to hold joint meetings and assemblies and incorporated work on the small and grassroots media that were then being developed. After the Unda-OCIC Congress in Manilla in 1980, the first joint meeting of the boards of Unda and OCIC was held in Washington in 1982 to study mutual relations. A commission, led by the American Fr. John Geaney, CSP, suggested that the two organizations should merge. But at the World Congress in Quito of 1987, the proposal was not accepted: they said yes to intense collaboration, but no to a merger. This decision was a paradox, because a few days earlier, the Latin American branches of the three Catholic organizations for the press, cinema, and radio and TV (UCLAP, OCIC-AL, Unda-AL) had created a joint secretariat to cover all the media, but the rest of the world did not follow them. The 1980s saw the proliferation of video use, soon followed by rapid developments in information technology and the growth of digital media and the Internet. Between UCIP, Unda, and OCIC, there were always contacts. As the offices of OCIC and (since the 1970s for) Unda were also in Belgium, these contacts were easy and friendly. All three organizations were represented on the board of the Catholic Media Council in Aachen, Germany from 1977 to 1991. The bonds became closer later. In the 1970s and 1980, UCIP's president was the Belgian Louis Meerts (1937–2007). He was succeeded by Austrian Hanns Sassman and German Günther Mees. At the UCIP World Congress in Pattaya, Thailand, in 1996, Mees appealed for closer ties with OCIC and Unda. He said UCIP, OCIC, and Unda members could train Catholic journalists and work together in a way that reflected sincere faith and make "Catholic" mean "quality". Since many members of Unda and OCIC worked in several media, and since media ministry was cross-media, the impetus for a combined Catholic Association for audio-visual media grew ever stronger, eventually leading to the merger of Unda and OCIC as SIGNIS on 21 November 2001 in Rome. Following the demise of UCIP in 2011, SIGNIS opened up membership to Catholic journalists, and at the SIGNIS World Congress of 2017 in Quebec, several Catholic press associations, former members of UCIP, were welcomed into SIGNIS, among them the CPA (Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada). Catholics and media education SIGNIS recognizes the power of the media and their influence