The Record Newspaper 08 December 2010

The Record’s Anthony Barich joined pilgrims from St Mary MacKillop Parish in Ballajura to immerse themselves in Scripture on a trip to the Holy Land.

Culture of life pioneer’s sanctity examined

Meet the Australian nun who cared for India’s poor 30 years before Mother Teresa

BY ANTHONY BARICH

THE preliminary phase of the cause for canonisation of another Australian has been opened – that of Catholic Women’s League cofounder Mary Glowrey.

Dr Glowrey organised her fellow medical students against practices she describes as “contrary to natural law”: such practices included sterilisation of the poor and the “benign neglect” of disabled babies. She also wrote a booklet for Archbishop Thomas Carr (Melbourne) against infanticide.

Dr Anna Krohn, CWL Bioethics Convenor and Committee member for the Cause of Sr Dr Mary Glowrey, said in an exclusive column for The Record on Page 5 that Glowrey was also a “prophetic leader”.

“She realised, decades before, what Pope John Paul II would write in his Letter to Women and

his Encyclical Evangelium Vitae: that it would be the ‘genius’ of women which would lead in the building up of a culture of life,” said Dr Krohn, who is also Academic Skills Advisor at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family and a Tutor in Nursing Ethics and Spirituality at Australian Catholic University.

Dr Glowrey left her thriving Ear, Nose and Throat specialist career in Melbourne to be a medical missionary for the poor in India.

Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart announced on 2 December that the preliminary phase of her canonisation cause - a careful evaluation of her work and writings, together with her religious life - has started in Bangalore, India.

Dr Glowrey left Melbourne in 1920 aged 33 to join the Congregation of the Society of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, a Dutch Order of Religious Sisters, and

worked in India as a medical missionary until her death in 1957.

The Catholic Women’s League of Victoria and Wagga Wagga, which holds more than 80 per cent of Mary Glowrey’s personal writings, has been working closely with the Society of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in India for the past two years preparing for the commencement of her cause.

The Archbishop of Bangalore, Dr Bernard Moras, appointed Fr Paul Puthanangady on 11 November to assist and guide the Society of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in the preparation of all documents and records needed in the preliminary phase of her cause.

People are not canonised for their works, however, but for their holiness. Sr Glowrey was known never to attempt anything without praying to the Holy Spirit, knowing that with His help all things are possible. At her Requiem Mass,

the Bishop of Guntur described Sr Glowrey as a “special creation of God … a great soul who embraced the whole world.”

For the last two years of her life, she shouldered the Cross of excruciating physical pain which she bore with extraordinary courage and patience. Her last words were: “Jesus, Mary and Joseph” and “My Jesus, I love you”.

Born the third of nine children in 1887 in Birregurra, 135km west of Melbourne, she studied medicine at Melbourne University. In the fourth year of her course she joined St Vincent’s Hospital and graduated in 1910 with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery. She did her residency in New Zealand and returned to Melbourne in 1912 and held positions at the Eye and Ear Hospital and St Vincent’s Hospital.

By 1914 she had a successful practice at 82 Collins Street, where her religious vocation came in 1915

after attending Mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral. During a chance reading of a pamphlet about the appalling death rate amongst babies in India and the need there for medical missionaries, she fell to her knees and knew that God, whose will she had constantly sought to do since an early age, was calling her to a life of medical mission work in India. She would wait until after the end of World War I before being able to travel to India.

In 1916, she was elected the first General President of the newly formed Catholic Women’s Social Guild (now the Catholic Women’s League of Victoria and Wagga Wagga.) Mary Glowrey also studied for a higher medical degree in obstetrics and gynaecology and was conferred as a Doctor of Medicine in December 1919.

Continued on Pages 4-5

Anna Krohn on why we need Sr Glowrey’s spirit today, Pages 4-5

Sr Dr Mary Glowrey treats the poor in a small rural village outside Guntur in Andhra Pradesh, India c 1924, working as a Sister of the Society of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The former ear, nose and throat specalist left her successful Melbourne clinic to join the Religious Order after having started the Catholic Women’s League. As a student, she also fought for the culture of life on a global level.

PHOTO: FROM THE GLOWREY PAPERS WITH PERMISSION OF THE CATHOLIC WOMEN’S LEAGUE OF VICTORIA AND WAGGA WAGGA.

Knights help pipe organ

Knights keep on giving

Editor

THE Knights of the Southern Cross have made a further contribution to the restoration of the Cathedral’s pipe organ. Archbishop Barry Hickey is pictured at right with KSC State Chairman Peter Murray and new State executive officer Jim Ryan on site, along with Vicar General Mgr Brian O’Loughlin, as preparations were nearing completion for the celebration on 8 December of the first anniversary of the opening of the restored and completed Cathedral.

The Cathedral pipe organ consists of the Chancel

AT A GLANCE

Organ and the JE Dodd organ, now known as the Grand Organ, which was first installed in 1910 and modified in 1964.

The Grand Organ and the Chancel Organ are connected by Ethernet so that either or both can be played from the manual of either.

The Archbishop is holding a copy of the book Our Cathedral, a history of the Cathedral commissioned by the Archdiocesan Historical Commission and written by John Winship a Cathedral guide and parishioner.

Following its launch in the Cathedral Parish Centre at 6pm on 8 December, the book will be sold in the Cathedral piety stall and The Record Bookshop at $29.95.

St Paul’s Mt Lawley

Christmas Carols

Singers and musicians from WAAPA (Western Australian Academy of the Performing Arts) will lead carols and members from the local media, political, sport and Religious communities will read the Scriptures. Refreshments afterwards. Enq: 9271 5253.

When: 7pm on 12 December at St Paul’s Catholic Church, 106 Rookwood St, Mt Lawley.

Last Sunday Sesh

SAINT Columba’s Parish in Bayswater hosted the Archdiocesan Catholic Youth Ministry’s last Sunday Sesh for 2010 on 21 November, with youth gathering for a special Youth Mass and catechesis afterwards on Divine Mercy.

Mercy - a message received by St Faustina from Jesus Christ in the 1930s. The Divine Mercy calls all sinners to the fountain of Mercy of Jesus and to the water which gushed forth from His Heart to cleanse and purify our souls.

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Malaysian-Singaporean Catholic Community of Australia

Australia Day retreat

The MSCCA is hosting a unique retreat for families and friends with talks on the organisation’s life, ministries, vision, mission and purpose. Retreat masters are Frs Oswald Lewis, Hugh Thomas, Roy Pereira, Albert Saminedi SDB and Doug Harris. Bring a plate to share for lunch. Retreat includes Mass. RSVP Deacon Pierre Nahas 0417 947 320.

When: 9am-1pm, 26 January at St Mary’s Church, 40 Franklin St, Leederville.

True Love Waits WA

Mass for the Intentions of Purity and Chastity

To wrap up 2010, TLW WA will hold a Mass followed by a light supper and fellowship in the Emmanuel Centre. For those who wish to, the Mass will include an opportunity to join thousands around the globe in making a pledge of purity. Enq: Thomas Seeber on 0423 390 819 or email truelovewaitswa@yahoo.com.

When: 7.30pm 13 December at St Francis Xavier Mass Centre, Windsor St, Perth, opposite East Perth Train Station.

St Jerome’s Spearwood

Preparation for the birth of Jesus Christ

To prepare for the birth of Jesus, there is a Portuguese tradition of having Mass every morning for nine days, finishing on Christmas Eve. Masses will be said in English and choir will sing songs dedicated to the birth of Christ in Portuguese.

When: 5.30am from 16-24 December at St Jerome’s Parish, Spearwood.

St Joseph’s Convent, South Perth

Oblates of St Benedict Oblates are affiliated with the Benedictine Abbey of New Norcia. All welcome to study the rule of St Benedict and its relevance to the everyday life of today for lay people followed by Vespers and tea. Enq: Secretary 9457 5758. When: 2pm every third Sunday at St Joseph’s Convent, York St, South Perth.

St Joseph’s Parish Bassendean

The music team provided the music for Mass, adding reverent atmosphere with the violinist playing a rendition of Schubert’s Ave Maria. Home-made dinner and cake awaited youth from across the diocese as the youth gathered for a fun evening of fellowship, formation and prayer.

The theme of the night, Divine Mercy, was a reminder for the youth to Trust in God completely and to understand the concept of God’s Mercy as part of His love for us since the beginning of time. The discussion challenged the youth to put their trust in Jesus’ Divine

For the youth, the affirmation that they can put their lives in His Mercy also acted as a reminder of the hope that comes from trusting in the Lord’s mercy.

The night concluded with the Divine Mercy chant, which was sung in front of a copy of the Divine Mercy picture presented by Jesus to St Faustina in an apparition.

“We had memorable times this year meeting up with the youth and working together to put on the Sunday Seshs for this year, and we look forward to seeing your new friendly faces and new youth for our 2011 Seshs,” CYM staff said.

OFFICIAL ENGAGEMENTS 2010

DECEMBER

9 Graduation Mass, University of Notre Dame Australia – Archbishop Hickey

Opening of buildings, St Patrick’s School, Fremantle – Mgr Brian O’Loughlin VG

10 Mercedes College Staff Mass, St Mary’s Cathedral –Archbishop Hickey

Embrace the Grace Conference, New Norcia –Bishop Sproxton

11 Profession of Carmelite Sister, Nedlands –Archbishop Hickey

Shopfront Christmas Party, Maylands –Archbishop Hickey

12 Embrace the Grace Mass, New Norcia –Archbishop Hickey

14 Catholic Pastoral Centre Annual Thanksgiving Mass – Bishop Sproxton

St Lazarus Day Service, St Bartholomew’s –Bishop Sproxton

15 Heads of Churches Meeting, Rivervale –Bishop Sproxton

16 10th Anniversary Margaret Hubery House –Archbishop Hickey Reconciliation, Bateman – Bishop Sproxton

18 40th Anniversary of Priesthood of Fr Joseph Rathnaraj, Kalgoorlie - Archbishop Hickey

Catholic Questions and Answers

Half an hour of Catechesis instruction in a Q&A format. followed by Fr John Corapi DVD series to deepen your understanding of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. When: 7-9pm every Thursday at St Joseph’s Parish Centre, 20 Hamilton St, Bassendean.

19 Mass and Procession for Feast of St Lucy, Spearwood – Bishop Sproxton

20 Ordination to Diaconate, Ballajura –Archbishop Hickey

The saving graces of Catholicism

The Record journalist Bridget Spinks found a couple celebrating their diamond jubilee who not only pulled through the tough times but came out stronger through Marriage Encounter

Bibra Lake couple Con Stacey and Beryl Bowden celebrated their diamond wedding jubilee on 29 November thanks to a Marriage Encounter weekend they attended more than 30 years ago.

Marriage Encounter is a weekend away for couples who value their marriage and wish to rediscover the person with whom they fell in love.

When they found that after 20 odd years of marriage they had their own interests, were starting to drift and weren’t communicating, Con and Beryl went on a Marriage Encounter weekend away. It played a big part in their continuing to have a happy marriage, they said.

“People who are having problems would be well-advised to go there,” Beryl said.

During the weekend, with help from a trained team and a priest, couples learn and have the opportunity to practise the art of dialogue.

Fr Bernie Dwyer, a friend they first met in Wagin, encouraged them to go along. He was involved with the Marriage Encounter Movement for 16 years and was involved in bringing the movement to Australia.

During their 60-year marriage, Con and Beryl have been very active in the community.

Con lectured in chemistry at Perth Technical College, then later at the West Australian Institute of Technology (WAIT), which became Curtin University.

For over 50 years Con has been dedicated to rowing: first as a rower at Aquinas, then as a Kings Cup oarsman and later as a coach.

He coached rowing at Aquinas College and in 1969 became the founding president of the West Australian Institute Rowing Club, a role he held for 26 years during which time the club became the Curtin University Boat Club.

He coached various crews including two state women’s crews and three state youth eights and, when the Curtin University boat shed was built in the mid 1970s on the Canning River, it was named Stacey Boat House in his honour.

For Con, whose father died when he was five months old, the six years of education at Aquinas made a lasting impact on his life, as it was here that he began to appreciate Catholicism.

There was no one chaplain at Aquinas he could credit with his becoming a Catholic; it was rather the male atmosphere, that the Brothers accepted him and that there was no pressure on him to learn about the faith, he said. He was allowed to sit quietly and could go on with his own work during Religion classes or he was welcome to listen.

“I was quite impressed with what the Christian Brothers were doing,” he said.

“They were strict. One thing they taught me was that I’m responsible for my own actions. I was a bit of a slow learner and I got the strap quite frequently, but that was all part of the game as far as I was concerned and it was us against them. They won some, we won some.

“I have a great deal of time for

what they did. Then I met up with this young lady and became a Catholic. I thought why not? Bring the kids up that way and it didn’t take much to push me that way after I’d been at the school.”

In 1972-73, Con became head of the Old Aquinians Association, and in solidarity, Beryl supported her husband and became head of the Old Aquinians Ladies Auxiliary.

Con said that being a Catholic has helped him a lot.

When they were first married they attended the Our Lady Help of Christians Parish in East Victoria Park.

When they moved to Mount Pleasant, they joined St Benedict’s Applecross parish and Con joined the Legion of Mary, the Holy Name Society and served on the Parish Council.

After moving to Bull Creek, the couple joined Willetton parish for 26 years where Con became involved with the St Vincent de Paul Society and chaired the parish refugee settlement scheme.

Although Con and Beryl now live in Bateman, they still call Willetton parish home.

They agree that being Catholic helped in their marriage as well.

“The fact that I had made vows when I married; they were vows I intended to keep and I’ve tried to keep them,” Con said.

Beryl too had a strong desire to honour her wedding vows.

“As the marriage goes on, you think I committed myself to this; I have to make it work. And also you don’t want to see a big upheaval in the family, between your children and yourself, and you do something to try and make it work, and that’s why we were lucky with getting onto Marriage Encounter,” Beryl said.

Con and Beryl were engaged for two and a half years before they finally married, in which time they were able to get to know each other and finish their degrees.

Con still remembers the first day he caught sight of Beryl.

tered accountant who runs his own practice; and Joanne, who is the clinical coordinator for the school of physiotherapy at the University of Notre Dame.

In 1950 when she married, Beryl was required to resign from her government job in the Taxation Department.

high school called Our Lady of the Missions in East Fremantle.

