The Record Newspaper 20 April 2011

Bishop Donald Sproxton, who is overseeing the implementation of the new translations of the Missal in the Archdiocese of Perth, has released the timeline for their introduction. Printed aids are also included.

EASTER 2011

“Iam the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”

John

True Love Waits reboots in 10th year

BY ANTHONY BARICH

PERTH’S branch of the international True Love Waits movement is using its own 10th anniversary this year as a launching pad to breathe new life into it after a period of stagnation.

When Archbishop Barry Hickey offers Mass at Sacred Heart Church in Highgate at 2pm on 30 April to mark the anniversary, current leader Thomas Seeber hopes it will be the start of a new wave of interest for the movement which he believes is still as critical as ever, not only for the Church’s mission but for society at large.

True Love Waits started in Perth in February 2001 with a pledge ceremony by 14 youth in their early 20s at the Redemptorist Monastery in North Perth. Over 200 pledges have been taken since.

Key to its foundation was Redemptorist Fr Hugh Thomas and Grant Gorddard and Clare Pike heading up a core youth leadership group who would go on to host over 50 presentations between 2001 and 2004, including in about 15 schools.

Its ‘open sessions’ at Highgate were hugely successful, where youth discussed real love, relationships, the virtue of chastity, sexuality, the dignity of the human person and testimonies of people living the chaste life, the joys and struggles, including those whose lives had been transformed by integrating their sexuality the way God intended.

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They also covered related issues like modesty, natural family planning, abortion, pornography and self-mastery and sexually transmitted infections.

Now Tom, 32, a civil engineer married with a four-month-old daughter, wants the renewal to come from TLW’s core vision statement, which, as always, is to “know in our hearts and live in our lives the truth and meaning of sexuality and teach it to young people”.

Using Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body as its foundation, TLW aims to provide formation for a core team who are then enabled to provide catechesis to the wider community. “We back that up by being witnesses in our own lives, supporting each other in a community of likeminded people,” he said.

Tom now wants to drive TLW in a new direction – away from a centralised ministry at Highgate and into schools and parishes.

His 12-month plan is to find and form a key leadership group as Fr Thomas, Grant and Clare did in 2000; then, within five years, he wants TLW present in schools and parishes across the Archdiocese.

There is a unique opportunity, especially in Catholic schools, he said, as high school students are, like he was once, searching for the truth, but may not go to Mass or even believe in God.

But this renewal will take time. After

the initial surge in 2000, Grant passed the leadership baton to his brother Stephen, but now both brothers have entered St Charles’ Seminary to train for the priesthood, while Clare is Mother Superior of the new Religious association called the Missionaries of the Gospel.

Stephen worked virtually full-time for TLW in 2008, and drew over 80 youth to a Created and Redeemed DVD series over several weeks at Claremont parish.

The DVD series featured Christopher West, the US lay speaker who popularised Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body teaching on the fulfillment to be found in the Church’s teaching on sexuality for a new generation.

Though West recently returned from a self-imposed sabbatical, having been criticised and defended by respected conservative theologians on some parts of his interpretations of the late Pontiff’s teachings, “you can’t deny that he put Theology of the Body on the map, at least in the western world”, Tom told The Record

West introduced Theology of the Body to TLW’s leaders in 2003 at a Perth forum hosted by The Record and attended by hundreds of youth, and Clare, Grant, Lydia Fernandez (now manager of Pregnancy Assistance) and Natalie Wood went on to complete a two-week TOB intensive at the John Paul Institute for Marriage and Family Studies in Melbourne which became the foundation of their ministry.

Grant, Stephen and Lydia (now Stanley) have returned to help Tom rebuild the ministry with others, but, with a young family, Tom needs help.

John Paul II’s biographer, theologian George Weigel, called Theology of the Body a “ticking time bomb” that was just waiting to go off once people realised the beauty of the body of work that the late Pope called a detailed exposition of Pope Paul VI’s controversial 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae (“on human life”).

The bomb certainly went off in Tom’s life. Since he made a conscious decision to be a Christian at 13 despite being a cradle Catholic, he struggled with one big question: why would God create such a wonderful thing like sex, only to put restraints on it?

No one – priests and laity alike – could give him a substantial explanation beyond pious platitudes, so he lived the alternative “worldly” lifestyle at university “almost as if to prove the Church wrong”, he said.

At age 27, after 15 years of searching for the Truth, he read West’s Introduction to Theology of the Body, and “the penny dropped”. His life was transformed and he set about reading everything he could on the subject.

He returned from World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney raring to find an outlet to promote this teaching about which he is so passionate.

To help Tom rebuild the TLW ministry, contact him on truelovewaitswa@yahoo.com or 0423 390 819

Help seminarians attend WYD

THE Redemptoris Mater Archdiocesan Missionary Seminary in Morley is appealing for help to send 16 of their seminarians to World Youth Day in Madrid in August.

ordained since Redemptoris Mater commenced; three more -Antonio Scala, Wilson Donizetti and Marcello Parrawill be ordained to the diaconate on 26 May at St Mary’s Cathedral.

chy in Australia. While a student at Downside, he had also been under the direction of John Bede Polding who later became the first Archbishop of Sydney.

