Photo: The Maronite Eparchy of Australia, New Zealand and Oceania/Snapix

More than 30 bishops concelebrated Mass at Our Lady of Lebanon Co-Cathedral on Sunday, taking part in ongoing celebrations for the 50th jubilee of the Maronite Eparchy in Australia.

Bishop Antoine-Charbel Tarabay was the principal celebrant for the Divine Liturgy, which was celebrated according to the Maronite Rite. He said the Maronite community was “privileged” to welcome the bishops, who are in Sydney for the biannual plenary meeting, during the jubilee year.

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A joint statement from Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB, President, Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and Father Peter Jones OSA, President, Catholic Religious Australia

In light of the recent announcement from Catholic Church Insurance (CCI), the Catholic Church in Australia wishes to assure both the Catholic and wider community that it remains fully committed to continuing to engage with survivors of abuse to meet all our legal obligations. We will do this according to the principles of justice and compassion.

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Australia’s premier gathering for young Catholics, the Australian Catholic Youth Festival, will now conclude the Church’s celebration of the international Jubilee Year in December 2025.

At the November 2022 plenary meeting of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, the Archdiocese of Melbourne was selected as the host city for the next Festival.

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In a message for the feast of St Joseph the Worker, Bishop Vincent Long OFM Conv has called for the Church’s workplaces to be “characterised by respect and freedom, by mutual esteem and kindness”.

Each year, the Bishops Commission for Social Justice, Mission and Service releases a message for the feast day, which falls on May 1.

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Fr Stephen Hackett MSC has been elected provincial superior of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in Australia, and will conclude him time as general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference in July.

Fr Hackett’s ministerial background included appointments within secondary and tertiary education, as a parish priest in several Australian dioceses and as vicar general in the Diocese of Darwin.

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A new National Centre for Pastoral Research report published today provides a comprehensive snapshot of the millions of people who identified as Catholic in the 2021 Australia Census.

The Social Profile of the Catholic Community in Australia is the latest in a series of reports published following each national Census, providing extensive demographic information on Australian Catholics.

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Financial pressures on low- and middle-income families have made responding to the cost of living one of the country’s most important and urgent policy issues, Australia’s bishops told the Senate Select Committee on the Cost of Living.

“Every day, thousands of Australian families feel the effects of international crises, insecure job markets, inflation, rising interest rates and slow wage growth,” Bishop Vincent Long OFM Conv, chair of the Bishops Commission for Social Justice, Mission and Service, said in a recent submission to the Committee.

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The bishops of Oceania say their people’s reflections for the global Synod of Bishops for a Synodal Church left them feeling “peace and joy”, but also called them to be prophetic and ready to “model ourselves on the love we proclaim”.

The bishops, in Fiji for the quadrennial assembly of the Federation of Catholic Bishops Conferences of Oceania in February, spent part of that gathering considering the region’s response to the Synod’s Working Document for the Continental Stage, titled Enlarge the Space of Your Tent.

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The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference has told the Fair Work Commission a 7.2 per cent increase in the minimum wage is needed to protect workers at risk of poverty – and analysis shows it is affordable.

The Bishops Conference has made submissions on the national minimum wage for decades, arguing consistently that working people and their families living in poverty is inconsistent with principles that see the minimum wage as a “safety net”.

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The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference has told parliamentarians that they should place the needs of vulnerable people at the centre of the country’s culture and politics.

The call was made in a submission to the Senate Community Affairs Committee’s inquiry on poverty, which the committee recently published.

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Jillian Segal, Bishop Michael McKenna and Teresa Pirola at the launch of Walking Together

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference today launched a new document to highlight Christianity’s unique relationship with Judaism and the celebrate the positive relationship the two faiths enjoy in Australia.

Walking Together: Catholics and Jews in the Australian Context comes 30 years after the Bishops Conference published a set of guidelines and recommendations to enhance Catholic-Jewish relations.

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Fr Kimi Vunivesilevu (left) and Fr Stephen Hackett led the spirituality day

Staff from its General Secretariat have extended the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference’s commitment to its Laudato Si’ Action Plan with a spirituality day focused on “An Integral Ecology of the Heart”.

Fr Kimi Vunivesilevu MSC and fellow Missionary of the Sacred Heart priest Fr Stephen Hackett, the general secretary of the Bishops Conference, guided staff through a four-part program.

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