Beryl became deputy principal there and later worked at CBC (Christian Brothers College) Fremantle as head of mathematics.

It was 1946, on an orientation day, he said. They were on opposite sides of Winthrop Hall up on the top balcony.

“I saw this girl from across the other side, and I said to my friend, ‘Now there’s a good looking girl.’”

They ended up taking the same course in chemistry until Beryl discovered that she wasn’t compatible with chemistry and changed to study mathematics.

Two years after they married on 29 November 1950 at St Mary’s Cathedral, they welcomed their first daughter, Sharon, who is now director of administration at Loreto College in Adelaide; then Michael, who is now a professor of surgery at Fremantle and Murdoch hospitals.

Then along came Chris, a char-

She eventually rejoined the workforce, initially on a very part time basis, when Joanne was three. Her entry into teaching began as a favour when she was asked to help teach maths for two hours a day at Our Lady of Fatima primary school, Palmyra which was run by the Our Lady of the Mission sisters until 1991.

“I was always at home when the children would get home from school or else I’d pick them up,” she said. “I didn’t go full time teaching until Sharon, my eldest, was doing her leaving and they were all at school.”

“The nuns that I worked with were very considerate for the fact that I had four children” she said, adding that if it arose that the children had to come before work, she was able to prioritise them which helped her a lot. “It started off as me doing a favour for them, but in the end they were doing a favour for me, having me there.”

Then, just as Sharon was reaching high school age, the Our Lady of the Missions Sisters opened a

Since retiring in 1987, Con and Beryl have travelled around Australia and overseas, lectured and studied at the University of the Third Age and worked for several years as volunteers in the Cathedral Archives.

“We’ve got to know each other more in retirement because where we were doing more things almost separately before, when we retired we started to do more things together,” Con said. The couple have 14 grandchildren, a greatgranddaughter and another greatgrandchild on the way.

Since the 1980s they have been researching their genealogy and more recently writing their individual life stories, in the hope that they may be of value to posterity and those who, like them, might want to know something of their ancestors.

Worldwide Marriage Encounter is for all couples who value their marriage. Why settle for a good marriage when you can have a great marriage?

For information about Worldwide Marriage Encounter in Australia, visit http://www.wwme. org.au. call 0424 220 625 or email WABookings@wwme.org.au.

Left, Con Stacey and Beryl Bowden on their wedding day. Above, Beryl, middle, with Con and her sister Betty from Wagin, where the pair met Fr Bernie Dwyer, who first encouraged them to attend a Marriage Encounter weekend which helped enrich their marriage. PHOTOS: CON AND BERYL/ BRIDGET SPINKS

Why we need Mary Glowrey’s spirit

Consecrated

Heavenly Father,

In the person of Dr Mary Glowrey, we encounter a woman deeply surrendered to Your will, and to the reality of Your love for her, and for every human person.

Blessed by You with a brilliant mind, yet

We

Special Pilgrimage in 2011 RWANDA AND KENYA

Enjoy a pilgrimage that will change your life forever.

Experience a spiritual renewal as we visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Kibeho, visit holy places and the ruins of the genocide. Learn about the Rwandan culture with Immaculée as your personal guide.

Come and join Immaculée Ilibagiza on a very special spiritual journey to Rwanda! You’ll be in Kibeho for the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, spending eight days in Rwanda including a visit to the Shrine of Our Lady of Kibeho. You will also have two nights in Nairobi, Kenya.

Inclusions will be three days in Kigali, five days in Kibeho and two nights in Nairobi.

You will visit and experience the Genocide memorials, the National Museum, The Orphanage, Shrine of Our Lady of Kibeho, School for the Blind and the Cana Centre with Fr Leszek. Immaculée will introduce you to traditional Rwanadan dancers and much more ... There will be a chaplain (TBA) for this special pilgrimage which will be led by Jane Pike from Australia. The Leader in Rwanda will be Immaculée Ilibagiza.

Anna Krohn

Red-Letter Advent: Awakening consciences to nascent mystery

“Every beginning brings a special grace, because it is blessed by the Lord,” so Pope Benedict XVI opens a new Church year and the liturgical season of Advent 2010 (Homily 27 November 2010). This Advent marks two very notable “beginnings” for Australia, the Church and the World.

In his few homilies and addresses thus far, Pope Benedict has brought us an exquisitely tuned synthesis of biblical, liturgical and spiritual themes which evoke the patient waiting and yet the fierce wakefulness of the expectant mother.

He points out the explicitly maternal nature of Christian spiritual pregnancy: “During the Season of Advent we shall feel the Church which takes us by the hand - and, in the image of Mary Most Holy, expresses her motherhood.”

Advent, for Pope Benedict, is not simply a time of cosy sentimentality or selfcongratulation, but a time of vigorous prophecy and expectation; of the purification and nurturing of conscience, of our being shaken awake to the reality of our beginnings and our final End.

The Biblical story of Jesus before His birth itself reminds us of the clash of two very different ways of seeing the world and people. This is vividly pictured by Bishop Anthony Fisher OP (in his homily this year paralleling the Pope’s): “There is more and worse. There is a plot to kill the baby, hatched by a power

crazed king. The family must flee as refugees … In Advent, creation is pregnant with hope of new life but there are those who would terminate that hope.”

This Advent, Benedict XVI is forging a fresh and distinctive path in the Church’s evangelisation of the “culture of life”a world-wide preaching and witness begun at the Second Vatican Council and brought into powerful prominence by Pope John Paul II.

While John Paul II used his large distinctive gestures to lay the broad philosophical foundations of this massive icon of the “culture of life”, Pope Benedict lays the delicate gold-leaf of liturgical and theological setting which is essential for this culture. It is precisely for this reason that he calls all people “of life” to gather in adoration and the recitation of the psalms rather than to a public rally.

For Pope Benedict, liturgy means engagement with, not withdrawal from, the philosophical and cultural struggle. In fact the liturgy is the fire which ignites the hearts of those who take the love of God outwards.

The Vigil “for nascent life” is directed four square to modern man and woman and especially at secular culture and institutions. “We are part of this world, tied to the possibilities and limitations of our material condition.”

Benedict declares this Advent as a time for prayerful vigil of the ‘nascent’ Saviour and at the same time the ecclesial and global vigilance for all unborn and frail human life.

There is no escaping the timeliness of this.

To believe in Jesus Christ means to see all human beings as intrinsically valuable.

This is not a private belief. Benedict calls for all Christians and people of good will to reach out and strike a chord in “the understanding and wanting” (the hearts AND minds) of all other people so that they can see this too.

For Australians particularly, there is an additional dimension of the “grace of beginning” which ties in the Pope’s

Sr Dr Glowrey’s

Continued from Page 1

In 1920, she left her thriving career as an ear, nose and throat specialist and, surrendering herself completely to God’s will, she sailed for India.

“She placed the remainder of her life at the service of the medical and spiritual needs of the people of India, as an expression of her own deeply held love for God and for humanity,” a Melbourne Archdiocese statement said.

“She had a deep love for the people of India and their culture. She studied and made extensive use of traditional Indian medicines.”

She began her work in a small dispensary in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, 1,600km south of India’s capital New Delhi. This dispensary grew into St Joseph’s Hospital.

Recognising the vital need to promote the Christian use of medicine, she founded the Catholic Hospital Association of India (CHAI) in 1943, with the aim of establishing a Catholic Medical College in India to train health professionals whose medical care would be grounded in an understanding of the absolute inviolability of human life and placed at the service of life.

Archbishop Hart told The Herald Sun last week: “Mary Glowrey was a gifted doctor, Religious and missionary.

“Her tireless work for humanity and her deep religious faith make her an ideal person whose cause for holiness should be investigated.”

However, contrary to The Herald

Sun’s 4 December report, Mary spent almost 37 years in Guntur, not Bangalore, as was reported.

Only the last few months of her life were in Bangalore.

She also did not go to Sydney after graduating from university, as the Melbourne-based newspaper reported - she went to New Zealand, the CWL confirmed to The Record

In 1967, 10 years after her death, St Johns Medical College was built in Bangalore.

Fr Dan Strickland, a former Albany resident and now priest of the Association of Christ’s Faithful called the Missionaries of God’s Love, also wrote the prayer, printed above left, for the cause of Sr Dr Mary Glowrey’s canonisation to be used on a holy card, which has been reprinted above.

The MGLs now have the care of St Benedict’s in Narrabundah where the Australian Chapter of the Society of Jesus, Mary and Joseph Sisters once lived.

Ten Sisters first arrived in Australia from the Dutch Order in 1960.

They taught at St Benedict’s when the Good Samaritan Sisters who were teaching there were entrusted with another school in the suburbs of Canberra.

The JMJ Sisters extended their mission to Blackburn South, then Mary’s Hill in Mooralbark.

A rapid change in the Catholic education system saw more lay Catholics teaching; many Dutch sisters went back to Holland and

Best

of Left to Tell, Led by Faith and

Lady of Kibeho.

today to fight the culture of death

global Advent mission. On the Feast of St Francis Xavier (3 December, once the patron saint of Australia and now the Missions), the Archdiocese of Melbourne announced the preliminary phase of the cause for canonisation of the extraordinary Sr Mary Glowrey.

The coincidence of the earliest “beginnings” of the Church’s formal recognition of her life, her mission and her sanctity and the Pope’s themes can only described as providential.

When Pope Benedict XVI declared last week during his homily: “Love for all, moreover, if it is sincere, tends spontaneously to

become preferential attention to the weakest and poorest.

“This explains the Church’s concern for the unborn, the frailest, the most threatened by the selfishness of adults and the clouding of consciences.” Here, he seems to have potted the life and vision of Sr Mary to precision.

In his luminous and comprehensive essay on Sr Mary’s life (published in Annals April-May this year), Fr Dan Strickland MGL writes that she was “a woman of profound faith and brilliant achievement …” who seems to have prefigured the “culture of Life” mission by over 80 years.

sanctity examined

they had to close down their convents due to a sudden drop in vocations and ageing Sisters.

Thus, the history of JMJ in Australia was closed by the end of 1982.

Copies of the prayer for her cause are available online at the Archdiocese of Melbourne website: www.cam.org.au/news/mary-glowrey-cause-for-canonisation-begins. html.

Not only was she a devoted and remarkably gifted Doctor of Medicine, one of the rare and first women of her time to become such, she was also a prophetic leader. She organised her fellow medical students against practices she

describes as “contrary to natural law”: such practices included sterilisation of the poor and the “benign neglect” of disabled babies. She also wrote a booklet for Archbishop Thomas Carr (Melbourne) against infanticide.

Fr Dan points out “her service for human life ... would find particular expression in her medical care of women and children.”

She realised, decades before, what Pope John Paul II would write in his Letter to Women and his Encyclical Evangelium Vitae: that it would be the “genius” of women which would lead in the building up of a culture of life.

Despite her spiritual humility and reticence, Mary Glowrey was elected the Founding President of the Catholic Women’s Social Guild in the midst of the social upheaval and carnage of World War I.

The Guild would later become the Catholic Women’s League of Victoria and Wagga Wagga and from it inception the Guild became a remarkable force in actively and concretely working for the social, intellectual and spiritual dignity of women and children.

Sr Mary Glowrey and her members worked to improve the working and living conditions of soldiers’ families, the industrial action of female workers and submitting research and publications which promoted the inherent dignity and well being of women and their families. Mary, along with Dr Eileen Fitzgerald (another Guild

member), founded an infant welfare clinic and a respite care home for the children of struggling families.

She believed that God had called her to take the Gospel via the service to life to the women and children of India. She became a consecrated apostle of “health and life,” a “Sister Doctor” as she was called by the people.

Her daily work and suffering as a Doctor was, in portrait form, delineated by Pope John Paul II’s call to “respect, protect, love and serve life, every human life!” (EV #5). This meant she practised the principles of palliative care long before it was named as such.

She denounced the patronising principles of the Marie Stopes clinics, she incorporated Indian traditional medicine with her own practice. More boldly still, from her tiny and poorly equipped dispensary in Guntur, India, where she cared for countless hundreds of thousands of patients, she founded the Catholic Hospital Association of India (CHAI) and she wrote papers in 1936 to the International Medical Congress in Vienna denouncing Euthanasia and Eugenics – against those forces of death which would swallow up and annihilate both the consciences of Europe and whole populations of Jewish people.

These early days of the investigation of her cause mark a very exciting “new advent” in the Church’s role in this millennium.

Alternatively, people can write to CWL to request a prayer card and enclose a self-addressed and stamped DL envelope: Committee for the Cause of Sr Dr Mary Glowrey Catholic Women’s League of Victoria and Wagga Wagga Mary Glowrey House

132-134 Nicholson St

Fitzroy VIC 3065 Australia

Mary Glowrey, front, tends to children in the dispensary that would become St Joseph’s Hospital in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh in India. PHOTOS: FROM THE GLOWREY PAPERS WITH PERMISSION OF THE CATHOLIC WOMEN’S LEAGUE OF VICTORIA AND WAGGA WAGGA.

Sr Dr Mary Glowrey with an Indian baby. On the back of the photo is written, in Mary’s own writing, “Flower for Christinamma.”

PHOTO: CWL

Gorgeous Assisi, where time

Places to visit

● Go to the Basilica of San Francesco to visit and pray at St Francis’s tomb in the crypt. In the upper part of the Basilica you can listen to an audio guide of the Giotto frescoes and tour the Church. The frescoes on the life of St Francis line the walls of the upper Basilica.

● Go to the Basilica of Santa Chiara. As you enter, you will also see the Cross of San Damiano from which Christ spoke to St Francis and called him to repair His church which was falling into ruin. Go downstairs and here, in the crypt you can visit the tomb of St Clare and possibly catch the scent of sweet perfume as you pray.

While downstairs, you will also see some relics of St Francis and St Clare - who founded the women’s Religious Order the Poor Clares.

● Go up Monte Subiaso, one of the Apennine mountains in the province of Perugia, to see where St Francis preached to the birds.

● Go to the Church of San Damiano to see where St Francis wrote the Canticle of the Creatures and to see St Clare’s convent and to see where the Cross of San Damiano originally was.

● Visit the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli (near the train station). Inside is the Portiuncula - the original, restored chapel, which St Francis used in the early days of the order in 1209.

Fast facts

● St Francis was born in 1181 in Assisi, died in 1226 and was canonised in 1228.

● St Clare was born in 1194, died in 1253 and was canonised in 1255.

