By OSV News - OSVNews

By Maria Pia Chin (OSV News) 

ATLANTA  | Ana Rodriguez-Soto, who recently retired as editor of the Florida Catholic, Miami edition, is the recipient of the 2024 St. Francis de Sales Award from the Catholic Media Association.

The award is named after the patron saint of writers and journalists. It recognizes “outstanding contributions to Catholic journalism” and is the highest honor given by the CMA to someone who “has performed with excellence and contributed to raising the professional standards of Catholic journalism.”

The announcement was made June 21 during the annual Catholic Media Conference held this year in Atlanta June 18-21. Rodriguez-Soto was one of three finalists for this year’s St. Francis de Sales Award.

The other two finalists were Tom Dermody, who had been with The Catholic Post in Peoria for 43 years, 32 of those as editor of the newspaper until he retired in 2022; and Joseph Sinasac, retired publishing director for Novalis, the largest bilingual religious publisher in Canada, who has spent five decades in Catholic communications and is the former publisher and editor of The Catholic Register in Toronto.

In accepting the award, Rodriguez-Soto highlighted the unity and collaboration of all Catholic Media Association members and said that the award was also for her colleagues in Miami and Florida, many of whom had come to this year’s conference.

The Florida Catholic serves the Archdiocese of Miami and the Florida dioceses of Orlando, St. Augustine, St. Petersburg, Palm Beach, Venice and Pensacola-Tallahassee.

After joking that the statue of St. Francis DeSales award she received — often nicknamed “the Franny” — was heavy, Rodriguez-Soto said she felt “incredibly honored and thrilled to have received this award.”

“I don’t really feel I deserve it,” she said, adding that she wished to have gotten involved with the CMA sooner but that being part of the board was a wonderful experience. “I really believe in this association. I believe in our union. I believe in our professionalism. I believe in our idealism, and I believe in how much we help each other.”

Throughout her 40 years as a Catholic journalist, Rodriguez-Soto has received many Catholic press awards for excellence, and served the CMA as a board member, while bringing Catholic news to the Archdiocese of Miami through her coverage. She had been described by her colleagues as “humble and joyful” as well as an inspiration.

She also called the CMA conferences fantastic experiences that make people — oftentimes busy meeting deadlines with very little staff and sometimes little support — feel less like “lone rangers” because of the association’s collegiality and professionalism. “So whatever you do, stay with it,” she said. “We learn so much from each other.”

Rodriguez-Soto, who began her career in the summer of 1979, a year before her college graduation, serving as an intern at La Voz Católica, the Archdiocese of Miami’s Spanish-language newspaper, said that she had been blessed to be able to do something meaningful as a member of the Catholic press.

“I’m just so grateful that I was able to have a job that wasn’t a job, that was really kind of the love of my life — family aside,” she said. “It meant something. It’s not just a job. It was more than that.”

Maria-Pia Negro Chin is Spanish editor for OSV News.