With no regular source of income – the seminary relies on Divine Providence - Rector Fr Michael Moore SM is seeking help for future Perth priests to join Pope Benedict XVI and an estimated two million fellow pilgrims. Since Redemptoris Mater opened its doors in 1991, it has continued to educate, feed and prepare future priests for the Archdiocese on the basis of ongoing donations from friends, supporters and even complete strangers. Fr Moore is hoping to raise the estimated $4,000 per seminarian needed for the pilgrimage.

Twenty seven priests have been

Before going to Spain, the seminarians will first travel to Oxford in the UK to spend a week announcing the Gospel, a common exercise among Neocatechumenal communities. Fr Moore is also hoping seminarians will be able to visit the Benedictine Abbey of Downside, near Bath.

Downside has numerous connections with the Church in Australia. Fr, later Bishop, William Ullathorne, who was educated at Downside, was based in New South Wales from 1833 to 1836 and was one of the main individuals responsible for persuading Pope Gregory XVI to establish the hierar-

In WA, the late Abbot of New Norcia monastery, Placid Spearitt OSB, was previously a monk of Downside.

Priests ordained from Redemptoris Mater are incardinated in the Archdiocese of Perth but, under an agreement with Archbishop Barry Hickey, may be released for missionary work anywhere in the world.

Several priests of the Archdiocese are now working as missionaries throughout the world including Finland, the Northern Territory, remote locations in Papua New Guinea and various Australian dioceses.

Fr Moore can be contacted on (08) 9275 7411.

The Record’s coverage of True Love Wait’s first pledges at the Redemptorist Monastery in 2001.

Tom Seeber

San Damiano links Balcatta’s past, present

BY BRIDGET SPINKS

THE $2 million, two storey building for the new hall and library at St Lawrence’s Primary School in Balcatta was blessed by parish priest Fr Irek Czech SDS on 13 April at a whole school assembly with parents and invited guests.

The new hall and library are part of an upgrade to the school grounds which includes the conversion of the former library into a computer lab and music room, refurbishment of existing buildings and the installation of shade cloth over the playground area.

Dignitaries at the occasion included Deputy Mayor of Stirling and St Lawrence and Mary Immaculate parishioner, Cr Giovanni Italiano; the Director of the Catholic Education Office in WA, Ron Dullard; and representatives from Santelli Architects, Ken

Paterson Architects and PINDAN Building Company.

The liturgical choir from the 258pupil, pre-kindy to Year 6 primary school sang Praise to the Lord, a Fr Irek-penned praise and worship song, for the opening hymn, taking the priest by surprise. A Cross of San Damiano will be hung in the hall, in memory of the Capuchins who were entrusted with the parish in its early days and who built its church. The Cross of San Damiano is also linked to the Salvatorian community who now run the parish because the soon to be beatified founder of the Salvatorians, Fr Francis Jordan, was close to the Franciscan spirituality, Fr Irek said.

The Federal Government provided $2,117,279 in funding as part of the Building the Education Revolution (BER) scheme and the school community kicked in an additional $240,000.

MARANATHA INSTITUTE FOR ADULT FAITH FORMATION

Tuesday (10th May – 28th Jun)

9.30am-12pm Creation Spirituality with Sr Shelley Barlow

1pm – 3.30pm Sainthood & Mary MacKillop – A Saint for all Australians with Dr Judith Woodward

Thursday (10th May – 28th Jun)

9.30am -12pm The Gospel & Letters of St. John with Sr Shelley Barlow

1pm – 3.30pm Parish Bereavement Support Ministry with Gerry Smith

Friday (13th May – 1st July)

9.30am-12pm Ministry to those who Grieve Level II with Gerry Smith ( Level 1

Boy wonder stars in Busselton’s 125th

BY MIA WUGOL

AN event in Bunbury which raised $4,300 for charity on 3 April was not only a musical affair, but also an ecumenical one.

The money was raised at the Rhapsody Concert; a part of Busselton parish’s 125th anniversary celebrations with over 250 people in attendance.

Held at the Busselton Uniting Church Performance Centre, funds raised will go to the Busselton Vinnies and the Busselton Uniting Church Outreach programme.

Pianist Mark Coughlan, who has performed throughout Europe, was the main event, supported by special quest violinist Stephanie Dean, Busselton Choral Society’s Janet Depiazzi and MacKillop Catholic College student Mathew Ho who started piano lessons in Hong Kong at age three.

Mathew, 15, studying Grade 7 piano, is a member of the youth group in the Busselton Catholic parish and plays piano for Sunday Masses. He gained first place in the Under 16 Classical period section at the 2010 Bunbury Eisteddfod.

The afternoon’s programme, which included works by Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, Chopin, Cesar Franck, Kurt Weill and George Gershwin, was compiled to reflect the many nationalities that have comprised the community over the years.

Uniting Church minister Wes Hartley offered some insights into the establishment of the parish and the importance music

in brief...

Clontarf boarding hostel construction underway

CONSTRUCTION has commenced on an 80 bed

played in the Catholic and Uniting Church communities throughout history.

