said Martinez. “The mission of the program became to bring the Gospel, the Good News, to everybody, to do it in a format that was family-friendly, that was intelligent, and that spoke to the community but also connected the community with the greater Archdiocese.”

She added that Cardinal Bevilacqua felt that using such a platform helped him fulfill his role as a shepherd. Philadelphia’s subsequent archbishops have continued to share special messages on a weekly or monthly basis on the show.

Archbishop Pérez continues to lead La Voz as he and Nunez discuss issues of the day on air once a month, in Spanish. It’s a practice he first enjoyed as a young priest of the Archdiocese since the show’s inception.

Martinez said these messages, and the show itself, played a critical part in linking the Latino Catholic community during the COVID-19 pandemic when people were homebound. She also believes the show still links a growing diversity of ethnicities withing the Delaware Valley’s Spanish-speaking Catholic community.

“When we’re talking about Hispanics, there is not just one monolithic community,” said Martinez, citing the longer name of the show as a reflection of the different nationalities within the Latino listenership.

“Our name is super long, especially for radio, ‘the Voice of God in the Voices of the People,’” she added. “It was suggested by one of the priests … and he said, ‘We wanted to really demonstrate that even though there’s one voice which is one God, there’s many voices, and we wanted to articulate that this isn’t just the Dominican voice of God or the Puerto Rican, but this is basically the voice of God in the voices of all the people.’”

Núñez recognizes that in a medium like radio, it’s rare to receive direct feedback on La Voz’s impact, but she knows the Holy Spirit is moving through radio airwaves to touch hearts in unexpected ways.

“I imagine some days people who may not have anything to do with the Catholic faith are on their radio and listening to music, and all of a sudden the show comes on at 10:30 a.m. every Sunday. We may (reach) them as well. And so they would come to hear that message, and who knows from that?” she said.

“There’s a seed that’s growing.”

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Listeners can tune in to the following stations and outlets to hear the show:
La Mega: 10:30 a.m. on WEMG 1310 AM – Philadelphia County and Camden County.

Holy Spirit Radio: 4 p.m. on WISP 1570 AM – Bucks, Delaware, Montgomery and part of Philadelphia County; and WCOJ 1420 AM – Chester County

Domestic Church Media: 5 p.m. on WFJS 1260 AM – Bucks County and Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey; and WFJS 89.3 FM – Freehold, Colts Neck, Spring Lake, New Jersey

CatholicPhilly.com: Listen to all episodes of La Voz.