● St Francis is a patron saint of Italy.

Catholic Social Justice Council Archdiocese of Perth

The Council seeks new members.

The council promotes Catholic social teaching in the Archdiocese and the wider community.

Current issues of council include:

1 WA prisons;

2 Aboriginal people and their inclusion in the Church and community;

3 Immigration and Refugees; and 4 working with Government, NGO’s, other churches and other faiths in justice work.

Council membership provides opportunities for Catholic people to support social justice work and to pursue ongoing personal formation.

If you are interested and have sufficient time, say two hours a week, please contact the Receptionist, Catholic Pastoral Centre, Highgate, on Ph: 9422 7900 or email reception@highgate-perthcatholic.org.au and obtain an application form.

Applications close on Friday 31 December 2010

Mr

Terry Quinn Executive Officer

The Record presents a three-part series of travel features by Bridget Spinks who travelled to Assisi, Florence and Siena courtesy of Harvest Pilgrimages

In the Umbrian region of northern Italy is Assisi: a pilgrimage site of prayer and peace that draws five million people a year.

There are numerous convents and monasteries in this holy, hilltop city, including the Convent of St Francis that houses 60 conventual Franciscan Friars from 18 countries.

Five months after the Chernobyl disaster and during the Cold War, Assisi was the place where Pope John Paul II gathered 160 religious leaders from various faiths for the first World Day of Prayer for Peace on 27 October 1986.

In an address to the representatives of the Christian Churches and ecclesial communities gathered on that day, the late Pope said he chose Assisi to mark the occasion because of the “holy man venerated here - Saint Francis - known and revered by so many throughout the world as a symbol of peace, reconciliation and brotherhood”.

On this day, the Pontiff made three addresses: one at the Church of St Mary and the Angels ( Santa Maria degli Angeli), another at the Cathedral of St Rufinus (San Rufino) and a third at the Basilica of St Francis (San Francesco).

These churches are all within easy walking distance along the narrow paths that weave through the town.

The Basilica of St Francis, like a bookend, marks one end of town, while the Basilica of St Clare (Santa Chiara) marks the other, anchoring the town to its spiritual heritage. Pilgrims can venerate the remains of both these saints in the crypt in their respective Basilica.

In the Basilica of St Mary and the Angels, Pope John Paul II stated that the day of the Prayer for Peace was a day “for prayer, for what goes together with prayer: silence, pilgrimage and fasting”.

“By abstaining from food we shall become more conscious of the universal need for penance and inner transformation,” he said.

Like the 12th century saint who draws millions to Assisi, who started out in this life as the son of a cloth merchant before radically abandoning wealth and riches

for a life of asceticism, Pope John Paul II was recognising the power of prayer and fasting as the means to peace.

At 20, Francis took part in a military campaign against the neighbouring town of Perugia.

But not long after that, he came to abandon the ways of the world and “a slow process of spiritual conversion began within him,” Pope Benedict stated in a General Audience earlier this year.

For instance, one day when St Francis was mounted on his horse, he passed a leper. Instead of throwing the leper a coin, Francis dismounted and hugged him.

Later, in the Church of St Damian (San Damiano), St Francis heard the voice of Christ on the Cross saying, “Go, Francis, and repair my house which, as you see, is falling into ruin”.

After hearing these words, St Francis literally began to repair the Church of St Damian, after which he lived the life of a hermit.

But the call to repair the Church was a symbol of a much deeper call to renew Christ’s own Church, as Pope Benedict XVI said, “with her radicality of faith and her loving enthusiasm for Christ”.

A few years later, Pope Innocent III had a dream in which he saw the Basilica of St John Lateran collapsing, and there was a religious brother supporting the church on his shoulders.

But in 1208, while listening to St Matthew’s account of Jesus’ discourse to the apostles whom he sent out on mission, Francis felt called to live in poverty and dedicate himself to preaching, Pope Benedict said in his address this year.

In 1209, St Francis and a band of 12 or 13 companions went to Rome to Pope Innocent III for approval of the Forma Vita: a collection of Gospel texts that

Francis and his companions referred to, which included a text on the Gospel of the mission of the apostles as heard by Francis in the Portiuncula on 24 February 1208.

Pope Innocent III gave verbal approval to Francis, gave them a small tonsure and, as early sources state, they preferred to be known as “penitents originally from the city of Assisi”.

In communion with the Church in Rome, St Francis and his followers went on mission to preach. They went to various European countries, Morocco and at the time of the Crusades, Francis met with a Muslim Sultan and obtained permission to visit the Holy Land.

The fruit of this visitation was that the Franciscans became and still are the Custodians of the Holy Land.

Two years before he died, St Francis received the Stigmata during a vision of the Crucified Lord in the form of a seraph.

On display in the Basilica of Santa Chiara are several relics of this pair of saints, including a small leather-soled shoe with flexible upper part in kid leather, which tradition holds was made by St Clare.

St Francis, a “giant of holiness” as Pope Benedict XVI called him earlier this year, continues to exert power in the town where his body is buried: Assisi.

Several years before Pope John Paul II held the World Day of Prayer in Assisi, he visited the city in 1978 and said he came to the city to “witness to that surprising holiness that passed here like a great breath of the Spirit”.

“A breath in which St Francis of Assisi participated, as well as his spiritual sister St Clare and so many other saints born from their evangelical spirituality,” he said.

The Cathedral of St Rufinus, in which Pope John Paul II made an address on the World Day of Peace in 1986, as seen by night. Below, a shop window full of religious statues, dominated by Francis, which reflects the old town’s strong emphasis on tourism. PHOTOS: BRIDGET

Battle won but life war far from over

BY ANTHONY BARICH Analysis

THE pro-life battle is far from over in South Australia and other States despite a euthanasia Bill being defeated in its Legislative Council on 24 November.

Greens MLC Mark Parnellwho sponsored the defeated Bill with Labor backbencher Stephanie Key - said that while he was disappointed, it could return to the Upper House next year if adequately amended in the Lower House.

“A number of members have expressed their support for the concept but for a variety of reasons they are not able to support this Bill tonight,” he told News Ltd. “Of course we are disappointed the Bill didn’t pass the Upper House last night, but this by no means is the end of the debate.”

Had it passed, the Bill would have amended the Consent to Medical Treatment and Palliative Care Act to allow a person to request to end his or her life.

The retirements of pro-life Liberal MPs Robert Lawson QC and Caroline Schaefer at the 20 March election had pro-lifers worried that the Bill would succeed, and the Bill’s supporters confident.

But the unexpected votes of three MPs, strong public statements from Adelaide’s Catholic Bishops and the Health Minister, and the activism of a non-Christian national network begun in the weeks prior to the debate led to the Bill’s demise.

Liberal MLC Jing Lee, who had not publicly declared her hand prior to the vote, voted against the Bill, as did Independent Ann Bressington, who abstained in the 2009 vote that defeated a euthanasia Bill, 11 votes to 9.

Michelle Lensink, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council who has changed her mind in the last two debates, also argued against the Bill in a speech which pro-lifers called “a triumph of commonsense”.

The day before debate started, Health Minister John Hill attacked the Bill, calling it “clunky” and “flawed” and said that euthanasia should not be associated with palliative care.

Paul Russell, former Family and Life Officer for the Archdiocese of Adelaide, founded a national network of people opposed to euthanasia called “Hope” and

www.noeuthanasia.org.au, which marshalled expert opinion from around Australia.

“With the Federal Greens Bill, another in NSW and another expected in Victoria after its 27 November State election, these threats were becoming more real and we needed to have an organised standing network of people willing to help in whatever way they could to fight these bills,” Mr Russell told The Record

In an unexpected twist and a sign of the persuasiveness of the euthanasia movement, Kelly Vincent, an MLC of the Dignity for Disability party, supported the SA Bill on the grounds of individual autonomy.

“This came as a shock considering the vast majority of disability organisations around the world are solidly against euthanasia due to the risk to the vulnerable that euthanasia entails,” Mr Russell said.

Mr Hill is also seeking to amend the criminal code in a similar way that the current exemption for abortion exists by having an alternate Bill introduced into the Lower House. This will create an exemption for doctors to make an act of euthanasia, but pro-lifers warn that it contains no safeguards or limits on bureaucrats who would design the regulations.

Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson issued a Pastoral Letter that was read in every SA parish two weeks before the vote that galvanised Catholic voters.

Port Pirie Bishop Greg O’Kelly SJ also issued a pastoral letter on 24 September, expressing “sadness that the first moves around our nation under our new political

arrangement seem to be a promotion of death and an abuse of marriage”.

Archbishop Wilson urged Catholics to write to local MPs to make it clear that the Catholic Church supports the development of advanced directives, is clear on the right to refuse futile and burdensome treatment and supports excellence in health care around Australia.

He said euthanasia challenges the accepted understanding of the importance of human life and impacts on the way the dying are cared for; and warned of its farreaching ramifications for society, health professionals, individuals and the vulnerable.

The Bill’s aim to make provisions for killing – “suggesting the aim of the bill is merely to bring order to a practice that is currently prevalent and unregulated” – is “a groundless slur on doctors, implying that they are routinely killing patients in the guise of relieving pain by administering large doses of pain killers.

“There is a profound difference between intending pain relief and intending death. In good palliative care, the intention is to relieve the patient’s distress.”

Euthanasia is seen as a “quickfix” to fears of a long and painful death, he said, which denies the opportunity for a dignified death that is provided when people are loved and cared for during the dying process.

The Bill’s apparent compassion to suffering is also misleading, he said, as it is already possible for people to indicate their preference not to undergo treatment that is burdensome or futile.

Thanks for a thankless task

Cathedral service a meaningful event for prison chaplains, workers who provide an often thankless task

BY FR ROBERT CROSS

A SERVICE to recognise and pray for staff of the Department of Corrective Services took place at St Mary’s Cathedral recently; the first of its kind.

The 25 November Mass was attended by the Commissioner of Corrective Services, Ian Johnson and DCS staff - including prison officers, counsellors, teachers and community correction officers.

The service began with an acknowledgement of traditional landowners and a welcome from Cathedral Dean Mgr Michael Keating.

Prison chaplains and uniformed prison officers recited prayers and readings, including an excerpt from the Gospel of Matthew 25: 32-40 and a passage from Crime and Punishment by Middle Eastern philosopher and poet Kahil Gibrahn.

Commissioner Ian Johnson delivered the keynote address in which he praised the commitment of staff operating in challenging environments.

Following a prayer of commitment by staff, the Moderator of the Uniting Church in WA the Reverend Ken Williams proclaimed the blessing.

Music for the service was provided by the Music Ministry of St Thomas More Parish, Bateman with the final song You Raise Me Up being followed by spontaneous applause.

Prison chaplain John McCarthy said the event was a great success.

“As those present partook of refreshments downstairs, there was such a feeling of euphoria about the service,” Mr McCarthy said.

“Seldom do those responsible for the social and psychological recovery of those who have been incarcerated receive any such thanks.”

Earlier in the month, on 14 November, the visit of two Catholic chaplains and several prison ministers was delayed when three guards were attacked with a crude weapon, leaving all three injured, one seriously. A few

weeks later, another prisoner took his own life.

“Such events leave the prison staff helpless and traumatised,” Mr McCarthy said.

The event was the culmination of an initial discussion between prison chaplains and a senior prison officer at Hakea Prison highlighting the need for positive spiritual reinforcement of staff.

After receiving approval from the Department, one of the Hakea chaplains and the Department’s events co-ordinator set about planning a service to pray for personnel and their families; giving them a chance to renew their commitment to helping prisoners reform their lives.

“It was considered important that all the personnel, whatever their religious or cultural tradition, would be at ease and comfortable,” Mr McCarthy said.

According to Mr McCarthy, there was some enthusiasm, after the service, for the event to become an annual fixture in the DCS’s calendar.

Sister Mary’s renewed vows ‘God’s way of loving’ her

BY MARK REIDY

SISTER Mary of the Holy Spirit described the renewal of her vows of consecration, which she made before Archbishop Barry Hickey and over 70 of her family and friends at St Mary’s Cathedral, as a deeper realisation of her fidelity to God.

During the 2 December Mass, which was concelebrated by Fr Ed Stewart, Fr Doug Harris, Fr Eugene McGrath and Fr Tiziano Bogoni, Sr Mary extended her vows of obedience, chastity and poverty as a member of the Holy Spirit of Freedom Community (HSOF), of which she is a life member.

The HSOF is a Catholic Charismatic Community who are called together to pray, and to love and serve Jesus in the poor, particularly street kids. Their outreach extends also to drug addicts, prostitutes, the emotionally injured, and their parents and families.

Presenting herself before the Archbishop in the habit and veil that has been her daily dress for the past two years, Sr Mary professed to continue to live a life of detachment and simplicity, centering her life around daily Mass, Adoration, the Divine Office, the Rosary and spiritual contemplation.

Sr Mary will also continue to be active within the HSOF

Community’s outreach to those who are caught up in addictions, homelessness and mental illness on the streets of Perth, as well as those involved in Pemberton at the Community’s spiritual base, “Karriholm – God’s Sanctuary”. She will spend time in between these ministries based at a convent in Bridgetown.

Josephine Bendotti, a member of the HSOF Council, said that the Community was excited by Sr Mary’s renewal of vows, which follow the renewal made by Brother Robert McLernon a year earlier.

“There is a branch of consecrated life emerging within our Community, which was envi-

sioned by our Founder, Reverend Frank Feain, many years ago”, Mrs Bendotti said. “We are very grateful to God and are hopeful that consecrations such as Sr Mary’s and Brother Robert’s will open the Community and the wider Church to many blessings, as well as inspiring other lay people to deepen their own callings.”

Sr Mary said she was extremely grateful to the Archbishop who had invited her to renew her vows at the Cathedral, which she saw as God’s way of loving her and the Community.

Right: Sr Mary with Sophia Batticci, Chiara Reidy and Ana Reidy.

Paul RussellArchbishop Philip Wilson

PHOTOS BY FR ROBERT CROSS

Commissioner for Prisons Ian Johnson addresses the service.

Catholic Prison chaplain John McCarthy.

Walking in God’s steps

Walking in the footsteps of 2000 years of pilgrims in the Holy Land last month, over 40 Ballajura pilgrims discovered their faith in a new way by going where Christ, His Apostles and the Prophets of old showed God’s glory

After a week in the Eternal City for Mary MacKillop’s canonisation, a group of Ballajura pilgrims continued on to the Holy Land. The Record’s Anthony Barich joined them, tracing the steps not only of Christ but also His Apostles and some Old Testament heroes.

