Catholic Voices was founded by
Austen Ivereigh and Jack Valero in 2010 to prepare the
State visit by Pope Benedict XVI to the United Kingdom in September of that year to beatify Cardinal
John Henry Newman in
Birmingham. The project had the blessing of the Catholic Archbishop of
Westminster, Archbishop (later Cardinal)
Vincent Nichols. The announcement of
Pope Benedict's visit in March 2010 caused controversy in Britain. Some people did not want the visit to take place or at least they thought the state should not pay for it. They considered that the views of Pope Benedict were not in line with modern British values. The areas mentioned included the clerical sex-abuse crisis,
HIV/AIDS in Africa,
gay rights,
abortion and birth control, the role of
women in the Church and in society, etc. Ivereigh and Valero thought the controversy would be a good opportunity to explain the real position of the Catholic Church on all these various issues given that the media would want to hold the conversation between the protestors and the Church. They saw a need for Catholics to be well informed about the Church and its doctrines, and good in communicating these in modern media settings in the fast-moving
24-hour news cycle. An October 2009
Intelligence Squared debate on “The Catholic Church is a force for good in the Church” had been massively lost by the Catholic side, which convinced the project founders of the need for better trained speakers. A call was put out for volunteers to be trained and 20 were selected from the more than 90 who applied to form part of the project. The training took place between March and July 2010, with the help of Kathleen Griffin, formerly a BBC producer for
Woman's Hour, who joined Catholic Voices as a third coordinator. In early September, presentations were made to the BBC and other media companies, and a debate was held in
Conway Hall between Catholic Voices and
Humanists UK. As the visit approached, members of Catholic Voices were asked to comment on news stories related to the Papal Visit. During the time of the Papal Visit 16–19 September 2010, members of Catholic Voices appeared in more than 100 news programmes. Despite some protests in Oxford Street, Pope Benedict’s visit was generally considered to have been a media success. Soon after the Papal Visit, debates between Catholic Voices and Humanist groups took place in London. Catholic Voices continued to train groups of Catholics around the country and organise debates. In 2013, they held a public debate on
same-sex marriage and in 2016 on
Brexit. There were many media calls at the time of the Papal transition from Pope Benedict to
Pope Francis in 2013. Many Catholic Voices TV appearances are included on their YouTube Channel. Seeing what the project had achieved in the UK, groups of Catholic Voices started in over twenty other countries, including Ireland, Mexico and the USA, some of which are still active, such as Chile, Bolivia, Malta, and France. Ivereigh and Valero set up the groups but, once established, they have run as independent entities in each country. There is a meeting of Catholic Voices groups every two years in Rome. ==Communications method==