Catholic life has existed in Busselton since the earliest days of settlement. The Abbey family of Newtown and the McCourt family of Wonnerup were among the prominent Catholic pioneers of the district throughout the 19th century.

Bishop Rosendo Salvado from New Norcia was one of the early visiting priests who, in 1854, compiled a list of 71 Catholics in the Vasse district out of at total population of 100.

The first St Joseph’s Church was built in 1868 but it was not until 1886 that Busselton became a parish with its own full time priest.

hostel at Clontarf Aboriginal College in Waterford.

According to the Catholic Education Office of WA website, the project is being funded by a joint initiative between the Catholic Education Office WA, the Indigenous Land Council and BHP Billiton.

One of the major challenges facing Indigenous students studying far from their home is ensuring they have quality

Tuesdays

Fridays

The first Catholic school in the area opened in 1903, and in 1906 Villa Carlotta in Adelaide Street was purchased and became a convent and boarding school run by the Sisters of Our Lady of the Mission.

Following their departure in the 1920s, it was taken over by the Sisters of Joseph and remained a convent until the 1960s. A new and bigger St Joseph’s Church was built on Kent Street in 1933.

The parish currently supports three churches and three schools in Bussleton, Cloisters and Dunsborough and is the home of a diverse Catholic community coming from all over Australia, as well as Britain, Ireland, Italy, Poland and Philippines.

accommodation. The website also reported that the demand for metropolitan hostel places has been steadily increasing.

The hostel at Clontarf will help alleviate such demand given the recent closure of the Swanleigh Hostel.

Construction of the hostel is due to be completed in September 2011, the site said.

MacKillop Catholic College student Mathew Ho performs during the 3 April event that was part of Busselton parish’s 125th anniversary celebrations.

PHOTO: COURTESY BUSSELTON PARISH

St Lawrence Catholic Primary School students participate in a school song during the blessing of its new $2 million hall and library. PHOTOS: BRIDGET SPINKS

UNDA to host Indigenous forum

ABORIGINAL politicians and healthcare experts will gather at the University of Notre Dame Australia at 6pm on 2 May to discuss how to increase the participation of Indigenous people in the health sector.

WA Federal and State MPs Ken Wyatt MHR and his nephew Ben Wyatt MLA will join Jenni Collard, Director of the WA Department of Health’s Office of Aboriginal Health and Kevin Cox, Director of WA country Health Service’s Aboriginal Health Unit, at UNDA’s Big Ideas evening at the Fremantle Campus’ Tannock Hall of Education Lecture Theatre at 6pm.

The event is co-hosted by UNDA’s Social Justice programme in the School of Arts and Science and Indigenous Health in the School of Medicine.

Ken Wyatt, the first Indigenous person elected to the Australian

House of Representatives, is the Liberal Member for Hasluck and a member of the Order of Australia for service to Aboriginal Health. He was born at Roelands Mission farm near Bunbury, a former home for young Indigenous children removed from their families.

Ken, who grew up in Corrigin, was formerly the director of WA’s Office of Aboriginal Health prior to being elected in March.

His mother, Mona, was one of the “Stolen Generations” of Aboriginal children removed from their parents and relocated to Roelands.

Jenni Collard has worked in various State Government Agencies of WA for the past 25 years.

Kevin Cox has worked in Aboriginal health service planning and delivery in Aboriginal community controlled health, private and State health organisations over the past 32 years.

Brady’s family hope to attend interment

BY ANTHONY BARICH

THE diocese of Perth’s founding Bishop John Brady’s family from Ireland want to attend the late prelate’s interment in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, expected to take place on a date yet to be determined.

His remains returned to Perth on 11 April and were cleared by Australian Quarantine and Customs on 14 April, after which they were received by Archbishop Barry Hickey, who was attending an Archdiocesan Council of Priests meeting Cathedral Presbytery on Victoria Square.

Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts

VICTORY AND FULFILMENT

Thurs 14, Fri 15 April, 7.30pm

Music Auditorium, ECU, 2 Bradford St, Mt Lawley

Tickets $23 Full / $18 Concession

WAAPA Box Office: (08) 9370 6817

The Faith Court Orchestra, under the direction of Peter Tanfield perform Shostakovitch’s glorious Symphony No. 9 and Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 4, a warm and fulfilling work, rich with allusions to Beethoven and featuring an adaptation of a Bach chorale and a chaconne as last movement

For idle hearts and hands and minds the devil finds a work to do!

THE RAKE’S PROGRESS

Thurs 21 April, 7.30pm

Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre

Performed by WAAPA Classical Vocal students

Devised and directed by Rachel McDonald nd directed by Rachel McDonald

Tickets $330 Full / $25 Concession BOCS (08) 9484 1133 or visit bocsticketing.com.au

Stravinsky’s operatic masterpiece re-imagineed in a workshop presentation, bringing this classic tale of debaucher y and redemmption to life in the beautiiful surrounds of the new State Theatre Ceentre

The Archbishop’s executive secretary, Fr Robert Cross, the archaeologist who led the excavation of Bishop Brady’s remains in the French parish cemetery of Amelie-Les-Bains on 20 March, said the re-interment of the prelate’s remains are dependent upon the availability of the Brady family members who wish to be in attendance, and on finding a suitable date for the public ceremony.

