Accra, Oct. 19, GNA - The Most Reverend George Kocherry, Apostolic Nuncio in Ghana, on Friday urged the Ghana Catholic Bishops' Conference, majority shareholders of The Standard Newspaper and Magazine Limited (SNAM) to reconsider re-naming the newspaper as The Catholic Standard to reflect its ownership.

He said if it was true that The Standard Newspaper was to serve as the voice of the Church and to promote its faith then it had to be renamed without fear of victimization.

"We don't have to be ashamed of being Catholics - after all we are Catholics and are proud to be one. Why can't we put our name on the newspaper to reflect it as such," Most Rev. Kocherry told shareholders at their maiden Annual General Meeting in Accra.

The Standard Newspaper, the only National Catholic Weekly, began in 1938 and was officially registered as a national weekly in 1940, printed by the Catholic Mission Press in Cape Coast.

Most Rev. Kocherry said the argument that when the newspaper was named after the church people would see the content as the stand and view of the church did not hold water as there were clear guidelines as to what to be published and not.

He therefore urged the Bishops' Conference to put the request on their agenda when they meet in two weeks at Kumasi for their annual conference. The Most Rev. Lucas Abadamloora, President of the Ghana Catholic Bishops' Conference, said during the 69 years, many things had taken place to promote the church, enlighten the public and make them committed to the principles and the faith of the church. He was grateful to the Apostolic Nuncio for his personal interest for the past seven years to make the newspaper a true Catholic paper. He said the AGM marked the beginning of shareholding of the Standard and the way forward to make the company produce more to achieve its target goals.

Mr Jacob B. Yirerong, Board Chairman, said the mission of The Standard was to be the voice of the voiceless, reflecting the truth and at the same time committing itself to the socio-economic development and civic education of the people, while fostering unity among them and promoting evangelisation.

He said the major challenge facing the newspaper was the difficulty in getting honest, dedicated and committed people to manage its Marketing and Printing Departments, thereby making it difficulty to retrieve sales proceeds.

"At the moment, we have over 300 million cedis in the field uncollected. To the company, this is a colossal amount of money because that money could have been ploughed back as investment to help strengthen the company and make it more profitable," he said. Mr Yirerong said even though SNAM had managed to meet all expenses from its own resources, it was certainly not the best for any company and urged all its debtors to honour their obligations to improve upon the financial position of the company.

He said plans were underway to increase the number of pages of The Standard, go colour and get more advertisements for the paper; branch into magazine production to make more money for the company. The company declared a net profit of 48.227 million cedis in 2006 as against 109.317 million cedis in 2005.