Not surprisingly, something happened…

At every holy site in Israel, Palestine and Jordan, a pilgrim’s religious sense can easily be overwhelmed by commercial and visual temptations.

Ballajura Parish Priest Fr John Jegorow, who led the group of about 40, made every effort to draw them back to the simple fact that all the items they bought (which were many) and all the sites witnessed were to no avail if they did not draw the pilgrim into a closer relationship with God.

We not only walked in the footsteps of Christ but of those who for 2,000 years have gone in search of the “footprints of God, rightly called ‘holy’,” as Pope John Paul II said.

Though church after church has been built over many of these sites through the ages - by the early Christians, Byzantines, Crusaders and even, in the case

of the Annunciation Church in Nazareth, by moderns as late as the 1960s – the historical truth of the sites’ location makes more concrete the Faith itself to those who witness them.

Fr Jegorow did much to keep a pilgrim spirit amongst the group, which was constantly harassed by local Christians, Muslims and Jews flogging their local product. It presented a constant conundrum as this was, after all, their means of survival.

Each morning on the charter bus we prayed a pilgrim prayer and a Mary MacKillop prayer (apt as this is a pilgrim group from St Mary MacKillop Parish).

Fr Jegorow even formulated a Litany of Saints made up of those pilgrims whose names accorded to saints’ names.

Fr Jegorow demanded silence whenever he read from Scripture relevant to the site we were approaching or leaving.

Caesarea

After landing in Tel Aviv on 19 October, we drove to a serene Caesarea that seemed a world away from the chaos and centuries of instability and bloodshed that have marred this very country.

As the Acts of the Apostles reveals, Caesarea is where St Peter baptised the first non-Jew, the Roman Centurion Cornelius – a good man who believed in God and was respected for his charitable work among the Jews – and his whole family. St Paul was also imprisoned there for two years until he was sent to be tried in Rome. On the way there, Fr Jegorow - who had clearly done his homework for this trip – read from Acts the moving account of an angel telling Cornelius God would reward him for his prayerful life and good deeds.

The next two nights were spent at the Carmelite Pilgrim Centre Stella Maris (Star of the Sea) in

Haifa, where nuns in habits run a hotel-style convent that could compete with the best hotels in Perth.

Elijah

The next day we beheld the place where the prophet Elijah proved the Lord God was great –and real – compared to Baal, the god of lightning who demanded child sacrifice and was worshipped by 400 ‘prophets’ who were then slaughtered. Three-dimensional mounted wall images depicted the slaughter. From the roof of the pilgrim church run by Discalced Carmelites, a stunning vista of the land of Israel opens up.

A towering statue of Isaiah brandishing a knife with his foot on the head of a Baal priest overlooks the church and obligatory tourist shop. The view from the roof of the shop and chapel was staggering - overlooking the Carmel Range Continued on Page 10

Ballajura pilgrim Peter Lewis takes time to reflect on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where Christ walked and reassued His disciples in their own doubt and brokenness. PHOTOS: ANTHONY BARICH

A statue depicting Elijah slaughtering the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel after proving that his God is the true God.

Glen Canham and Hilda Panpone pose at the sycamore tree that commemorates where Christ called the tax collector Zacchaeus down.

Fr John Jegorow with a statue of St Peter at Capernaum, near the first Pope’s house, which is adjacent to the temple where Christ preached.

Two sisters, Carmelita Williams and Hazel MacDonald, pose at Elizabeth’s house, where Mary visited her while pregnant with Christ.

Walking in the foo

Continued from Page 9 which extends 35km to the Bay of Haifa on the Mediterranean Sea to the southeast. In Hebrew, Carmel is Kerem El meaning “vineyard of God”.

Crusaders

Moving on to the 5,000 year old city of Acre, which has been the subject of several invasions and attempted occupations – including by Napoleon – we go where many people only went when they were condemned to death – underground prisons.

Adjacent to these haunting underground cells are similar looking rooms that were used for healing pilgrims who had walked for years from Europe to the Holy Land. The Knights of the Hospitalier cared for the sick. Their doctors examined urine samples and diagnosed the “various strange diseases” from which the pilgrims suffered.

“The sick are our lords and we are ordered to care for them better than we would care for ourselves,” says a plaque in The Northern Halls.

Another plaque quotes the Rule of Raymond de Puy (1120-1160): “When the sick man shall come here, let him be received thus, let him partake of the Holy Sacrament, first having confessed his sins to the priest, and afterwards let him be carried to bed, and there, as if he were a lord, each day before the brethren go to eat, let him be refreshed with food charitably according to the ability of the House.”

Such evidence of acts of charity in a turbulent place is a moving reminder of the power of the Holy Spirit working among His people, even in the most difficult circumstances.

While we were admittedly not as damaged as pilgrims who had walked so far – a bit of water fixes up the worst of us – we related to those who had come so far “in search of the ‘footprints’ of God”.

The Transfiguration

Old Testament was blended with New as, next day, Fr Jegorow celebrated Mass with the pilgrims on Mt Tabor where Jesus is believed to have been transfigured before his Apostles Peter, James and John, and Elijah and Moses spoke with Him about His coming Passion.

The view from Mt Tabor is glorious, not unlike that from Mt Carmel, both places where God’s glory is revealed in two very different ways.

Fr Mario, an Albanian Franciscan – the Religious Order that has had custody of the Holy Land sites since the 13th century – impresses Perth pilgrims with his serenity and “air of holiness” as he deals with feisty pilgrims from Germanic countries who were unimpressed that the site is closed for a couple of hours, as is scheduled. The personal blessing he gave as he laid his hands on my head was a highlight of my trip.

Naim

A much less glorious site but one which was no less powerful a witness of God’s love and glory was Naim, a remote town we briefly passed through.

As Jesus approached the “door of the town”, a dead man was being taken out by his mother, a widow, and many other people. Jesus, taking pity on her, brought the man back to life “and gave him back to his mother”. Driving into the town

up the dirt path, one could imagine Christ and His Disciples walking up it. There is a sole Christian church there but we could not enter as it is owned by a local Muslim. Though it was a simple village, its quietness spoke to me of the simplicity of Jesus’ life and in a way of His mission – how He touched people in their everyday lives in ordinary villages like this.

While those on the pilgrimage were Catholic, experiences such as these made Faith in Christ more concrete. There was no doubt of these events in these real places, as the truth of the New Testament has been proven, and, it must be said, powerfully awakened in this reporter.

Nazareth

In Nazareth, the largest city in the North District of Israel, is the Basilica of the Annunciation, built and consecrated in 1969 over the remains of Byzantine and Crusader churches, incorporating the cave in which the Virgin Mary received the news from Gabriel that she would be the Mother of God.

Fr Jegorow celebrated Mass in the Basilica which is believed to house the childhood home of Jesus. The name “Nazareth” may derive from the Hebrew verb na·tsar, meaning “watch, guard, keep”. The focus of this Mass was motherhood and women consecrated to God. We prayed that God would open our hearts to receive Jesus as Mary did –through faith.

The counterpart to this was the Greek Orthodox Church of St Gabriel. As we entered and descended stairs to the wellspring where people filled their water bottles, Russian Orthodox pilgrims

chanted their traditional Marian prayers which filled the icon-filled room with the unique beauty of its culture.

The wellspring is the site of a story detailed in the Proto-Gospel of St James – not part of the official canon of Scripture but from which the Church derived much of its understanding of the early life of Mary. The story tells that Gabriel first appeared to Mary, announcing her role in the salvation of the world, at the well where she came to draw water for her household; but she ran home, embarrassed at such a public display, where Gabriel appeared to her again to make the announcement that the Roman Catholic Church celebrates in the Rosary and the liturgical calendar.

Also in Nazareth was a humble little Crusader chapel built over the remains of the original temple where Christ read from Scripture His mandate from God, and ended with “Today as you listen, this Scripture is being fulfilled”.

Sea of Galilee

The Sea of Galilee provided not only the chance to celebrate the Eucharist where Christ revealed His glory by walking on water, but a museum on the banks also revealed the “Boat of Peter” – a boat discovered during a major drought in Israel in 1986 that brought the Sea to its lowest level in memory. It had been remarkably preserved in mud and the way it was made led scientists to date it around the first century. It provided a glimpse of what Peter’s boat would have looked like.

Galilee was also where Christ tested the faith of Peter by inviting him out to walk on the water with him. He walked at first then started doubting and sank.

Unlike other sites ar whose historical ver is the Sea where Jes sured His disciples and brokenness. It was a perfectl point to reflect and the family back hom faith.

I tried to imagine over the boat as the the sleeping Jesus to He rebuked them fo It was hard to im still; the only noise Chinese fishing vess Fr Jegorow urge resist chat so they co Scripture relating to

On the shore of stands the Church Peter, a modest Fra incorporates part o church.

Just outside are th after the Resurrec banks, called the Di boat, cooked break commissioned Peter It was the third ti to His Disciples aft To know that Jesus spot gave our faith edness.

Peter’s

Further along th north shore in Cap fishing village, is ‘headquarters’ of Je istry. Adjacent to t of the house - over church has been bui

Fr John Jegorow gives Peter and Noeline Lewis a special blessing on their wedding anniversary in the Church of the Annunciation that incorporates Mary’s house.

Abe and Margaret Lynx, Peter and and Maria Haynes renew their we His first miracle at a wedding.

The Ballajura pilgrim group at one of the Seven Wonders of the World in Petra, Jordan. The temple was carved into the sheer rock face by the Nabataeans, an industrious Arab people who settled there more than 2,000 years ago.

Fr Jegorow with Jo Wells, Gaye Ayensberg, Hazel MacDonald and Helen Imlay at the site of the Crucifixtion in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Ballajura pilgrim Susie Croll looks

otsteps of Christ

round the Holy Land racity is unsure, this sus walked and reasin their own doubt ly serene and quiet offer up prayer for me and for our own e the waves crashing e Apostles called on calm the storm, and or their lack of faith. magine as it was so was provided by a sel that putted by. ed the pilgrims to ould meditate on the that place. the Sea of Galilee of the Primacy of anciscan chapel that of a fourth century he rocks where Jesus, tion, stood on the isciples in from their kfast for them and r to “feed my sheep”.

ime Christ appeared ter the Resurrection. s stood in that very a new level of assurHouse he Sea of Galilee’s pernaum, an ancient Peter’s house, the esus’ Galilean minthe ancient remains which a hexagonal ilt - is the Synagogue

in which Christ taught the doctrine on the Eucharist.

On 24 October, Fr Jegorow celebrated Mass for pilgrims at the Mount of Beatitudes at an outdoor chapel that Pope John Paul II had built, where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount.

River Jordan

The pilgrim group also renewed their baptismal promises at the Jordan River, in which John the Baptist baptised Jesus, but not at the same spot. The real spot is in a disputed de-militarised zone.

Packing three days’ worth of gear for Jordan, we trekked 8km to Petra, an historic archaeological city known for its rock cut architecture, used in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, dating back to the six century BC.

Passing the city of Sodom, we stopped at Masada, where the Jews held out against the Romans after the destruction of the Temple in 70AD. We also visited well-kept remains of a grand palace Herod had built on the same hill, high up overlooking the vast desert.

A minor miracle occurred when Fr Jegorow managed to celebrate Mass in the chapel atop Mt Nebo, where Moses is believed to be buried. Fr Jegorow feared that other pilgrim groups from Italy were booked ahead of us, but Fr Fabian Adkins OFM, the Franciscan Friar in charge of the place, happened to be Australian, from Broken Hill. He’s been there for four years after spending 30 years in Jerusalem. He preached the homily, saying the main message of this place is to trust God, just as Moses did after some serious doubts that he could lead God’s people out of bondage. On the back wall of the chapel was

a Byzantine mosaic 1,500 years old. We stood not only where Moses is likely to have stood, but where John Paul II did, looking over the land of Jordan and the Promised Land mentioned in the Bible –240km x 100km.

Jericho

After floating in the Dead Sea, we arrived at Jericho, the oldest city in the world; a war-torn place suffering from much poverty that has previously been closed, but today the machine guncarrying soldiers at the town gate barely flinched as we drove through to the sycamore tree which commemorates where Jesus called Zacchaeus down to host Him for dinner. Locals were waiting at the spot to sell their wares to sustain their families, and again many pilgrims obliged. It was also the city where Jesus cured the blind beggar Bartimaeus.

Moving on through the desert hills out of Jericho, we recalled the parable of the Good Samaritan. Christ’s parable, while fictional, used real settings – the path he mentioned from Jerusalem to Jericho has always been known to be a treacherous one, so His listeners would have identified with a man being robbed and beaten within an inch of his life. Again, the Gospels came to life. We also drove past the Qumran caves, where two Bedouin shepherd boys found the Dead Sea Scrolls, containing the complete Isaiah Scrolls, over two weeks in 1947.

Bethlehem

In the Church of the Nativity, it was unfortunate that the Greek Orthodox priests pressuring the hundreds of pilgrims to move through faster when

they practically could not, and the sheer number of people proved too much for some pilgrims. Still, after walking through the glorious Cathedral in the process of being renovated, the site of Jesus’ birth itself was humble – in a cave.

A particularly moving moment came when Fr Jegorow celebrated Mass in St Joseph’s Chapel in these caves under the Benedictine-style Church of St Catherine. Behind the wall where the altar stood was the Nativity site which we would visit the next day.

Several pilgrims broke down during readings and the Prayer of the Faithful as they remembered their loved ones.

In the room next to this in the caves was the desk where St Jerome, an early Father of the Church, translated the Bible into Latin in the fourth century.

St Catherine’s is attached to the Church of the Nativity, which incorporates the birthplace of Christ, the historical truth of which is almost certainly assured.

Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was again bustling with tourists and an early start was the only way to wait less than two hours to get into the site that commemorates Christ’s Resurrection.

Jerusalem reveals the upper reaches of the Kedron Valley which Jesus traversed often, and was where he sat weeping for the city, foreseeing its demise in 70AD.

On the outskirts of the city on the Mount of Olives was the Chapel of the Ascension believed to be where Jesus ascended into Heaven. It’s a small site that underwhelmed some pilgrims, but not every site has to be a glorious

basilica. Pilgrims overcame their initial reaction to place their religious items on the spot believed to be the ‘point of Ascension’, which was a touching testament to their faith.

