Agenzia Fides is the news agency

News agency

A news agency is an organization of journalists established to supply news reports to news organizations: newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasters. Such an agency may also be referred to as a wire service, newswire or news service.-History:The oldest news agency is Agence...

 of the Vatican

Holy See

The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...

. It is based in the Palazzo de Propaganda Fide in Vatican City

Vatican City

Vatican City , or Vatican City State, in Italian officially Stato della Città del Vaticano , which translates literally as State of the City of the Vatican, is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, Italy. It has an area of...

. It is part of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples

Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples

The Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples in Rome is the congregation of the Roman Curia responsible for missionary work and related activities...

. It was formed on June 5, 1927 as the first missionary news agency of the Roman Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

 and was approved by Pope Pius XI

Pope Pius XI

Pope Pius XI , born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, was Pope from 6 February 1922, and sovereign of Vatican City from its creation as an independent state on 11 February 1929 until his death on 10 February 1939...

. Current director is prof. Luca de Mata.

Agenzia Fides started to issue editions in English, French and Polish (latter for a short period) followed by those in Italian (1929), Spanish (1930), German (1932), Chinese (1998), Portuguese (2002) and Arabic (2008). Since 1998 Fides Service went online with up to five reports daily from non-European events. Its homepage consists of information about statistics and missionaries killed as martyrs

Christian martyrs

A Christian martyr is one who is killed for following Christianity, through stoning, crucifixion, burning at the stake or other forms of torture and capital punishment. The word "martyr" comes from the Greek word μάρτυς, mártys, which means "witness."...

.

The image archive of the agency includes about 10,000 photographs documenting the history of Catholic missions from the years 1930 to 1990.