After receiving Bishop Brady’s remains, the Archbishop led the Council of Priests in prayer for the late prelate’s soul.

Bishop Brady, who established the diocese of Perth in the Swan River Colony in 1845, left the State in controversial circumstances.

A detailed examination of Bishop Brady’s remains – which include almost his entire skeleton bar a few foot bones – will occur in the next two months and Catholic funeral directors Bowra and O’Dea will store them until the public interment ceremony is arranged.

Fr Cross is certain that Bishop Brady was about 6 foot tall, and announced as much to the Council of Priests who were also very curious about the prelate’s remains when they were brought to their meeting room on 14 April.

The ossuary of Bishop Brady’s remains includes most of his bones, with his skull, along with hair, cloth and bone fragments.

These fragments must be separated and identified as part of the re-examination by Fr Cross, archaeologist Jade O’Brien and retired surgeon Dr Michael

Shanahan, who were present at the exhumation in France. A space has been reserved in the St Mary’s Cathedral crypt for the late Bishop Brady.

City Beach goes after lost sheep

BY ANTHONY BARICH

HOLY Spirit Parish in City Beach has launched a new programme to “Reconnect” with lapsed Catholics.

over 5,000 new flyers with the banner “Drifted away from the Catholic Church? Like to reconnect?” were distributed throughout the suburb.

faith filled community, as living witnesses of Christ’s love to others.”

waapaa.ecu.edu.au

The parish has created a portfolio on its parish council led by a new family whose story is the reason why such a ministry is so critical.

The migrant family who had been at the parish for three months without anyone noticing or speaking to them, are now spearheading the Reconnect programme, seeking to strengthen the connection between the parish and families in its adjacent primary school. Parish priest Fr Don Kettle said the fact that nobody had welcomed them in three months was “totally unacceptable” for a parish that claims to be a true spiritual community.

The initiative is the result of the Legion of Mary doorknocking over 3,000 houses in City Beach in 2008 to gauge how many lapsed Catholics lived in the area. On 14 April,

A welcoming committee has been set up which rings those who respond to the flyer, sets up a time for visitation and tells them about the parish’s apostolic work, movements and prayer groups. The parish will then assign an established parishioner or family to the respondents as part of a “buddy system” to walk with them in their faith journey.

The flyer says: “The Holy Spirit Catholic Church, City Beach welcomes you to join with us in our faith journey, especially those who are searching for information about the Catholic Church and those who wish to be engaged further in the life of the Church and its mission in the daily living of the Gospel.

“If you wish to strengthen your personal relationship with Jesus Christ, then we invite you to become a part of His vibrant,

Fr Kettle said he chose these words carefully so as not to use “overly Catholic terminology” but to focus on the basics of Christianity that lie in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and living this out in the world as a “witness” to God’s love.

The flyer, which also displays the parish’s Easter and weekly timetables, including Family and Children’s Masses and Reconciliation, includes a large image of a cord nearly broken in the middle.

“There would be Catholics out there who have disengaged from the Church for whatever reason and I just feel strongly that this is the time to do it. I’m conscious that some people are isolated, not connected to any community, so we need to reach out to those people as well as those who have drifted away.”

City Beach parish, at 2 Kearney Place, can be contacted on 9341 3079 or by emailing Holyspirit.Parish@perthcatholic.org.au.

Above, Bowra and O’Dea employees load the ossuary containing Bishop John Brady’s remains into the car of Archbishop Barry Hickey’s executive assistant and archaeologist Fr Robert Cross at the mortuary. Below, Fr Cross lifts the ossuary carrying Bishop Brady’s remains at Bowra and O’Dea’s Highgate quarters with mortuary employee Sally Weaver.

PHOTOS: ANTHONY BARICH

BY ANTHONY BARICH

EXPLANATIONS of the new translations of the Roman Missal to hit parishes by Advent or early next year have been well received throughout Perth, Auxiliary Bishop Donald Sproxton said.

The prelate said the workshops for the Catechesis on the Mass and “Train the Trainer” are being received very well by the parishes.

The workshops have introduced the interactive DVD Become One Body, One Spirit in Christ, which is available from The Record Bookshop, to some 200 participants, and have explained how to use this catechetical resource in the parishes. These workshops have been presented in Kalgoorlie and opportunities will be given to other country parishes to have the presentations.

The Bishops of the Province of Western Australia have agreed that plenty of time needs to be given to the well ordered implementation of the Missal, said Bishop Sproxton, who is overseeing the implementation process in the Archdiocese of Perth.

The people’s parts of the Mass will be introduced on the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time (29-30 October). This should enable the parishes to be prepared for and deliver the catechesis on the Mass. In some other parts of

Australia, this will be earlier. “We anticipate that the New Roman Missal will be available at the beginning of Advent, when the priests will be permitted to begin using the Presidential Prayers, the Prefaces, the Eucharistic Prayers and the rest of the Missal,” Bishop Sproxton said.

Archbishop Barry Hickey ordered the Pew Cards, which are now available to the parishes free of charge from the Centre for Liturgy. The cost of delivery will have to be charged if these cannot be collected personally upon arrangement from the Centre.