On the bottom of the Mount of Olives slope is the Church of All Nations, which included exposed ground believed to be where Christ wept blood foreseeing His Passion. Adjacent to this are the Olive Trees in Gethsemane, which were unlikely to have been there when Christ was as the Romans cut them all down in 70AD. Though the trees are still dated at between 1-2,000 years old, the important thing was that the Gospels came to life. God’s message is real.

The Word

We developed a new appreciation for what Pope Benedict XVI said in his recent apostolic exhortation Verbum Domini (“The Word of the Lord”) issued on 11 November this year following the 2008 Synod on the Word of God: “The Bible is not a dusty collection of ancient writings addressed only to ancient peoples.” Its messages, while old, he said, need to be given new attention.

This is why, a few days after our return, we received in the mail a ‘feedback’ sheet by Fr Jegorow asking pilgrims how the pilgrims’ lives and hearts had changed in the way they proclaim the Gospel through their lives.

There was much more that we saw, but prudence is necessary.

As St John said in closing his Gospel: “There are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

d Noeline Lewis, Trevor and Sue Logan, Darral edding vows in Cana, where Jesus performed George Kavalam at the desk of St Jerome who translated the Bible into Latin in the fourth century, in a cave next to the site of the Nativity.

Fr Jegorow floats in the Dead Sea in Jordan with pilgrims from Ballajura.

over the city of Jerusalem.Carla Lynx, Marion Fredricks, Sandra Canham, Margaret and Abe Lynx enjoy the boat ride on the Sea of Galilee after Mass was celebrated by Fr Jegorow on board.

Sylvette Farhi rides a donkey with the help of a local in Petra, Jordan where a city has been carved out of stone.

Footsteps of Christ

Ballajura pilgrims go where the New and Old Testament played out

Nuns at the Carmelite centre the Ballajura pilgrims stayed at in Haifa chat to Fr John Jegorow.

Israeli soldiers on patrol on the Via Dolorosa where Christ walked His Passion, where pilgrims meditate on the Stations of the Cross.

Above: A child runs through the water in the Jordan River, where many people go to be baptised. Below: Alison Hammond, Jo Wells, Anthony Barich, Susie Croll, Sandra Canham, Abe and Margaret Lynx, Glen Canham, Coni Plati in the Jordan River.

A local in Acre selling local produce - pomegranates were sold everywhere, and many locals had manual juicers all over the Holy Land, selling it in cups. He said his cousin drives taxis in Melbourne, Australia.

Maria Haynes and Gaye Ayensberg at the Carmelite accommodation centre in Haifa.

A Pentecostal group from London baptises a youth in the Jordan River, to the celebration of her peers.

Above, a local woman works at her shop in Acre. Below right, Carmelita Williams with a Coptic priest on the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Bottom right: An Eastern-rite priest prays where Jesus’ body is believed to have been anointed in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

A desperate plea for help on the Via Dolorosa, the path Christ travelled to His death where pilgrims pray the Stations of the Cross, meditating on each phase of His journey.

The Record Bookshop’s Christmas Catalogue

The Catholic Source Book

Harcourt Religious Publishers

RRP $46.95

This revised edition of The Catholic Source Book is a vast collection of information to help people of faith learn, renew, teach, and live the risen life of Jesus Christ in the Catholic Church. The ten chapters include: Prayers, An Overview of the Tradition, Scripture, Church, Liturgy, The Liturgical Year, Devotions in Catholic Tradition, Veneration of Saints and Heroes, Catholic Symbols, and Word and Phrase Origins.

Why Do Catholics Do That?

A Guide to the Teachings and Practices of the Catholic Church

Kevin Orlin Johnson, PhD

RRP $22.95

Renowned scholar and religion columnist Kevin Orlin Johnson answers the most frequently asked questions on Catholic faith, worship, culture, and customs, including:

* How the Church Makes Laws * The HardFought Genesis of the New Testament * The Cycle of Redemption * A Short Guide to the Meaning and Structure of the Mass * Decoding Symbols of Scripture and the Sacraments * The Calendar as the Image of Christ’s Life * The Rosary and the Story of Apparitions *

The Scripture Source Book for Catholics

Harcourt Religion Publishers

RRP $46.95

The Scripture Source Book for Catholics is a collection of information about Scripture gathered to help people of faith learn about the Catholic understanding and interpretation of Scripture and enrich their lives through reflection on the word of God.

Reading God’s Word Today

A Practical and Faith-filled approach to Scripture

George Martin

RRP $25.95

With persuasive instruc- tion and personal exam- ples, George Martin shows you how to read and understand Scripture in ways that help us hear what God is saying to us and that draw us nearer to Him in prayer.

In the most extensive revision yet of his best- selling classic Reading Scripture as the Word of God, this edition brings God’s word to life for beginners through seasoned veterans of Bible study.

When Did We See You, Lord?

Bishop Robert J Baker

Father Benedict J Groeschel, CFR

RRP $27.95

Based on Matthew 25:3146, the meditations in When Did We See You, Lord? can help give us new ears, to truly hear Christ inviting us to serve Him. And new eyes, to truly see Christ waiting for us in those needing help.

Catena Aurea

Commentary on the Four Gospels

St Thomas Aquinas

RRP $219.95

St Thomas Aquinas’

Catena Aurea is a masterpiece anthology of Patristic commentary on the Gospels – it includes the work of over 80 Church Fathers. St Thomas Aquinas’ work demonstrates inti- mate acquaintance with the Church Fathers and is an excellent complement to the more recent attempts to understand the inner mean- ing of the Sacred Scriptures. For each of the four Gospel writers, the Catena Aurea starts by indicating the verses to be analysed, then phrase-by-phrase, provides the early Fathers’ insights into the passage.

Christian Martyrs for a Muslim People

Martin McGee, OSB

RRP $33.95

This engaging book tells the story of the 19 priests and Religious assassinat- ed in Algeria 1994-1996. It chronicles the heroic witness of these religious men and women and shows us that ChristianMuslim relations thrive when we draw close to each other in mutual respect, service, friend- ship, and prayer.

Friendship with Jesus

Pope Benedict XVI Speaks to Children on their First Holy Communion

Amy Welborn

Ann Kissane Engelhart

RRP $8.95

This little book was based on a meeting that the Holy Father had with the children of Rome who had recently received the sacrament.

Amy Welborn, the well-known author and blog- ger, introduces Pope Benedict’s beautiful dia- logue with children and they are accompanied by watercolour illustrations.

Seeking Jesus in the Old Testament

Dr Reni Rita Silvano, OCV, STD

RRP $19.95

Seeking Jesus in the Old Testament is a work of love and devotion. Dr Silvano has carefully gathered the threads that run through the Old Testament and the New Testament to weave a rich and unified tapestry of the Word of God.

Catholics take up arms in Sudan

Civilian militias defend Sudanese villages from rebel army attacks

BY PAUL JEFFREY Catholic News Service

YAMBIO, Southern SudanWhen church bells ring in the villages nestled throughout the forest along the Congolese-Southern Sudan border, they are usually calling people to Mass. Yet these days, the bells can also ring out danger, alerting villagers to the threat posed by a Ugandan rebel group that has moved into the region, sowing terror in its path.

In response to a series of attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army on both sides of the border, a homegrown network of village militias has formed to protect civilians. Known as the Arrow Boys, the squads of adult men are armed with bows and arrows, spears, clubs and an odd rusty rifle or two.

Their creation reflects frustration with the inability of governments to rein in an armed force that many believe is a proxy for northern government officials in Khartoum intent on sabotaging a January referendum on the South’s independence.

“They (LRA members) are black like us, but the difference is they have guns and uniforms, and they’ve come to kill us,” said Simon Peter Gamana, a 42 year old Catholic who heads the Arrow Boys in the small village of Riimenze, where there’s a church in the middle of the jungle built decades ago by Comboni priests. When the Arrow Boys ring the church bell, as they have on several occasions, villagers send their children to hide in the bush, and the men pick up their bows and arrows to fight.

Although seemingly out-gunned by the LRA, the Arrow Boys do not feel at a disadvantage given their intimate knowledge of the surrounding jungle, where they regularly hunt wild game. In a September encounter outside Riimenze, Gamana said the militia

killed five LRA soldiers without suffering any losses.

“When they came into Sudan, at first they took our food,” Gamana told CNS. “Then they started taking people as well, young children they turn into soldiers. So we organised to defend our community. We have no power. No one is looking after us. People are afraid to go out to harvest cassava on our farms, and we began to go hungry. So we took up the weapons we have and began to follow them.”

A Catholic nun from New

Zealand who lives in Riimenze praised the men’s response.

“They’re a powerful force for good, and they’re doing it for love of their people, not for money,” said Sr Margaret Scott, a member of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions who came to Africa as part of Solidarity with Southern Sudan, a network of religious workers from around the world providing training for teachers, health workers and pastoral agents in the nascent country.

“They go out with very little, just

their bows and arrows. If they have a few guns, they often don’t have many bullets. They try to push the LRA back into the Congo. That doesn’t help the Congolese, but it certainly helps the Sudanese,” Sr Margaret said.

Many people in Southern Sudan already had bad memories of the LRA, which was formed by northern Ugandans almost 25 years ago in response to tensions with the Kampala government.

The Sudanese government in Khartoum often employed the LRA as a proxy militia to attack southerners. It was tit for tat, given that Kampala backed the southerners’ liberation movement.

Led by Joseph Kony, a former Catholic altar boy turned spirit medium turned military commander, the LRA quickly developed a reputation for brutality against its own people, kidnapping boys and turning them into soldiers, abducting girls and making them sex slaves.

When the LRA tired of someone they had kidnapped, commanders mutilated them or ordered other children to kill them with sharp knives and clubs.

Kony was indicted by the International Criminal Court in 2005 and charged with crimes against humanity.

He remains at large.

A combination of peace talks and robust attacks from the Ugandan military finally chased the LRA into a remote corner of the Congo.

In 2008, a three-nation military assault - supported by the United States - failed to eliminate the LRA, and instead seemed to enrage Kony who had walked away from peace talks a few months earlier.

LRA attacks on Congolese villages in December 2008 killed more than 800 people and drove thousands of civilians across the border into Southern Sudan.

The LRA soon followed, its attacks often coinciding with village gatherings for religious services. As a result, local church activities ceased.

“Most of the chapels along the border are closed. We reached the point where to assemble the people for prayer in the areas where

the LRA was operating was putting the people in danger, because some people were killed in churches,” said Comboni Sr Giovanna Calabria, an Italian working in Nzara.

Sr Giovanna told CNS that most people in the area believe the LRA’s recent attacks are being encouraged by the rebel group’s old patron, the government in Khartoum.

“People who escaped have told us that when LRA leaders are sick, they are taken to Khartoum to be treated in a hospital. They have good guns and uniforms, and the people who got away said food was being dropped from planes. How can such a large group of people, both the soldiers and the people they have abducted, survive in the forest for so long without outside support? They couldn’t, unless there is someone behind them,” said Sr Giovanna, who worked for 13 years in northern Uganda before coming to Southern Sudan eight years ago.

LRA attacks in the region tapered off in September, yet the Bishop of the Tombura-Yambio Diocese doubts the LRA threat has ended.

“Kony and his men are still here in the forest,” Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala told CNS.

“Nobody has taken them out. He’s still equipped with guns and in contact with people outside who support him. So it hasn’t ended.

“The end will be when he’s out, when the abducted are set free, when the forest becomes free of these kinds of people, and when he’s taken back to his country. Until then, we move with fear,” he said.

Bishop Hiiboro worries the LRA will renew massive attacks aimed at sabotaging the 9 January referendum on independence, which requires that at least 60 percent of registered voters actually cast a ballot.

“The LRA is a time bomb for the referendum. Kony is preparing something for 6, 7 or 8 January, when he’ll come in and start shooting. If that happens, who is going to vote? Nobody is going to vote, because people will be running. A huge number of people will be disappointed, and that disappointment can lead to violence,” Bishop Hiiboro said.

Benedict took ‘decisive action’ on abuse in 80s

While a Cardinal, Pope asked for swift action against abusive priests

BY JOHN T HAVIS Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY - A newly disclosed letter reveals that as early as 1988, the future Pope Benedict XVI pressed for swifter and more streamlined procedures to punish priests guilty of “grave and scandalous conduct.”

The letter, written by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when he was head of the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation, expressed concern that the normal process for dealing with such priests - which typically involved a request for dispensation from priestly obligations - took too long and was seen more as a favour than a punishment.

Eventually, with Cardinal Ratzinger’s involvement, the penal procedures were simplified and sanctions were strengthened. But in 1988, the Cardinal’s suggestion

of a “more rapid and simplified penal process” was rebuffed by the Vatican’s canon law experts.

The letter was cited in a lengthy article published on 1 December by the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. The article highlighted what it described as a “crucial role” and “decisive action” by Cardinal Ratzinger in the 20-year process of strengthening sanctions against errant priests.

Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter, dated 19 February 1988, was addressed to the president of the Pontifical Commission for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, who at that time was Venezuelan Cardinal Jose Rosalio Castillo Lara.

The doctrinal congregation was in charge of examining petitions for dispensation from priestly obligations, some of which involved priests guilty of grave crimes. Those offences included sexual abuse, although sexual abuse was not specifically mentioned in Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter. Cardinal Ratzinger’s concern was that not enough attention was being given to penalties foreseen by Church law for priest-offenders

- including “reduction to the lay state” - because the penal process was too cumbersome.

He wrote that such penalties “in the judgement of this dicastery, ought in some cases, for the good of the faithful, to take precedence over the request for dispensation from priestly obligations, which, by its nature, involves a ‘grace’ in

favour of the petitioner. Yet in view of the complexity of the penal process required by the code (of canon law) in these circumstances, some ordinaries are likely to experience considerable difficulty in implementing such a penal process”.

“I would be grateful to your eminence, therefore, if you were to communicate your valued opinion regarding the possibility of making provision, in specific cases, for a more rapid and simplified penal process,” he said.

The response from Cardinal Castillo Lara came less than a month later. It was sympathetic with Cardinal Ratzinger’s concerns but recommended reminding Bishops to exercise their authority rather than streamlining penal procedures.

“To seek to simplify the judicial procedure further so as to impose or declare sanctions as grave as dismissal from the clerical state ... does not seem at all appropriate,” Cardinal Castillo Lara wrote. He likewise rejected changes that would allow an “extra-judicial administrative decree in these cases.”

