Vatican Radio offers various services to radio stations available in a special section of Vatican Radio’s website www.vaticanradio.org/R4R (“R4R” means “the Radio for the Radios”). Among these services, first of all there is the possibility to rebroadcast the programs of Vatican Radio by means of the modalities indicated below.

The rebroadcasting of Vatican Radio’s Programs must be authorized by the General Direction – International Relations Office. Those radio stations which are interested in rebroadcasting such programs have to address their request to relint@vatiradio.va or fax number +39 06 6988 3237 (Mr. Giacomo Ghisani, Head of International Relations, tel. number +39 06 6988 3945). Following this request, the radio stations receive a simple, standard agreement to be signed in order to formalize the cooperation with Vatican Radio.

Vatican Radio doesn’t operate on a commercial basis given its particular nature to be at the service of the Papal Ministry and Divine Word: for this reason, we always try to put our programmes at the disposal of Catholic radio stations without burdening upon their limited economic possibilities. However, since the production of the programs represent a significant and important economic cost for the Holy See, a proportioned contribution may be asked to radio stations for the rebroadcasting of the programs of the Pope’s Radio.

The technical modalities in which Vatican Radio may be re-broadcasted are the following:

Internet “Professional services”: Nearly all of our programs are available on demand in the “Professional Services”, which is an area of our website www.vaticanradio.org/R4R made expressly for those radio stations wishing to download and re-broadcast Vatican Radio programs. The files of Vatican Radio programs of this area are of high quality, which means that they are made available to professional operators for re-broadcasting purposes. In the section www.vaticanradio.org/R4R, you may find a list of all our programs available via internet and the server which allows to download closest to your area. If a radio station is interested in this type re-broadcasting, a password will be provided by our Computer Dept. in order to have access to download the files.

Satellite: The satellite from which radio stations may pick up our programs are the following:

Eutelsat Hot Bird 13° East (Europe), Bouquet RAI
Intelsat AOR (Atlantic), IS 801, 328,5° E
Intelsat IOR (Indian), IS 904, 60° E.

V- Sat: There is an important initiative in collaboration with SIGNIS to make available Vatican Radio programming for Africa through V-SAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) technology. The V-SAT system links up to internet via satellite (with a 120 mt. dish) avoiding the inefficiency of the terrestrial internet connection and, in our case, provides a channel where all Vatican Radio programs in various languages (English, French, Portuguese …) can be heard.
With V-SAT system radio stations have also the possibility to broadcast live all the main Papal celebrations offered by Vatican Radio with commentaries in the languages most commons to Africa.

The subscription of this service has to be made to SIGNIS, which also supplies all the necessary equipment which needs to be purchased through them. There are some costs involved in the purchasing of the equipment and in the eventual subscription for surfing the internet. These sums have to be paid to SIGNIS. The re-broadcast of Vatican Radio programs remains basically free-of-charge, but it is necessary to sign the re-broadcasting agreement with us.