The Pew Cards have the people’s responses and the texts of the Confiteor, the Gloria, the Creed and the Mystery of Faith acclamations. The cards should be made available for the people’s use from the end of October.

The priests are to receive

homily notes which are for the Sundays of Easter Season. These provide some simple points about the elements of the Mass in general and can give a foundation for the reflections on the new translation in each community.

A series of 14 Bulletin Bits accompanies the homily notes. These are designed for use in the parishes from the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (2-3 July).

The Bulletin Bits give something of the theology and the liturgical understandings of the Mass, as well as what remains the same and the changes in the texts of the Mass, Bishop Sproxton said.

“When the series is completed, we will have arrived at the end of October when the people’s parts will be introduced,” he said.

The priests will be provided with two seminar mornings, Thursdays 16 and 23 June, on the spirituality of the Eucharistic life and presiding with the New Translation, an analysis of the texts and how the new texts will affect the way the celebrant prays them.

“The priests will be given ways to lead the parish community in the implementation of the New Missal. The in-service sessions will give the chance for the priests to get to know the extensive changes in the Missal that affect them,” the Bishop said.

Bishop Donald Sproxton

Ukraine youth steeped in culture, faith

Ukrainian community immerses its youth in faith, culture in Easter preparations

BY BOHDAN MYKYTIUK

PERTH’S Ukrainian Catholic parish has used the lead-up to Easter to immerse its youth in its rich heritage of which their faith is of central importance.

On 10 April the Ukrainian Youth Association in Perth held its third consecutive monthly culturaleducational session for members, friends and other interested people.

The sessions, held after Holy Liturgy on the second Sunday of the month, are designed to encourage youth participation in our parish and community.

The activities in February and March were dedicated to Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine’s greatest poet, and culminated in Ukrainian Youth participation in the Shevchenko Concert by way of poetry recitals, the performance of two traditional Ukrainian folk songs and a Powerpoint presentation about Taras Shevchenko’s life, poetry and painting.

With the Ukrainian Youth motto “God & Ukraine”, each session begins with Holy Liturgy followed by a half hour educational activity and ends with a sausage sizzle to which members of the parish are invited to catch up over a cup of tea or coffee and view the youth activities.

The session ends promptly at 12 noon so that everyone is good to go to enjoy the rest of Sunday, having been nourished spiritually, bodily, culturally and educationally.

Sunday, 10 April was particularly interesting because the culturaleducational session was based on preparing for Easter by decorating traditional Ukrainian Easter Eggs or Pysanky, an activity which

required considerably more than the usual half hour.

Consequently, members of the Association, with the parish priest Fr Wolodymyr Kalinecki, organised a special Youth Liturgy at 8.30am attended by about 20 people, with the readings and homily in English and the rest of the liturgy recited in Ukrainian, using bilingual prayer books.

It was particularly pleasing to see members rock up to the Liturgy and the pysanka activity which followed, with their non-Ukrainan friends, parents with their children as well as Pani Stasiw, a tireless parish and community worker, who came along to pass on her knowledge and experience.

Pysanky (pysanky -plural, pysanka-singular) comes from a Ukrainian word pysaty meaning ‘to write’.

Pysanky are eggs (either whole raw eggs, or hollow) decorated using a wax-resist method where one draws (or “writes,” as Ukrainians would say) those portions of the design which you want to remain

the colour underneath the wax. A small, hollow funnel attached to a stick is used to heat the wax and write with. This drawing or writing implement is called a kistka Archeologists have discovered ceramic pysanky in the Ukraine dating back to 1300BC linking

pysanky designs to those of Egyptian ceramics created in 1500BC, and to symbolism of the Trypillian culture in Ukraine around 6000 - 3000BC.

Unlike most societies which were patriarchal, the Trypillians were a matriarchal society worshipping “mother earth” with little interest in politics, ruling castes, power struggles, taxes and money.

Trypillian symbolism in design and colour reflected the people’s close attachment to the soil and other elements of nature.

Ukrainian symbolic art is based, in large measure, on these early ideograms, most notably the Ukrainian meander or unending line, which denotes the cyclical nature of life.

Other examples include motifs such as the circle, stars, dots, matriarchal symbols, wheat, fir tree, horse, stag, horns and various geometric patterns and designs.

With the acceptance of Christianity in Ukraine in 988AD, pysanky were integrated into the Christian tradition of Easter, especially the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and a new beginning for

Perth church help orphans back home

Students focus on sustainable assistance for forgotten orphans, with help of Perth Ukrainian Catholics

BY ANTHONY BARICH

MEMBERS of Perth’s Ukrainian Greek Catholic community joined other private citizens to raise enough money last month to fund over 20 university healthcare students to help orphans in their homeland for four years.

Since 2008, occupational therapist Kirrily Kilbane, 37, has organised about 20 physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy students a year to travel to the Ukraine to assist orphans, some of whom have been born with disabilities.

On 20 March, one of the students hosted the fundraiser which drew the interest of the Maylands Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church parish as one of its senior figures, Bodhan Mykytiuk, with a long history in tertiary education, thought it a worthwhile cause.