Cardinal Castillo Lara said such

modifications would “endanger the fundamental right of defence” and would favour the “deplorable tendency” toward “so-called ‘pastoral’ governance” that obscures the due exercise of authority.

Instead, he said, Bishops should be reminded “not to omit their judicial and coercive power” in such cases, “instead of forwarding petitions for dispensation to the Holy See.”

In 2001, the doctrinal congregation was given exclusive jurisdiction over a number of “most grave crimes,” including the sexual abuse of a minor by a priest.

In 2003, Cardinal Ratzinger obtained from Pope John Paul II new faculties to deal with sex abuse offenders, including those making it easier to dismiss them from the priesthood.

The Vatican newspaper article was written by Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts. He said Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter came to light during the Council’s preparation of a revision of the penal section of the 1983 Code of Canon Law.

Simon Peter Gamana, front, and Charles Gorden patrol the forest on 16 November near their village of Riimenze, Southern Sudan. In response to a series of attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army along the border with Congo, a homegrown network of village militias, known as the Arrow Boys, has formed to protect civilians.

PHOTO: CNS/PAUL JEFFREY

Pope John Paul II embraces Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, in 1978. PHOTO: CNS

Election no guarantee of stability

Southern Sudan independence vote won’t bring easy peace, Bishop warns

BY PAUL JEFFREY Catholic News Service

YAMBIO, Southern Sudan - The people of Southern Sudan should not expect quick results from a January referendum on independence, said a Catholic Bishop in the war-torn African country.

“People expect a lot. They think that independence means milk and honey, that all will be OK. And while ordinary people think that, the politicians are only thinking of having power and the riches it can bring,” said Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala of TomburaYambio.

The Church should help people from both groups understand the new responsibilities that independence - the expected outcome of the referendum - will bring, the Bishop told CNS.

“The Church must help people understand that we have to take upon ourselves the noble duty of building our own nation,” Bishop Kussala said.

“We are the privileged generation that is going to be voting and laying a strong foundation. We need to help instill pride in being a nation and help people understand that they have a God-given right to be free. They can only do that together with one another, not just within their own ethnic group. We are a multicultural, multireligious community, and we need to respect one another.

“For the politicians, it’s the same. There’s a need to engage them and help them create a vision. No one is talking much these days about vision. Most politicians don’t seem to see where we’re going. We need a group thinking ahead of us, because we’re not going to have the international community with us forever.”

The January vote on independence was stipulated by the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended decades of civil war

Sudan

Voting on independence for Southern Sudan begins Jan. 9.

Khartoum

Chad

Central African Republic

Proposed border for Southern Sudan

Abyei

Ethiopia

Malakal

Yambio

Uganda Congo

between Sudan’s North and South. Southerners are expected to vote overwhelmingly for secession, and Bishop Kussala said creating a functional and effective government will not be easy.

“The people of Southern Sudan have never had a government. We’ve just practised this for the last five years, and you can see the difficulties we’ve encountered. There’s an absence of proper laws, little respect for law and the dignity of persons. Most government personnel came from the fighting forces, and they’ve just been converted into civil servants. With independence, there could be new competition among them, a new struggle for power,” he said.

The Bishop warned that some of the dangerous practices of political leaders in northern Sudan, such as control of the media, limited free speech, corruption, nepotism and tribalism, have begun to emerge in the South.

“We don’t want to see dictators replaced by other dictators, so we’re

Kenya

designing our programmes so we can keep talking to those who take power, as well as to the people of Southern Sudan, to help them see that they have to be the founding fathers of democracy, a people who will uphold the rule of law and show respect for each other,” Bishop Kussala said.

The Catholic Church in Southern Sudan played a major role during the liberation struggle, said John Ashworth, an adviser to the Sudan Ecumenical Forum, which includes the Catholic Church. The Church was the only institution that stayed with the people during the long war.

“Everything else collapsed,” Ashworth told CNS. “There was no government, no NGOs, no UN, no civil society, and the traditional (tribal) leaders were seriously weakened and divided. The Church took on many of the roles of government, providing basic human services and aid, schools and clinics. We didn’t have guns, but the presence of the Church provided a

Pope’s condom comments reflect pastoral concern

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - Pope Benedict XVI’s recent comments about condoms represented a “normal and traditional” pastoral application of moral theology, according to a theologian who advises the Vatican on doctrinal matters.

The Pope’s comments reflect the principle that there can be “intermediary steps toward moral awareness” that allow for some flexibility in how Church teachings are applied, Franciscan Fr Maurizio Faggioni said.

Fr Faggioni, a moral theologian and a consultant to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, spoke to CNS about the reaction to the Pope’s statement on condoms in the book, Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times.

In the book, the Pope repeated his view that condom campaigns are not the way to stop the AIDS epidemic, but he allowed that in some specific cases - for example, a prostitute who tries to diminish the risk of spreading infection - use of a condom could be a first step

toward taking moral responsibility for one’s actions.

Fr Faggioni said the Pope’s comments should be seen in the light of traditional principles of moral theology, including gradualism, which understands moral decisionmaking as a path that involves a series of progressions. “The Holy Father recognises that there is a path of growth in responsibility,”

Fr Faggioni said. By saying condom use may mark a step along that path, he said, the Pope is allowing for a “wise and prudent” application of Church teaching to individual cases.

“This is nothing more than a normal and traditional application of some principles of pastoral teaching and of moral casuistry,” Fr Faggioni said. Moral casuistry refers to a method that tries to determine appropriate moral responses to particular cases and circumstances.

Fr Faggioni said the Pope’s comments do not place in question the Church’s teaching against birth control, but recognise that there can be different ways of applying the gen-

eral law to specific situations.

“One could ask to which other cases this would extend. This is something that will be seen. One should not force the words of the Holy Father, either,” he said.

Fr Faggioni noted that the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation began studying the morality of condom use in disease prevention at a time when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - now Pope Benedictwas the congregation’s Prefect.

He said the Pope had chosen an informal medium, that of a booklength interview, to discuss the issue. In the strict sense, then, his words do not have the weight of official Church teaching, he said.

But at the same time, Fr Faggioni said, the Pope knows what he’s talking about, having followed the theological discussion on this issue for many years. He said commentators should remember this when suggesting, as some have, that the Pope may have strayed outside his field of expertise. “This is the Pope speaking, after all,” Fr Faggioni said. “He is the supreme teacher.”

degree of protection and safety. It provided moral and political leadership.” Bishop Kussala said some in the government now want to forget that history and ignore the moral voice of the Church.

To help prevent the entrenchment of power among a few leaders, the Church has designed pastoral work to include civic education so people understand their rights, identity and citizenship, he said.

The prelate also expressed concern that some government officials in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, will not respond well to Southern Sudan’s independence and will seek to make trouble for the fledgling nation.

“For our neighbours in northern Sudan, separation is not going to be a cup of tea. They are not happy about it. Many officials have made strong statements that if the South breaks away, then southerners who live in the North are going to be denied their rights. Such behaviour will pull us toward war and cause chaos in the South,” he said.

“My mother was killed by north-

ern government soldiers when I was just two months old,” Bishop Kussala said.

“I don’t want to see another baby losing its mother in the same way. If I have any power to promote a culture of harmony and peace, I will do it.”

Bishop Kussala also appealed to Catholics in the United States to become aware of the situation in Sudan.

“Especially at this moment, we need their solidarity. We need them to continue praying for us and being close to us,” he said.

“We need them to raise their voices with the US government. The CPA came about in part because of the American people. The pressure that the US government brought to the conflict enabled the fighting to stop.

“The Church from the US and around the world has continued to accompany us for these last five years, and now we come to the most critical part of this process when we choose between unity or separation. We need their accompaniment now more than ever.”

Crucifixion relic stolen in India

BANGALORE, India (CNS) -

Three historic relics of crucifixion preserved at a 10th-century church under the Syro-Malabar Irinjalakuda Diocese in India’s Kerala State were discovered missing on 30 November.

Police are investigating the disappearance of the relics from the Holy Cross Shrine Church Mapranum in Irinjalakuda.

“Everyone is stunned here as the sacred relics have been stolen,” Bishop Pauly Kannookadan of Irinjalakuda told CNS.

The stolen relics include what is believed to be a piece of the cross on which Jesus was crucified, a blood stain of Christ and a piece of the towel with which his face was wiped during the Passion. The shrine houses a letter from Pope Leo XIII confirming the authenticity of the relics that reached the church in September 1887.

“We have no clue regarding this theft,” said Bishop

Kannookadan, who spent several hours between 30 November and 1 December at the shrine where hundreds of stunned faithful gathered.

Fr Joji Kallingal, Vicar of the parish that was elevated as a shrine in 2008, said the thieves did not touch the offertory box that had a lot of cash.

“They also uprooted the centuries old five-metal cross on top of the tabernacle but did not take it away,” he said.

Built in 928, the shrine is one of the oldest Catholic churches in India. Its archaeological department oversees the preservation of historical parts of the old church, which was largely dismantled in 1989 to make way for a spacious new church.

Since police collected fingerprints from the altar shortly after the theft was discovered, pilgrims have offered prayers continuously seeking the return of the relics.

Sr Rosa Le Thi Bong, a Vietnamese member of Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions, greets children in in the Makpandu refugee camp in Southern Sudan on 16 November. More than 4,000 people who fled the Lord’s Resistance Army reside at the camp.

PHOTO: CNS/PAUL JEFFREY

Suffering from identity theft?

I say I say

By Mark Reidy

The 2002 film Catch Me If You Can was based on the true-life story of teenager Frank Abagnale, who, in the 1960s, spent five years impersonating an airline pilot, a lawyer and a doctor.

Abagnale’s deceptive exploits began at age 16 after he attended a Family Court hearing with his parents and discovered that they were getting a divorce. The judge explained to him that he would have to decide which parent he was going to live with.

Abagnale ran from the court in tears and his counterfeit lifestyle began. He didn’t see his mother for the next seven years and he never saw his father again. Believing that everything about his life had been a façade, he went about creating a new one, or rather, several of them.

In a recent interview Abagnale made an insightful observation

into the human condition. When asked why there was such an overwhelming interest in his fraudulent lifestyle, he simply answered, “Because everybody would like to be someone else”. I was reminded of Frank Abagnale at a retreat I attended during the celebration of Christ the King. One of the speakers asked the

audience how many of us believed that we were the sons and daughters of a King. I wasn’t the only one who failed to raise their hand. The reluctant response, she believed, was because most of us were victims of identity theft – and she is right. We have forsaken our true identity in Christ by allowing the world to determine our worth.

Church’s biggest crisis is loss of faith, not abuse

DUBLIN, Ireland (CNA)Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, Ireland delivered a hopeful but brutally honest homily about the state of the Irish Church on 20 November, addressing serious failings that he said indicated a deeper crisis of faith.

He did not shrink from speaking frankly about the scandals that have rocked the Irish Church in the wake of two 2009 reports.

The Murphy Report and the Ryan Report detailed sexual and other physical abuse in the Irish Church, along with Church authorities’ efforts to hide the incidents.

Both reports prompted a papal investigation that began on 12 November.

Speaking to members of the Legion of Mary at a Mass marking the 30th anniversary of its founder Frank Duff’s death, Archbishop Martin acknowledged that many Church leaders had failed profoundly in their pastoral duties. But more than this, they had demonstrated “arrogance and power seeking,” acting in a way that alienated many believers and contradicted the message of the Gospel.

These failures and abuses, he said, caused the Church to lose both its remaining social power and much of its credibility.

The blows came at a time when many Irish Catholics were already drifting away from the Church to “live as if God did not exist,” the Archbishop continued.

He also highlighted the “crisis of vocations to the priesthood,” noting that he recently presided at a Mass in memory of 20 priests who had died within the past 12 months.

“A further dozen or so priests retired from active ministry during the same period, and yet, in the past year I ordained just one new priest for the diocese (of Dublin),” he said.

While in no way minimising either the abuse scandals or the priest shortage, Archbishop Martin offered that there was a deeper cri-

sis within the Irish Church, one that concerned “the very nature of faith in Jesus Christ,” and the question of Jesus’ identity and mission.

He proposed that the Irish Church would only be able to address its more obvious problems, by returning to what he called “the fundamental question:” “Who is Jesus Christ?”

“We do not create our own identity for Jesus Christ,” the Archbishop emphasised. Nor, he said, could the Christian message of sacrificial love be reduced to the notion of “being nice to each other.” He stated that only a rediscovery of Jesus’ real call to discipleship would enable the Irish Church to find its footing – not by returning to a past state of affairs, but by returning to the unchanging truths of faith.

“In today’s society, where the message of Jesus is less and less accessible,” he said, “the Church must become a place where formation in the Word of God resounds in a way that it has not done in the Irish Church for generations.” The Church, he stressed, was not a “vague moralising agent in society,” but a supernatural institution, with a mandate that God’s grace alone could achieve.

Outside interventions and structural reform, while potentially

However, if we profess to be Christians, then it is imperative that we believe what Scripture tells us“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1). In fact Scripture is even more specific, describing us as “heirs” and a “royal priesthood”. Yet how many Christians believe this and are living it out in their daily lives?

Too many have allowed their true spiritual identity to be buried under a cloak of lies and ignorance. Too many have become entrapped by those negative words, attitudes and acts that were directed toward them in their childhood. And too many have failed to recognise their true identity because the reality of who they are in Christ was never acknowledged or nurtured.

This is why Abagnale’s observation resonates so profoundly. The reason why people are not content with who they are is because they have never known their real identity, and they have inevitably become dissatisfied with the false one that has replaced it. They have built their lives on a fraudulent foundation and this has prevented them from recognising who God created them to be.

It is understandable why those who have no belief in God would be disillusioned with their perceived identity, because they have no choice but to measure themselves by the transitory standards that society dictates. That is why there is a multi-billion dollar industry that thrives on physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual makeovers - because people have become entangled in a futile cycle of redesigning the masks they are wearing.

However, the good news for Christians is that we do not have to allow society to gauge our worth.

Our value as a person can never be measured by what we earn, what we look like, what we do, what others think of us or even by what we think of ourselves. While these factors may, more often than not, camouflage our true identity in Christ, they can in no way change it.

But it is up to us to make a choice.

