ICN birthday celebration

Asta Paulauskaite

The virtuoso Lithuanian violinist and composer, Asta Paulauskaite, played at a small party in Dolphin Square, Westminster, on Friday evening, to celebrate the tenth birthday of Independent Catholic News.

Among the guests was Fr Terry Tastard, who writes a regular Sunday reflection for the site, Cindy Kent from Premier Radio, representatives from a number of organisations and religious orders including CAFOD, Catholic Children's Society, Jesuit Communications, the Columbans, the Carmelites, the Romero Trust, BBC and Vatican Radio, as well as some of ICN's London-based writers and web editors.

ICN was the first Catholic news service to be launched in the UK. When we started up we only produced two updates a week. Now news is posted up every day - with links to Facebook and Twitter.

ICN is run on an entirely voluntary basis. Our main expenses are web hosting fees, software, hardware and technical support, which have so far been covered by small grants, donations and e-mail subscriptions. We have also started carrying some adverts.

In September, ahead of Pope Benedict's visit, ICN is planning to host a lecture by television presenter Mark Dowd, at Heythrop College, London University.