They raised $9,000 on the day –more than enough for four trips as they only spend up to $2,000 each trip on therapeutic equipment like

foam, walking aids and switches that help modify toys for children with poor motor control.

“For something so critical, the opportunity to go back to the Ukraine and leave something (important) behind” was too good to pass up, said Bodhan, whose mother’s side is linked to ‘Patriarch’ Josyf Slipyj, who was arrested by the NKVD (predecessor to the KGB) and held captive in Siberia for 20 years.

The need to help orphans in the Ukraine is great, and government funding is given to help students

based on their ability to walk, so the children with more debilitating disabilities receive less.

“I’m haunted by the orphans I saw with a high level of disability – one child with muscular dystrophy was the only one who made eye contact with me. There was a moment there where he looked at me knowingly, I looked at him, and I knew he had significant cognitive ability, but he was trapped. I thought if he were somewhere else (in a western country with better facilities) …” Kirrily said.

“So our focus is on orphans where we can make the most difference, which is early intervention with kids who’ve had no intervention in the first five years of their lives.”

In her trips to the Ukraine, Kirrily has seen much cerebral palsy and other neurological conditions, including Hydrocephelus –water on the brain that requires a ‘tap’ inserted above the spinal cord to relieve pressure in the brain as without it they can get brain damage. She’s seen babies born with no impairment but who have problems as their heads were squeezed with forceps to remove them from the womb.

But it is not without hope.

“The situation there is bad, but it is changing,” she said. “We work in regional areas that are not so

well resourced, where it’s harder for agencies and non-government organisations (NGOs) to access. She was first inspired after a trip to the Ukraine in 2005 and, within three years she quit her job that hires occupational therapists and started the programme to bring healthcare students over to not only help the orphans but train local staff to better look after them.

This is what she calls “sustainable care”. Since 2008, she has seen a change in how the orphanage staff value the children. At the same time, the experience is mutually beneficial for the students who learn in an acute way about the value of human life.

This year, another group will leave on 18 May for a month. In the long term, Kirrily plans to move there with her husband and child, who is now three, for up to 12 months.

While orphanages are nonexistent in Australia, they are necessary in the Ukraine, a country where poverty is rife, the healthcare system cannot cope, and much of the wealth is controlled by oligarchs. It also has one of the fastest-growing rates of HIV, with child porn and people trafficking rife. Tuberculosis is also not uncommon.

To assist Kirrily’s mission, contact her on Kirrily. Manning@exchange.curtin.edu.au.

humankind. The egg was likened to the tomb from which Christ arose and ideograms, including the cross and other Christian symbols became more prominent.

The symbol on a pysanka’ put simply, is a word picture, an ideogram, a special code, embodying key elements of a culture.

It expresses feelings such as love, happiness, hope, sadness, dread ... more effectively than words.

For people with some understanding of symbolic art, it tells a story with a deep meaning, remaining a mystery to those who cannot decipher the code.

Each pysanka involves a trinity of symbolisms: the symbolism of the egg itself (life), the symbolism of design, and the symbolism of colour, embodying the sense of mystery in its creation.

Information about pysanky is readily available through Google.

A useful site for writing them is http://www.learnpysanky.com.

Filipinos have three reasons to celebrate

THE Archdiocese of Perth’s Filipino chaplaincy is hosting a three-fold celebration on 1 May - of Flores de Mayo in honour of Mary Mother of the Risen Christ, Philipine Labour Day and St Joseph, Patron of Workers.

The Mass, at Notre Dame Church in Cloverdale at 2pm, includes a homily in Tagalog in honour of Our Lady and St Joseph, an Offertory offering of flowers to the Virgin’s statue by women and children, a special blessing on migrant workers and will conclude with participants singing Flores de Mayo hymns while processing behind the Virgin’s and St Joseph’s statues and the priests - including Filipino chaplain Fr Armando Carandang and others - to the church hall for a light Merienda

The next special Sunday Mass for all Filipinos is on 12 June, Independence Day, to offer special prayers for the urgent needs in the Philippines and to raise awareness for priestly and religious vocations among young Filipino-Australians in Western Australia.

Above left, Fr Wolodymyr Kalinecki leads youth in the Divine Liturgy before the activity. A funnel, or kistka, is used to put on molten wax which is used to make designs on the eggs after the designs are drawn with pencil. Below, a Ukrainian youth uses the kistka PHOTOS: COURTESY BODHAN MYKYTIUK

Healthcare students on mission wth Lviv in the background.

PHOTO: COURTESY KIRRILY KILBANE

Perth-grown mission goes national, global

BY ANTHONY BARICH

PERTH’S Voice of the Voiceless ministry that prays for and financially assists seminarians and the poor around the world has spread to Melbourne, London and Nigeria.

Nigerian-born Fr Nicholas Nweke, 47, founded Voice of the Voiceless started in 2006, inaugurated by Archbishop Barry Hickey in 2008, based on the charism of the late Pope John Paul II, who had personally inspired him to the priesthood.

Two lay people showed interest in VOV when they met Fr Nicholas while he was on retreat at Jensen Spirituality Centre in Boronia, Victoria, and introduced them to a group of 40 at their Bayswater parish in Melbourne. He will return there with Perth VOV members Tanja Mallard of Ellenbrook, Freddie Low of Willetton and Marica Mudri of Beaconsfield on 1 May – the date of John Paul II’s beatification – to celebrate a Divine Mercy Mass with them.