We can either accept the counterfeit identity that we have built on the shifting sands of this world or we can choose our true identity, which is proclaimed in Scripture and built on the rock of faith – that we are the sons and daughters of a King who has already conquered this world.

New organism to expand defi nition of life

beneficial and at times necessary, could never substitute for this type of spiritual renewal, which the Archbishop acknowledged would be painful.

“There are many indications that the Church in Ireland has lost its way,” he said. “Many people of various ages no longer really know Jesus Christ.” He suggested that this living faith, for many people, may have given way to cultural expectations and outward obedience.

“Can we be happy to celebrate First Communion services which put people into debt for thousands of Euro,” he asked, “while neither the children nor their parents have been led to a true understanding of the Eucharist and … the Church? Can we be satisfied when Confirmation is looked on by many as a graduation out of Church life?”

“In not addressing such issues, we are not just deceiving ourselves, but we are damaging the integrity of the mystery of Jesus.”

Archbishop Martin offered no easy answers or quick fixes in the searching address. He acknowledged the persistence of deep and authentic faith among many Irish Catholics, as he observed that “many people with little education have a deeper insight into the message of Jesus Christ than learned theologians or Bishops.”

Above all, he praised the example of Frank Duff, a layman who began the Legion of Mary during the troubled year of 1921, during which the Irish people faced looming civil war and crushing poverty.

“Frank Duff was a man who, in the face of a major social challenge, did something … He gathered likeminded men and women around him into a movement of spiritual renewal, prayer and Christian service.” Such movements, the Archbishop indicated, would have a critical role to play in calling Irish Catholics - both the clergy and the laity - back to the essence of their faith.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - The discovery of the first known microorganism on Earth to thrive on the toxic chemical arsenic will help expand scientists’ understanding of the definition of life, said the head of the Vatican Observatory.

“It’s clear that if we are searching for life forms in the universe, we have to at least know what to look for: that is, to define what a living being is,” said Jesuit Fr Jose Funes.

The recent discovery of a life form based on a completely different chemistry “will surely contribute to expanding our conceptual horizons on the subject” of what could be life and living matter, he said in an article in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano on 4 December.

A team of astrobiology researchers - funded by NASA - recently discovered a microbe strain, called GFAJ-1, in California’s Mono Lake, which has unusually high levels of salinity, alkalinity and arsenic.

“Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur are the six basic building blocks of all known forms of life on Earth,” a NASA press release said on 2 December.

However, GFAJ-1 is able to thrive and reproduce using arsenic since it substitutes the toxic chemical for phosphorus in its cell components, the press release said.

Fr Funes wrote, “In short, it’s a microbe that breathes arsenic.”

“The study of planets with atmospheres outside the solar system reintroduces the question of the possibility of life in the universe,” wrote the Jesuit astronomer.

Another series of discover-

Fr Jose Funes SJ

ies recently published in Nature magazine also have interesting consequences on science’s understanding of the universe, wrote Fr Funes.

Researchers have determined that there may be triple the number of stars, bringing the estimated total to 300 sextillion, or 300 followed by 21 zeroes.

The new tally comes after scientists discovered there are more red dwarf stars than previously calculated, particularly in elliptical galaxies.

Fr Funes wrote that the greater number of stars in the universe might mean “the proportion of dark matter in the galaxies” is less than previously estimated.

A greater number of stars also “very probably” would increase the number of planets “and with this, increases the probability of life in the universe,” he wrote.

However, he wrote, scientists may never know because the galaxies under question are too far away - making observation of the individual stars within them too difficult.

“Not even the wildest fantasies of the writers of Star Trek and Star Wars imagined the possibility of exploring other galaxies,” he wrote.

Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2002 film Catch me if you can

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin

Those we don’t want to meet are biggest blessings

Bee in my bonnet

A reflection on the struggles of those forgotten in society and Church

By Barbara Harris

Gifts do not always come in packing that is attractive to me. Sometimes even the gift is not something that I desire or that I can foresee any use for.

The same with issues of my health problems or people whom I meet. I’m always amazed, though, that looking back I can see how my life has been blessed by adverse events or those unwanted gifts and even people I did not want to meet.

Recently, I sat with June as her 21 year old daughter died. June said, “You know when my daughter was born it was so hard. She was our third daughter. My husband wanted a son but instead Clare was born. Clare had extra genetic material (Down Syndrome) and Cerebral Palsy. I hadn’t asked for or wanted to deal with a baby with those disabilities.

“When our other babies were born we were straightaway onto the telephone to let the grandparents, other family members and friends know. With Clare, though, we were scared, ashamed and too devastated to tell anyone. Somehow we felt it was our fault, I certainly felt that somehow I had done something wrong and the birth of Clare was my punishment.

“I began to notice that we had very few visitors and fewer phone calls of congratulations. My husband struggled to get up the courage for short visits to the hospital and found it very hard to hold Clare and did not know how to let go of his own grief.

“I kept thinking This is a bad dream and I will wake up and it

will all go away. It didn’t. I found myself having to deal with other people’s grief and an ocean of well intentioned ‘solutions’ suggested by friends. I heard how ‘it would be too much for you to have Clare at home’ as well as ‘we are praying for a miracle for you’.

“All well meaning but not what I wanted at that time.

“Out of hospital and home meant never-ending return visits as well as trips to specialists and clinics and trying to spend time with my other two children. It was exhausting. It all became too much for my husband and he packed his bags and left.”

People who are sick either recover or die and there is closure. A person’s disability, however, continues and that is a challenge.

I can put up with any amount of discomfort when I know that in X days/months it will end. Disability is open-ended.

The day in and day out dealing with disabilities can be especially draining.

Working through the unanswerable “why”, preconceived ideas, juggling lives and needs is like a continuous dark tunnel with no light.

Parents expect a perfect baby and the definition of “perfect” is ingrained in us from an early age. I myself had definite views about perfection- what it looks like and where I will find it.

Reflecting on the Christmas story changes all that. Jesus’ birth in the squalor of a stable was not what I would envisage for the birth of a king.

A king should have been surrounded by heaps of servants ready to respond to his beck and call.

What I see, though, are animals and a few shepherds together with animal waste and smells. Not very kingly in my mind. Not the perfect setting, not the gift many would have wanted or expected.

So what can I do when a friend or family member gives birth to a baby who is different? June said, “Reflect on your presumptions. As time pro-

Of course I will sin again...

Q&A

By Fr John Flader

‘I will not sin again’

gressed and Clare grew older and struggled to be accepted I noticed that friends would chat normally about the other two daughters and then ask, ‘How is little Clare?’ Never mind that Clare was 20 years old”. There is always the expectation that ‘purpose’ and ‘power’ means a job, money, friends, and status, to just name a few for starters.

I think we have a rigid interpretation that each individual must conform to expectations about the three Ps – Perfection, Power and Purpose. Clare was not perfect in the eyes of most people. Yet, June told me, “Clare couldn’t speak; never had an education or a job, but she has changed my life. She showed me the light. She challenged the lives of so many other people. Their lives were changed by just being herself. God has used her to show His love, His power and His purpose.”

The baby born in an animal shelter and laid in an animal feeding trough because there was no room in the inn in Bethlehem, an insignificant small rural town changed the whole world so much so that we measure our calendar years centred on that birthday – BEFORE CHRIST (BC) and ANNO DOMINI (AD), the year of the Lord, after Christ.

So the next gift given to me, whether it be a parcel poorly wrapped, a health issue, a person I would rather not have to deal with, a situation that I don’t want, I will think of Clare and her giftedness to her mother, June and to all those whose lives were changed because she was born. She was perfect. She had a purpose and what power.

I will think of Jesus, the Lord of the entire universe, gifting Himself to me and the world as a helpless baby. What perfection? What purpose? What power?

Barbara Harris is coordinator of the Emmanuel Centre, a self-help centre run for and by people with disabilities, their families and those who work with people with disabilities. Contact emmanuelcentre@westnet.com.au

Q: In the act of contrition after confession I say “and with the help of thy grace I will not sin again”. I have always had a problem with this since I know I will sin again. Sometimes to be safe I say “I will try not to sin again”. What should I say?

Your question troubles many people and it is a good time to answer it.

True sorrow for sin, or sorrow for having offended another person for that matter, always implies the determination to try not to do it again. Without this determination, which we call purpose of amendment, there is no true sorrow.

This determination lies between two extremes: on one hand the conviction or statement of fact that we will not sin again, and on the other an uncaring attitude that does not even try to avoid sinning. Let us first examine these extremes.

Firstly, as you say, we know we will sin again, no matter how hard we try not to. It is simply a consequence of the weakness of human nature wounded by original sin. With original sin comes the fomes peccati, the tinder of sin; that is, the tendency or facility to sin which we all experience.

Even St Paul speaks of his difficulty in avoiding sin: “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death” (Romans 7:21-24)?

And St John writes: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 Jn 1:8).

No matter how determined we are to avoid it, we know that inevitably we will sin again. The Council of Trent tells us that we cannot avoid all sins except with a special grace of God: “If

anyone says that a man once justified … can during his whole life avoid all sins, even those that are venial, except by a special privilege from God, as the Church holds in regard to the Blessed Virgin, let him be anathema” (Sess. VI, Can. 23).

Therefore, in the act of contrition when we say “I will not sin again,” we are not stating a fact, or even a conviction that we will not sin again. No one can have that conviction, since we know our weak and sinful nature.

But on the other hand, neither can we have the careless attitude of one who does not even try to avoid sinning because he knows he is going to fall anyway. That would not be sorrow at all.

This attitude is what some non-Catholics accuse us of having when we go to Confession – that we commit sins, go to Confession to be purified and then go back to our sinful ways without even trying to avoid them.

True sorrow implies a firm resolution or determination to do everything possible to avoid falling again into the sins we have just confessed.

The Council of Trent teaches that “the repentance of a Christian … includes … a determination to avoid sins and a hatred of them…” (Sess .VI, Chp. 14). We must both have a hatred or detestation of sin, seeing it as ugly and offensive to God, and a determination to avoid sins in the future.

We notice that the Council is saying only that we must have a “determination to avoid sins”, not a conviction that we will in fact avoid them.

This determination includes the resolution to avoid the occasions of sin. Thus if we have voluntarily put ourselves into occasions of sin such as associating with certain people, watching certain television programmes or films, looking at certain sites on the internet, etc, which have led us into sins, our purpose of amendment must include the resolution to avoid those occasions.

It should also include praying for help to avoid sinning, and doing penance, both to make up for past sins and to strengthen the will in grace for future battles.

If we have these dispositions, then our sorrow is true and genuine, and God will forgive us. Contact director@caec.com.au.

Jill Loveless smiles as counsellors braid her hair during a break at Camp Sharing Meadows in Rolling Prairie, Indiana, for adults with developmental disabilities which draws participants from Indiana, Illinois and Michigan. It combines traditional camp activities with daily counsellor-directed group sharing sessions.

PHOTO: CNS/KAREN CALLAWAY, NORTHWEST INDIANA CATHOLIC

Panorama entries must be in by 12pm Monday.

Contributions may be emailed to office@therecord.com.au, faxed to 9325 4580, or mailed to PO Box 3075, Adelaide Terrace, Perth WA 6832.

FRIDAY, 10 DECEMBER

Healing Mass

10am at St Simon Peter Parish, 20 Prendiville Ave, Ocean Reef. If you are suffering from any kind of sickness, physical or emotional, please do come to receive the Sacrament of Healing of the Sick. Light refreshments served in our Parish Centre after the Mass.

SATURDAY, 11 DECEMBER

Divine Mercy and Healing Mass

2.30pm at St Francis Xavier’s Church, 25 Windsor St, East Perth. Main celebrant will be Fr Marcellinus Meilak OFM. Divine Mercy Prayers, followed by the Veneration of First Class Relic of St Faustina Kowolska. Reconciliation in English will be offered. Refreshments afterwards. Enq: John 9457 7771.

St Padre Pio Day of Prayer

8.30am at St Mary’s, Franklin St, Leederville. Programme as follows: St Padre Pio DVD in parish centre. 10am Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, Rosary, Divine Mercy, Silent Adoration and Benediction. 11am Holy Mass, St Padre Pio Liturgy, Confessions available. 12pm shared lunch, tea and coffee supplied. Enq: Des 6278 1540.

Carmelite Final Vows

9.30am at the Carmelite Monastery, 100 Adelma Rd, Nedlands. A solemn concelebrated Mass during which Sr Thanh Catherine of Divine Mercy (Thanh Ngoc Tran BUI) will make her Final Vows. Archbishop Hickey will be the Principal Celebrant. All are welcome to the Mass and morning tea afterwards.

SUNDAY, 12 DECEMBER

Anniversary Celebrations

9.30am at Our Lady Help of Christians Church, East Victoria Park. If you have a past association with the parish or school, we welcome you to celebrate with us, Mass followed by refreshments. Please bring copies of photos and/or memorabilia to share and reminisce.

Lessons and Carols

Christmas carols led by singers and instrumentalists from WAAPA (Western Australia Academy of the Performing Arts). Scriptures read by members of the local media, political, sport and Religious communities . Refreshments afterwards. St Paul’s Catholic Church, 106 Rookwood St, Mt Lawley. Contact: 9271 5253/stpaulsmtl@iinet.net.au.

The World Apostolate of Fatima - Eucharistic Hour

3.15pm at Our Lady’s Assumption Church, Dianella. The hour in reparation for sin of abortion in Australia. All welcome. Enq: 9339 2614.

THURSDAY, 16 DECEMBER  FRIDAY, 24 DECEMBER

Preparation for the birth of Jesus Christ

To prepare ourselves for the birth of Jesus Christ there is a Portuguese tradition of having Mass every morning for nine days ending on Christmas Eve. The Mass will be said in English and the choir will sing songs dedicated to the birth of Christ in Portuguese. This will be held at St Jerome’s Parish, Spearwood and begin at 5.30am each day of the novena.

THURSDAY, 16 DECEMBER

Christmas Concert

7pm at the WA Italian Club, 217-225 Fitzgerald St, Perth. Featuring Collegium Musicum Choir. Admittance free. Light refreshments will be served. Enq: WA Italian Club 9328 4104.

FRIDAY, 17 DECEMBER

Medjugorje Evening of Prayer

7-9pm at All Saint’s Chapel, 77 St George’s Tce, Allendale Sq, Perth. An Evening of Prayer with Our Lady Queen of Peace. Eucharistic Adoration, Rosary, Holy Mass. Celebrant Fr Bogoni. Ivan, alleged Visionary from Medjugorje, coming to St Mary’s Cathedral 22 February 2011, 6-9pm. Enq: 9402 2480 or email medjugorje@y7mail.com.

