Publisher prepares to print pope papers

HUNTINGTON, Ind. (WANE) - As thousands of people waited around the world for a new pope to be chosen, staff at Our Sunday Visitor (OSV) in Huntington were busy preparing.

"We are doing research now and everything we can to look at candidates and who has been talked about so when the new pope is named we [can react quickly]," John Christensen, the director of marketing and advertising for Our Sunday Visitor, said.

Around 100 people work in the publishing department of OSV and half of them were already devoted to preparing materials about the new pope.

"We pride ourselves in creating content very quickly and then we use resources around the country to distribute as effectively as possible," Christensen said.

While the writers and editors were working, they were also anxiously waiting for word about the new pope.

"We'd be prairie dogging and popping up [from our cubicles to look at the television] and on our computers we can see streaming video," George Foster, an OSV editor, said. "Then someone called out that there's white smoke and a new pope was elected. It was very exciting." 

As word that white smoke indicating a pope had been chosen spread across the newsroom, the excitement in the room grew. People clapped and cheered and the crowd around the television grew.

"We usually go to press on Tuesdays and we held this issue specifically in case this happened this afternoon. We will change our cover and put in a story on the new pope," Gretchen Crowe, the editor for OSV Newsweekly, a weekly newspaper, said.

OSV will print up and distribute around 150,000 bulletin inserts and prayer cards for Pope Francis. Parishioners across the country should have those by next Sunday. OSV is also working on a book about Pope Francis and the process of choosing a pope. That initial publication will be 20,000 copies.

Christensen said OSV's book about Pope Benedict XVI was printed so quickly after he was chosen that people didn't believe it was actually a new book.

Click here for more on choosing the new pope.

OSV's publisher and president and its associate publisher are both in Rome. Follow the link to see their updates on Twitter.