Former Ellenbrook parishioners and VOV members Claude and Louise Felix and their family have also moved to London and gained the support of their parish to start the ministry there, and Fr Nicholas hopes to visit next year to formalise its foundation. The parish is already praying according to the format that VOV members currently pray every Friday at St Brigid’s Church in Northbridge from 7.30pm.

With exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, they pray the Rosary with meditations on Our Father, along with a Litany of Jesus and Divine Mercy prayers. During this time they pray for God’s mercy on the sick and suffering around the world.

VOV also started faith formation late last year with Scripture study and further reflection. Every fourth Saturday he also offers a Healing Mass at St Brigid’s Church.

Fr Cyprian, chaplain of a leper colony with over 200 patients on Oji River in Nigeria which VOV has fundraised for, will also start a VOV ministry there this year.

Fr Nicholas will also visit an orphanage and leper colony in Vietnam from 20-26 May to assess how VOV can help and to “give what we have”. He is being assisted here by Perth Catholic Dr Leonard Chan, who is part of Christian Health Aid Team, a group of doctors who work in

Youth office gathers leaders for retreat

Youth continue to spread the power of the Holy Spirit with Perth teenagers

AT the Sydney World Youth Day in 2008, the theme for the gathering was “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses” [Acts 1:8]. Pope Benedict XVI gave a challenge

poor areas around south-east Asia. Dr Leonard is negotiating a place through a priest in Ho Chi Minh and Frs Nicholas and Bonaventure Echeta and Perth couple Maureen and Darion Wylie are being sponsored by families from Singapore.

VOV, whose members span across the several parishes Fr Nicholas has been based at since his ordination in 2005, started off with a prayer group which sang Christmas carols at aged care homes and helped teach English to overseas-born St Charles Seminary students. In 2008 VOV financially helped Fijian seminarians.

With a foundation of prayer and Scripture study, VOV seeks to reach out to people both locally and abroad through personal connections, as the late pontiff did.

VOV’s very ministry seeks to make a critical point –that Christianity and indeed Catholicism is more than praying and attending Mass once a week, said Fr Nicholas, now Hamilton Hill parish priest. He seeks to dispel the misconception that his ministry is simply about Healing Masses.

“People think Sunday Mass and private prayer is all there is to being Catholic, but it’s about reaching out to others so they can feel Christ in others,” he said. “Mission is about caring.”

The key, he said, is to create time in one’s life to build loving relationships with God and to reach out to others, first in one’s own family and inner circle, then to others.

This ministry helps people

to those gathered at Randwick and asked the question to the young people, ‘What will you leave for the next generation?’

Catholic Youth Ministry (CYM) is gathering youth leaders who experienced the Sydney WYD to share their experience of fun and faith with Perth teenagers at a locally held retreat. CYM will be holding the retreat from 6-8 May for teenagers called ‘Be Inflamed’. Local parish youth leaders will be leading the retreat and teenagers aged 13-17 years old are invited to attend. A Friday night to Sunday lunchtime retreat will give the teenagers a short break away from their regular routine to enjoy a weekend that’s all about fun activities, music, new

Lay missionaries mark 50 years

BY ANTHONY BARICH

understand why VOV takes John Paul II as its mentor – because he “stood up from his chair and travelled the world to touch the hearts of the sick and the lonely who nobody would touch; the disabled man who nobody would reach”.

A trip to an orphanage in the Philipines last year which he and fellow Nigerian-born Perth priest Fr Bonaventure Echeta visited, gave rice to and offered Mass for taught him much about the nature of the Christian life.

“Seeing the joy in these children during our visit showed that a personal encounter means more than a million dollars,” Fr Nicholas said. “I was humbled and touched. Jesus was visibly among these people, not just me.”

This also sent a critical message that priests must do more than just preach love from the pulpit, but “actually go out and meet people with problems, as Christ did to people begging for healing, both physically and spiritually.

“He not only gave them Scripture but touched them personally. That’s why VOV embraces the spirituality of John Paul II, and its motto is “Gather my people” –as it is about “letting people know about Jesus and how to love each other”.

This can only come about through personal renewal, he said, because “you cannot give what you do not have”. “You must have peace in your own life, your own family, before you can reach out to others. Otherwise it is false.”

To assist Fr Nicholas’ ministry, call 9331 7105 or email jr_nnweke@yahoo.co.uk.

friends and, most importantly, to deepen their spirituality.

CYM Youth Ministry Worker Michael Connelly who is organising the retreat currently runs an active teens youth group in his parish of Lockridge. “This is an exciting opportunity to reignite the Sydney WYD atmosphere and share that feeling of hope and empowerment that we all felt by being in union with one another and the Holy Spirit,” he said.

For teenagers interested in attending the retreat, it will cost $60 for the weekend including food and accommodation. A full registration form can be downloaded from www.cym. com.au, email admin@cym. com.au or call 9422 7912.

THE Palms Global Mission Programme is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a renewed push to encourage lay people to help Catholic hospitals, schools and Bishops in the neediest parts of the world.