SATURDAY, 18 DECEMBER

Novena

5pm at Holy Trinity Church, Embleton. Devotions in honour of Our Lady of Good Health, Vailankanni, followed by Vigil Mass. Enq: Church Office 9271 5528 or George 9272 1379.

MONDAY, 10 JANUARY  FRIDAY, 14 JANUARY

The Young Salesian Summer Camps

Nanga Bush Camp on the Murray River at Dwellingup. Fun filled camp for 12-15 year olds with a Christian background. Lots of activities such as rafting, lantern stalk, disco, Pictionary, camp Masses and more. Cost - $230 including all meals and transport. This is a well organised and supervised camp. Enq: Erin 0412 672 256 or Graham 0418 979 600.

EVERY SUNDAY

Pilgrim Mass - Shrine of the Virgin of the Revelation 2pm at Shrine, 36 Chittering Rd, Bullsbrook. Commencing with Rosary followed by Benediction. Reconciliation is available before every celebration. Anointing of the Sick administered during Mass every second Sunday of the month. Pilgrimage in honour of the Virgin of the Revelation, last Sunday of the month. Side entrance to the church and shrine open daily between 9am-5pm. Enq Sacri 9447 3292.

Extraordinary Form of Latin Holy Mass

11am Sunday and 7.30pm Monday except 3rd Monday of the month, at St Joseph’s Parish, 20 Hamilton St, Bassendean.

THIRD SUNDAY OF THE MONTH

Oblates of St Benedict

2pm at St Joseph’s Convent, York St, South Perth. Oblates are affiliated with the Benedictine Abbey of New Norcia. All welcome to study the rule of St Benedict and its relevance to the everyday life of today for lay people. Vespers and tea later. Enq: Secretary 9457 5758.

EVERY FOURTH SUNDAY OF THE MONTH

Holy Hour for Vocations to the Priesthood, Religious Life

2-3pm at Infant Jesus Parish, Wellington St, Morley. The hour includes Exposition of the Blessed Eucharist, silent prayer, Scripture and prayers of intercession. Come and pray that those discerning vocations to the priesthood or Religious life hear clearly God’s loving call to them.

LAST MONDAY OF EVERY MONTH

Christian Spirituality Presentation

7.30-9.15pm at the Church hall behind St Swithan’s Anglican Church, 195 Lesmurdie Rd, Lesmurdie. Stephanie Woods presents The Desert Period of Christianity, 260 to 600AD. From this time period came the understanding of the monastic lifestyle and contemplative prayer. No cost. Enq Lynne 9293 3848.

EVERY TUESDAY

Novena and Benediction to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal

6pm at the Pater Noster Church, Marmion and Evershed Sts, Myaree. Mass at 5.30pm. Enq: John 0408 952 194.

EVERY WEDNESDAY

Holy Spirit of Freedom Community

7.30pm at The Church of Christ, 111 Stirling St, Perth. We are delighted to welcome everyone to attend our Holy Spirit of Freedom Praise Meeting. Enq 9475 0155 or hsofperth@gmail.com.

SECOND WEDNESDAY OF THE MONTH

Chaplets of the Divine Mercy

7.30pm at St Thomas More Catholic Church, Dean Rd, Bateman. A beautiful, prayerful, and sung devotion will be accompanied by Exposition and followed by Benediction. All are welcome. Enq: George Lopez on 9310 9493(h) or 9325 2010(w).

EVERY THURSDAY

Catholic Questions and Answers

7-7.30pm at St Joseph’s Parish Centre, 20 Hamilton St, Bassendean. Catechesis learned easily with questions and answers. The Catechism of the Catholic Church. Adult learning and deepening of the Catholic Faith, with Fr John Corapi DVD series, 7.30-9pm.

Divine Mercy

11am at St John and Paul Church, Pine Tree Gully Rd, Willetton. Pray the Rosary and Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and for the consecrated life especially here in John Paul parish, conclude with veneration of the First Class Relic of St Faustina. Please do come and join us in prayer. Enq:

John 9457 7771.

Taize Prayer and Meditation

7.30-8.30pm at Our Lady of Grace Church, 3 Kitchener St, North Beach. Prayer and meditation using songs from the Taize phenomenon. In peace and candlelight, we make our pilgrimage. All are warmly invited. Enq: Joan 9448 4457 or parish 9448 4888.

The Cathedral Praise Meeting

7.45pm at Faith Centre, 450 Hay St, Perth. When the Spirit Comes – A Holy Spirit Seminar. Each evening –worship, teaching, small group sharing, refreshments. All welcome. Enq: Flame Ministries International 9382 3668.

FIRST FRIDAY OF THE MONTH

Holy Hour for Vocations to the Priesthood and Religious Life

7pm at Little Sisters of the Poor Chapel, 2 Rawlins St, Glendalough. Mass, followed by Adoration with Fr Doug Harris. All welcome. Refreshments provided.

Communion of Reparation All Night Vigil

7pm-1am at Corpus Christi Church, Lochee St, Mosman Park. Vigil consists of Mass, Rosary, Confession and Adoration. Celebrant Fr T Bogoni. All warmly welcomed. Enq: Vicky 0400 282 357.

Catholic Faith Renewal Evening

7.30pm at St John and Paul’s Parish, Pinetree Gully Rd, Willetton. Songs of Praise, sharing by a priest followed by Thanksgiving Mass and light refreshments after Mass. All welcome to attend and bring your family and friends. Enq: Kathy 9295 0913, Ann: 0412 166 164 or catholicfaithrenewal@gmail.com.

The Alliance, Triumph and Reign of the United Hearts of Jesus and Mary

9pm at St Bernadette’s Church, Glendalough. Commences with exposition of the Blessed Sacrament followed by Reflections, Rosary and alternating with healing sessions. Vigil concludes with the Holy Mass at midnight. Come, be healed and be part of the Lord’s Mighty Work. Enq: Fr Doug 9444 6131 or Dorothy 9342 5845.

Healing Mass

7pm at St Peter’s Parish, Wood St, Inglewood. Reconciliation, praise and worship, exposition of Blessed Sacrament, Benediction, anointing of the sick, and special blessing. Celebrants Fr Sam and other clergy. All welcome. Enq: Priscilla 0433 457 352, Catherine 0433 923 083 or Mary-Ann 0409 672 304.

AA ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

Is alcohol costing you more than just money? Enq: AA 9325 3566.

OPPORTUNITY FOR COMMUNITY SERVICE

Emmanuel Self-Help Centre for People with Disabilities is looking for volunteers to transport newspapers and other recyclable paper from its Perth office to a Canning Vale paper mill about every six weeks. Manual car driver’s licence required. Physical fitness is advantageous as heavy lifting is involved; Centre staff will assist. Enq: Fr Paul 9328 8113 or emmanuelcentre@westnet.com.au.

AL  ANON FAMILY GROUPS

If your home is unhappy because somebody drinks too much, we can help with understanding and supporting families and friends of problem drinkers. Enq: 9325 7528.

ST MARY MACKILLOP COMMEMEMORATIVE MERCHANDISE

eg commemorative mugs and plates, collector’s items, all available from the Mary MacKillop Centre, 16 York St, South Perth. Enq: Sr Maree 0414 683 296.

PILGRIMAGE TO THE HOLY LAND.

St. Peters’ Parish in Inglewood is organizing a visit to Jordan, Israel and Egypt, from 13rd-26th of March 2011. The pilgrimage will cost A$ 3,990, everything included in it. Fr. SAM will be the Spiritual Director. Eng Jim 0411615239, zawnaing@optusnet.com.au

ACROSS

7 Church runway

8 Member of a certain Religious Order

10 Hail Mary or Grace before meals

12 Patron saint of young girls

13 Matteo Ricci served here

16 Cousin of Saul

18 Communion wafer

20 Tunic-like vestment

21 Poor ____ (Religious Order)

22 Papal ___

25 Tribe of Israel

26 “…but do not perceive

27

28

29

1

2

3

4

5 “Love

6 ___

9

11

ACCOMMODATION

HOLIDAY ACCOMMODATION

ESPERANCE 3 bedroom house f/furnished Ph 09 9076 5083.

FEMALE HOUSE MATE WANTED Opportunity to live with young Catholic women in the style of the Emmanuel community. A room will be available at the end of the year to join a household of four. Where: 29 Jugan St, Mount Hawthorn, close to St Bernadette’s, Glendalough, shopping and cafes. Enq: Rebecca aura157@yahoo.com.au or call 0433 244 973.

BOOK BINDING

NEW BOOK BINDING, General Book Repairs; Rebinding; New Ribbons; Old Leather Bindings Restored. Tydewi Bindery 0422 968 572.

TRADE SERVICES

BRENDON HANDYMAN

SERVICES Home, building maintenance, repairs and renovations. NOR. Ph 0427 539 588.

BRICK RE-POINTING Ph Nigel 9242 2952.

PERROTT PAINTING Pty Ltd

For all your residential, commercial painting requirements. Ph Tom Perrott 9444 1200.

PICASSO PAINTING Top service. Ph 0419 915 836, fax 9345 0505.

FURNITURE REMOVAL

ALL AREAS. Competitive Rates. Mike Murphy Ph 0416 226 434.

Deadline:

LAWN MOWING

WRR LAWN MOWING & WEED

SPRAYING Garden clean ups and rubbish removal. Get rid of bindii, jojo and other unsightly weeds. Based in Tuart Hill. Enq 9443 9243 or 0402 326 637.

DAYBREAK HEALING

Each session offers computerised health scan.

ACUPUNCTURE Aroma-oil Cupping Massage. Clinic: Guildford / Morley Ph: 0438-979036.

SETTLEMENTS

ARE YOU BUYING OR SELLING

real estate or a business? Why not ask Excel Settlements for a quote for your settlement. We offer reasonable fees, excellent service and no hidden costs. Ring Excel on 9481 4499 for a quote. Check our web site on www.excelsettlements.com.

FOR SALE

ART FOR THE CATHEDRAL www.margaretfane.com.au.

OPPORTUNITIES

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY

Work from Home - P/T or F/T, 02 8230 0290 or visit www.dreamlife1.com.

MUST SEE CONCERT

Collegium Symphonic Chorus Collegium Baroque Orchestra Conductor: Margaret Pride

HANDEL’S MESSIAH

Soloists: Sara Macliver, SallyAnne Russell, Jason Wasley & James Clayton

Sat 18th Dec at 8 pm

PERTH CONCERT HALL BOCS 9484 1133/ www.bocsticketing.com.au

RELIGIOUS PRODUCTS

CATHOLICS CORNER Retailer of Catholic products specialising in gifts, cards and apparel for Baptism, Communion and Confirmation. Ph 9456 1777. Shop 12, 64-66 Bannister Rd, Canning Vale. Open Mon-Sat.

CONVENIENT LOCATIONS FOR BIBLES, BOOKS CARDS, CDs/DVDs, candles, medals, statues and gifts at Ottimo. Shop 108, Trinity Arcade, 671 Hay Street, Perth. Ph 9322 4520. Mon-Fri 9am-6pm, Sat 10am2pm and at Station Street Market Subiaco on Fri-Sun 9am-5pm.

RICH HARVEST YOUR CHRISTIAN SHOP Looking for Bibles, CDs, books, cards, gifts, statues, Baptism/Communion apparel, religious vestments, etc? Visit us at 39 Hulme Ct (off McCoy St), Myaree, Ph 9329 9889 (after 10.30am Mon to Sat). We are here to serve.

KINLAR

13

14 Tu St John of the Cross, priest, doctor of the Church (M) Wh Zeph 3:1-2.9-13

flourish Mt 1:1-17 Genealogy of Jesus

18 S Jer 23:5-8 A branch for David Vio Ps 71:1-2.12-13.18-19 Right Judgement Mt 1:18-24 Mary with child

The Record Bookshop’s Christmas Catalogue

A Priest Forever

Nine Signs of Renewal and Hope

Alfred McBride

RRP $19.95

In this very personal and moving reflection on the meaning of the priesthood, Father Alfred McBride explores a priest’s commitment to feed our people and witness the Church’s social teachings, to spend time in daily prayer, to find solutions to the crisis of priestly identity plaguing today’s priests, and to become a man of personal mercy in all one’s dealings as a priest.

A Priest Forever is McBride’s search for fresh growths in vocations as well as new hope in the hearts of priests everywhere who again say, “Yes, Lord,” to the challenge of love of God and our beloved people. Simply put, Alfred McBride sees in faith the renewal of Catholic priests.

Ireland’s Saint The Essential Biography of St Patrick

JB Bury

RRP $24.95

Saint Patrick is a man shrouded in legend, myth, and history. Discover how we know, what we know about him, and what has passed down to us in tradition. Taken as a slave from England, he eventually escaped, only to return as a missionary to the people who enslaved him. Set amidst the colourful history of Ireland, readers will enjoy learning about the historical context of Patrick, as well as the man. Inset text allows for further description and explanation of unfamiliar people, places, events, and terms. 205 pages, indexed, paperback.

h

The Singing Heart of the World Creation, Evolution and Faith

John Feehan

RRP $35.95

S

The central argument in The Singing Heart of the World is that human reason occupies the pivotal position which science claims for it, but that the scientific endeavour itself penetrates insufficiently deeply into the human encounter with reality, and is on this account inadequately rational.

The book begins with an overview of the universe that science has unfolded for our contemplation and response, and ends with the argument that future humanity can thrive only through the unfettered exercise of reason allied with virtue and grounded in faith in a God who is now seen to be utterly greater than the smaller Gods of a more restricted view of reality.

Christmas Special

Sue and Leo Kane RRP $17.95

The Little Brown Book

A walk together on the beach, pondering retirement plans, led Sue and Leo Kane on a unique adventure – they collaborated to pen The Little Brown Book which explores Mary MacKillop’s spirituality in our everyday livesand they have been busy ever since.

The easy-to-read book is designed to be ‘dipped into’, a page at a time, rather than read from start to finish. It explores the personality and spirituality of Mary and what she could mean for each of us.

All of the pages rely heavily on Mary’s own words, backed by Scripture passages, that support her many insights. They also include a brief reflection on how all of this might be applied in our busy, everyday lives.