BALTIMORE (CNS) — A series of advertisements for the U.S. bishops’ campaign to strengthen marriage have been successful in the numbers of people they have reached and the awards they have garnered from professional advertising organizations, Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Ind., said Nov. 14.

The bishop, who is chairman of the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, made the comments on the opening day of the bishops’ fall general assembly in Baltimore.

In a presentation on the work of the Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, Bishop Rhoades said the public service announcements with messages about marriage had been measured as having 1.3 billion “audience impressions” since they began several years ago. He said the campaign “which won a national public relations award in 2009, has been the most successful of its kind ever sponsored by the USCCB.”

A series of public service announcements with the theme of “a good marriage goes a long way,” was released in September to 1,600 television stations and 7,000 radio stations, he said. Bishop Rhoades reported that a series of ads for the “For Your Marriage” campaign that began in July 2007 had nearly a quarter of a million broadcasts.