Lord,
You asked that
the little children
be allowed to come to you;
for it is such as these that
the Reign of God belongs.
You entrust them
to the care and protection
of our communities of faith.
Guide us
as we strive to ensure
that our Catholic communities
provide a safe environment
for each child.
We pray especially for all those
who have been harmed
in their childhood.
Give them courage
in facing the past
and lead them
to your healing protection.
Amen Continue reading
Alex, Archbishop Hart, Santilla Chingaipe, Minister Chris Bowen and Fr Maurizio Pettena at the colloquium
IN a fitting tribute to Bishop Joseph Grech, the second annual memorial colloquium on migration was held last night at Australian Catholic University in Fitzroy.
The event which is a partnership between ACU and the Australian Catholic Migrant and Refugee Office is held to honour the memory of Bishop Joseph Grech who passed away in December 2010.
A staunch defender of the rights of migrants and refugees, Bishop Joe always emphasised the importance of dialogue between all people of good will on such issues as the right to seek asylum. Continue reading
BISHOP JOE GRECH MEMORIAL LECTURE
GIVEN BY ARCHBISHOP DENIS HART
FOR THE SECOND ANNUAL BISHOP JOSEPH GRECH COLLOQUIUM ON ETHICS AND MIGRATION
AT AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY
ON THURSDAY, 30TH AUGUST 2012 AT 7.00 P.M.
Archbishop Denis Hart
INTRODUCTION
Minister Chris Bowen, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
Bishop Joe Grech was passionate about helping refugees and asylum seekers, so I am very pleased we are remembering him in this Colloquium.
Migration and the Church
In acknowledging the Traditional Owners of this area, I invite you all to reflect on how the great majority of us have relatively recent family histories in Australia, how migration has been central to the development of the Catholic Church and how migration has transformed Australia into a vibrant, prosperous, western democracy in just over two hundred years.
I remember that migration has not always helped Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We have a lot more work to do with our Indigenous brothers and sisters to create a truly just Australia.
The 2011 census shows almost a quarter of Catholics were born overseas. Migrants to Australia have brought the Church new symbols, practices and devotions which express the richness and diversity of the Universal Church. We are grateful for example for the people from the Eastern Catholic Churches – the Maronite Diocese and the Melkite, Chaldean and Ukrainian Eparchies. Their traditions help to enrich the whole Church in Australia.
A recent analysis of the 2011 census data in The Australian newspaper highlights the role of migrant communities in Australia’s most Catholic city suburb, Horsley Park in Sydney’s west. Almost three quarters of the population there are Catholic, partly explained by the fact that more than 40 per cent of the residents have Maltese or Italian heritage. Continue reading
Minister Bowen addresses the colloquium
Acknowledgements
Thank you, and thank you to Father Pettena for the opportunity to contribute to this important colloquium on ethics and migration.
Father Pettena combines passion with action. Last year, Father Pettena came to see me to lobby for faster action in moving children into the community, out of detention. I pointed out to the Father that one of the very real challenges is finding appropriate housing for children and families, and that with more accommodation we could move quickly.
The next day, Father Pettena called back saying that he had found a former monastery in Canberra that could sleep plenty of unaccompanied minors and made it available to us, an offer we accepted with alacrity. He’s my kind of action-oriented advocate.
Your Grace Archbishop Denis Hart, Father Pettena, Associate Vice-Chancellor Mr Chris Sheargold, ladies and gentlemen.
I would like to begin by acknowledging the Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation, the traditional owners on whose land we meet today, pay my respects to their elders – past and present – and thank them for their stewardship of our land over the millennia.
Assisi Program
Catholic Earthcare will offer the Assisi Program in 2012 and there is more information on their website.
“…someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, humanity will have discovered fire.”
(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)
Are you wondering …
I would like to invite you to participate in the ASSISI Animator for Sustainability Program and, secondly, to pass this invitation to others in your network for whom this might be applicable. Continue reading
By Daniel Hopper Oo’s family after the Citizenship ceremony with Sr Elaine Troy OLSH and Ted Booth SCARF
By Daniel Hopper
Meet our newest Australian family – Oo Reh (husband), Phray Meh (wife), Soe (16), Christina (14), Joseph (10) and Leh Leh (7) – who only this week celebrated receiving their Australian citizenship. Prior to coming to Australia they had spent ten years in a refugee camp. They, along with 600 other migrants, refugees and members of all our cultural communities will be attending the annual “Many Cultures, One in Christ” Mass and Cultural Celebration at St Francis Xavier’s Cathedral in Wollongong at 2pm on Sunday 26 August.
Oo grew up in a remote lowland village in Karenni State (a former independent state in Burma) and worked as a policeman. In his early twenties he met Phray who lived with her family in a small mountain village with 40 other families. After they married, Oo moved into Phray’s village, where they lived a subsistence lifestyle, without electricity, in a region regarded as one of the least accessible and poorest areas in the Union of Burma. Continue reading
Martha Fernandez-Sardina
By Beth Doherty
“You are what you eat”, said evangelist Martha Fernandez-Sardina as she addressed the 400-strong crowd at PROCLAIM 2012: the first national conference on the “New Evangelisation” held from 9-11 August at The Concourse in Chatswood.
The American keynote speaker wasn’t giving diet tips or fitness advice; rather, she was exhorting the crowd gathered to understand the power in frequent reception of the Eucharist.
“If you receive Christ frequently, you slowly become transformed. It changes you. You become the bread come down from heaven. You become Holy as the Lord your God is Holy”, she said. Continue reading
Bishop Greg O'Kelly SJ, Bishop of Port Pirie
Statement from Bishop Greg O’Kelly SJ on same sex marriage, in response to comments from the Premier of South Australia, Jay Weatherill.
“What the Premier has described as marriage equality is not the equal to marriage as all cultures and faiths have understood it throughout the centuries.
Marriage demands a man and a woman in a vowed permanent union that is open to life.
If people are to be entitled, as the premier says, to express their identity in any way they wish, and that is all that constitutes marriage, then the gates are open to all sorts of arrangements like polygamy and polyandry, and the weakening of the family as the basis of society.”
-Bishop Greg O’Kelly SJ, Bishop of Port Pirie Diocese.
Holy Family, entry into Egypt
By Fr Maurizio Pettena CS
August 1, 1952 marks the 60th anniversary of the Apostolic Constitution Exul Familia Nazarethana on the Pastoral Care of People on the Move by Pope Pius XII.
May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. (Rom 15:1-7)
Chapter 15 of the Epistle to the Romans gives Christians the unnegotiable reason and the modalities of why and how to welcome others. The welcome must be Christian, in the sense that it must reflect the same welcoming one has received from Christ; (“Welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed you”); thus: Christ is the reason, Christ is the model and Christ sets the modalities such “ as Christ has welcomed you”. All of this is to be done “for the glory of God”. God is made manifest and given glory through the duty of welcoming which becomes, therefore, at the core of the Church’s ministry of evangelisation. Continue reading