c. 1999 Religion News Service

NEW ORLEANS _ He is a familiar figure on balmy evenings, trodding the grassy bank of Bayou St. John, eyes down, a rosary dangling from one hand. His gait is a bit more of a shuffle than it used to be, and one shoulder tends to droop a bit. Usually he is lost in prayer or thought, although he will acknowledge a motorist’s honk with a slight wave, and, ever gregarious, will entertain a bit of conversation from anyone bold enough to approach and fall in step alongside.

This is the solitary time in retired Archbishop Philip Hannan’s usual day. There is another little piece, early in the morning, when he rises and says Mass alone in the chapel of his house facing the bayou. That’s if he’s at home, not waking up in a hotel in Washington or San Francisco on another fund-raising mission.

Hannan retired 10 years ago as Catholic archbishop of New Orleans and marked his 86th birthday on May 20.

He might easily have lightened up and coasted into his final years in New Orleans, enjoying his status as one of the city’s most revered citizens and regarding with a builder’s satisfaction the huge network of housing and social services he helped put in place for the poor.

But for years he has been dreaming a dream in his evening walks along the bayou, and he appears to be at the threshold of bringing its first stage to life.

In about three weeks, three satellites will begin beaming translations of American Catholic programming, including his own weekly television news program, “Focus,” to an audience Hannan numbers at about 22 million homes in Latin America, and, to a lesser extent, North America and Europe.

It is the dawning, he hopes, of nothing less than a global, multilanguage Catholic television network.

Its core is an existing Mexican television enterprise called Claravision, which for five years has broadcast Spanish-language Catholic programming to global audiences from a base near Mexico City. In recent weeks, Hannan has forged a deal with Claravision to supply it with a wide range of U.S. Catholic programming for global broadcast _ an arrangement that Hannan and his colleagues believe will drive Claravision to a higher level of prominence.

Hannan has emerged from the deal as the new president of Claravision, while its founder, Mexican television executive Emilio Burillo, becomes vice president.

Entirely private, not officially connected to the Catholic church, the network nonetheless would be distinctively Catholic.

In its grandest form, it would broadcast daily reports from the Vatican, Catholic-centered news shows on developments ranging from bioethics to the global political crisis of the day, family entertainment programming, safe children’s programming _ the whole vision an untapped cultural influence as powerful, Hannan believes, as the Catholic elementary school classroom.

Later, the network would package its programs accompanied by a menu of audio tracks for local television sets to seize: Ukrainians would hear it in their language, Nicaraguans in theirs, Italians in theirs. Claravision would gather Catholic programming from around the world, translate it and broadcast it around the world.

The scale of Hannan’s ambition is so big that one piece of it _ just a piece _ has required developing a retirement community of 174 homes in the northern New Orleans suburb St. Tammany Parish. Its role is to raise income for the network, provide a base for a new television-production studio and a source of ready manpower in dozens of eager volunteer retirees to staff it.

That, too, is about to rise over the horizon. The grand opening of Terra Mariae _ Mary’s Land _ is at hand. Three model homes are up and a sales staff is training to sell sites to people interested in buying into Phase 1, which calls for building 56 homes starting at $149,900.

“I was shocked and honored that he approached us and asked us to help,” said Rodney Lacoste, whose New Orleans company, Lacoste Builders L.C., has joined Hannan to develop the community on a $1.5 million tract Hannan acquired from a community of Catholic nuns in 1996.

As Hannan’s partner in the subdivision, Lacoste’s company hopes to turn a profit, to be sure. But beyond that, Lacoste said, “We’re going to try to make him as much money as we can for his work.”

The day he stepped down as archbishop in February 1989, Hannan knew he would launch another career in television. The medium fascinated him, and he was convinced, he said, that the church had not properly harnessed its potential.

As archbishop in 1981 he had founded WLAE-TV, an archdiocesan television station that broadcast educational programming and some Catholic devotional and news content, conspicuously his weekly news program “Focus.”

As soon as he retired, he threw himself into “Focus,” for which he became a producer, reporter and on-air star, traveling around the world in the early ’90s, filing stories with fellow-anchor Mary Lou McCall from the Balkans, the Far East and the former Soviet Union.

He is healthy, he says, showing up at the office every day and many weekends. He prefers the stairs.

He feels built for work, and what’s driving him, friends say, is the desire to launch his television network.

Ground zero for the moment is a former AT&T office building in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie. Hannan’s Focus Syndicate Inc. bought it last month for $1.2 million.

Focus Syndicate is Hannan’s nonprofit television production company at the center of his plans.

Staffed by 10 or 11 full-time employees who seem dazzled and energized by what they’ve done so far, it’s Focus that’s developing Terra Mariae, Focus that produces Hannan’s news show and provides other programming for WLAE (which is no longer owned by the archdiocese) and Focus that will function as a production arm, gathering and supplying the English-language programming to be broadcast globally by Claravision.

When Hannan flies about the country raising money, he’s raising it for Focus. When asked, he is vague about how much he has raised or how much more is needed, stressing instead how cheaply _ how inventively _ the Focus staff scrounges about its work on a shoestring.

At present, the start-up date for Hannan’s new network is June 14.

On that day Claravision will begin accepting and retransmitting translated American programming coming from Hannan’s Focus group. In time he hopes programming contributions will grow substantially.

At first, Hannan’s contribution will be limited to a single day of programming _ his “Focus” news show, old Loretta Young shows given him for free by her family, and some devotional and children’s programming, said Char Vance, a former radio programmer and Focus employee. In time they hope programming contributions will grow substantially.

“You’d be surprised,” she said, (at) “the amount of Catholic programming there is out there that producers are anxious to give away, just to get it on the air.”

DEA END NOLAN