June John­ston is not miss­ing the week­ly Wednes­day dead­line to put the Catholic News to bed. But since her last work­ing day on May 24, she still gets up late on a Thurs­day. Her body clock is still at­tuned to the rou­tine of the ed­i­tor fac­ing the mi­graine-trig­ger­ing bat­tle of copy ver­sus ad­ver­tis­ing, de­vel­op­ing sto­ry ideas and at the same time bal­anc­ing the mes­sage of the Word and lessons of the world in a 24-page pub­li­ca­tion.

It's been 22 years that John­ston has been at the faith-based news­pa­per that has served as the voice of the Ro­man Catholic com­mu­ni­ty in T&T since Feb­ru­ary 1982. She nev­er con­sid­ered her­self a jour­nal­ist–ex­cept when Cuban of­fi­cials deemed her so when she went to cov­er Pope John Paul II's vis­it there in 1998.

"I am just a Cat­e­chist who ran a news­pa­per," John­ston said. "I nev­er did an in­ter­view, have nev­er been a re­porter but I un­der­stand what a re­porter must do."

She even taught her­self how to type on a bor­rowed IBM word proces­sor be­fore she got her first Ap­ple com­put­er at the of­fice.

John­ston's strength has been her un­der­stand­ing of the faith, hav­ing writ­ten books on the church's Sacra­ments for school and parish, taught as a re­li­gious ed­u­ca­tion teacher and worked at Ser­vol in the ca­pac­i­ty of Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and Pas­toral Coun­selling.

John­ston's back­ground is the­ol­o­gy, found­ed on her moth­er's be­lief that faith was im­por­tant and in­spired by the Sis­ters of Cluny at her al­ma mater St Joseph's Con­vent, Port-of-Spain. Dur­ing her teen years, she was at a point where she could ei­ther own her faith or dump it, so she start­ed ask­ing ques­tions, got in­volved in A Move­ment for Bet­ter World which served as a cat­a­lyst for her un­der­stand­ing.

"Some thought I would have been a nun. I was sure about the faith but not a nun. Maybe I would have been a priest," she said, laugh­ing.

She did spend a lot of time at Mt St Bene­dict, where young men are trained to be priests. Like them she was fol­low­ing a spir­i­tu­al path, and was in­vit­ed by the late Fr Hen­ry Charles, who was then a sem­i­nar­i­an, to par­tic­i­pate in cours­es in com­mu­ni­ca­tion. She al­so met her hus­band and the­olo­gian, Ever­ard, there. This was af­ter she re­turned from France af­ter study­ing for one year. Be­fore that, she taught at Prov­i­dence Girls' for two years af­ter leav­ing sec­ondary school.

In 1975, she ac­com­pa­nied her hus­band to Bel­gium as he pur­sued his PhD in The­ol­o­gy at the Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty of Leu­ven. John­ston earned her BA in Re­li­gious Stud­ies and had her first child. She at­tempt­ed her mas­ter's when Ever­ard was at sab­bat­i­cal in Chica­go but with ba­by num­ber two on the way, she didn't fin­ish. Yet the ex­po­sure in her stud­ies and the un­der­stand­ing of every­day liv­ing served as a deep con­nec­tion be­tween her faith and the peo­ple.

So call her pres­ence at Catholic News her vo­ca­tion?

"There is the Bene­dic­tine mot­to: To work is to live. I was just do­ing the will of God. You just have to be open," she ex­plained.

Fr Michel De Ver­teuil was the voice that called her in 1991, ask­ing her to be his as­sis­tant ed­i­tor when he was the ed­i­tor. His plate was al­ready por­tioned with the run­ning of the Pas­toral Cen­tre, which meant he was of­ten away from the ed­i­tor's desk and out of the coun­try two to three times for the year, leav­ing John­ston in charge of the pub­li­ca­tion.

She worked un­der Arch­bish­ops An­tho­ny Pan­tin, who had to­tal trust in every­thing that was done at the news­pa­per; Ed­ward Gilbert, whose fo­cus was on ed­u­ca­tion and the syn­od and Joseph Har­ris, who un­der­stands the lo­cal cli­mate and will speak when needs be.

With a Ro­man Catholic pop­u­la­tion of 300,000 in T&T, the cir­cu­la­tion of the Catholic News is 18,000 - loose­ly trans­lat­ed one per house­hold. But in the wider land­scape it is now but one medi­um through which the Church con­nects with its fol­low­ers. Tele­vi­sion, ra­dio, the news­pa­per and new me­dia, which in­clude a web page and links to Face­book - form Cam­sel, the com­mu­ni­ca­tions body for the arch­dio­cese and led by Mon­sign­or Cuth­bert Alexan­der.

"Times have changed. In 1991, it was the Catholic News. Now there is a mul­ti­me­dia di­men­sion to out­reach this gen­er­a­tion," John­ston not­ed.

Al­though the mis­sion to spread the Word is not com­plete, John­ston be­lieves her work at Catholic News is fin­ished.

"The spir­it may be there but it's time for me to move off, so oth­er things can hap­pen," said the moth­er of Je­re­my, Ce­cile, Matthew, Daniel and Nico­la.

For now, she has no plans ex­cept a va­ca­tion trip to Bel­gium and to spoil her nine-month-old grand­daugh­ter. Al­so on her to do list: read more, go to the movies, take up swim­ming or danc­ing. She has been warned about get­ting bored but that word, she said, is not in her vo­cab­u­lary.

Kath­leen Ma­haraj: Ea­ger to spread the Word

?

When Kath­leen Ma­haraj was asked to do copy edit­ing for the Catholic News in 2005, it was not an im­me­di­ate yes. Her de­ci­sion was found­ed on "gen­tle and per­sis­tent over­tures" by John­ston.

Now Ma­haraj is in the ed­i­tor's chair at the Catholic News. She comes from a news back­ground, hav­ing worked as a jour­nal­ist for 16 years at the Trinidad Ex­press. She joined the Catholic News as a free­lancer and be­came a mem­ber of staff in 2012.

John­ston says she is hap­py that Ma­haraj is now at the helm, hav­ing worked with her in an­oth­er ca­pac­i­ty.

"We were on the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (Matt) ex­ec­u­tive to­geth­er. That was with Dale Enoch from Pow­er 102, the late Vaughn Sa­landy from TV6 and Tony Git­tens from TTT," John­ston re­called.

At first, Ma­haraj thought by work­ing with the Catholic News she was con­tribut­ing to her faith.

"Turns out that as I helped im­prove copy, He was im­prov­ing me!" she said.

Ma­haraj said she is keen­ly aware of the sa­cred re­spon­si­bil­i­ty which ac­com­pa­nies this "awe­some gift."

"I am ex­cit­ed about this new op­por­tu­ni­ty to help build the King­dom of God in T&T. I am grate­ful for the sup­port be­ing pro­vid­ed and for all the good wish­es re­ceived," she said.

And at the same time, Ma­haraj un­der­stands the need to com­pli­ment the sec­u­lar and the faith while pro­duc­ing the pa­per.

"The con­tent of the Catholic News is guid­ed by the fact that it is the news­pa­per of the Arch­dio­cese of Port of Spain and it is with­in that con­text that the 'ide­al blend' will be found. Among oth­er things, the Catholic News is a voice of the Church in Trinidad and To­ba­go and so mat­ters im­pact­ing the com­mon good must nat­u­ral­ly have a place in the pa­per. Sport, the arts and cul­ture have long been in­clud­ed in our con­tent," she said.