Palms held information sessions on 16 and 17 April in Perth and Fremantle but the organisation says interested people involved in teaching, health, admin, agriculture/farming, trades and other professional or technical areas can still make themselves available for a one-year trip starting in July.

While Palms has received many requests from Bishops around the globe for help in healthcare and education, Palms has so far confirmed that volunteers will be sent to East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

Anyone with training or skills that may be useful is encouraged to apply, but Palms is not looking for people to do unskilled labour, leaving that for the industry of local people. Palms mainly needs physiotherapists, trades people, IT specialists, social workers and workers in community development.

Successful volunteers will attend a 2-10 July orientation course advising need-to-know information on working in other countries relating, for example, to healthcare,

how to build and maintain positive relationships, working across cultures and how to immerse oneself in a foreign community.

Palms assistant director Brendan Joyce, who joined the agency after a two-year stint in Papua New Guinea as a teacher with Palms, said volunteers “do not arrive and tell people how to do things and just fix their problems.”

His classroom in Bougainville in Papua New Guinea - which was an Australian territory until it became part of an independent PNG in 1975 - consisted of civil war combatants aged 15-35.

“A missionary, or volunteer, must become part of the community so it can develop; this way they can get something out of the experience also,” Mr Joyce told The Record during a trip to Perth last week.

“They must also work on development and put things in place so that what they do continues to have an effect on the community long after they have left.”

Mr Joyce accepted a two-year missionary stint in Bougainville aged 25 while a teacher at a Mercy Sisters Catholic High School in Melbourne and returned to Palms to work fulltime in Sydney.

People interested should contact Palms soon, he said, as health checks, police clearances and visas take time to organise.

Phone 02 9518 9551 or email Brendan@palms.org.au.

Damien Beale, from Nollamara, a speech pathologist with Anna, a sign language student in Fatima, Papua New Guinea. In 2007, Damien and his wife Sarah, a nurse, spent a year volunteering with Callan Services for Disabled Persons in the Archdiocese of Mt Hagen.

PHOTO: PALMS AUSTRALIA

People in the leper colony in Nigeria which Fr Nicholas Nweke visited and helps through his Voice of the Voiceless ministry, whose work represents the greater Christian mission - to reach out to people in need.

The business of betrayal

Lieutenant General James Longstreet commanded the First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee during much of the fratricidal conflict known as the American Civil War. Longstreet, who Lee affectionately referred to as “my old warhorse” commanded about 60 per cent of Lee’s Confederate army, which, both for its fighting qualities and legendary esprit de corps, has often been regarded as probably the finest army the world has ever seen. It was Longstreet who formulated the tactic known as the defensive-offensive which consistently made him the best battlefield commander of the entire war and the most formidable foe in any theatre of that conflict. James Longstreet knew what it meant to be a soldier, knew what an army should be.

The issue of armies and their spirit captured the news headlines around the country in the last fortnight as the Australian Defence Force Academy affair disturbed ordinary men and women in the street and families everywhere. Part of the problem is that what transpired at the ADFA has implications which extend beyond its boundaries.

Given that not all the facts are known, opinion must, for the time being, be somewhat tentative. However it appears that the basic facts of what occurred are not being debated. If what is alleged to have occurred does turn out to be true then it would be entirely accurate to say that what is being dealt with is best defined as betrayal. The youths who participated in the events at the heart of the scandal set out to betray a woman. Understanding an apparently ingrained culture of betrayal in a military college shows how deep the poison has entered into the heart of an institution such as the the ADFA.

What is alleged to have happened not only widely disturbed many, it sickened them as well. Deep down, this revulsion is because people everywhere immediately understand that the essence of betrayal is to offer the face of friendship or of love while harbouring an intention to deceive.

A military college is supposed to take raw youths and turn them into men capable of personal discipline, bravery and sacrifice. However it is impossible to tolerate at one and the same time bastardisation and corruptions such as pornography acted out against colleagues for the entertainment of other colleagues and to produce an officer corps of the kind needed to run an army. The simultaneous tolerance of such a culture and mission to produce outstanding officers is not only disastrous but schizophrenic. One of these things has got to go.

THE RECORD

PO Box 3075

Adelaide Terrace

PERTH WA 6832

office@therecord.com.au

Tel: (08) 9220 5900

Fax: (08) 9325 4580

That there was clearly no shortage of ‘mates’ wanting to participate in the events at the heart of this affair is what really reveals the wider problem. The young woman in question went to the media because she had been betrayed by boys who are supposedly in the business of learning how to be brave and how, in some ways, to be men. The wider significance of this affair is that she was doubly betrayed.

What happened sounds like the sort of bastardry we have become accustomed to expecting from football clubs, not from the nation’s elite military school. And its seriousness lies in the fact that it is actually symptomatic, an expression of the wider reality not of the ADFA but of Australian society. Doubtless, their immature young minds thought the whole thing was just a harmless prank, a little bit of larrikinism that everyone could have a laugh about afterwards. In fact, they were behaving as they had been taught by their peers, by the media, by our culture.

In this sense the young woman who went to the media was betrayed by an Australian culture which has smiled benevolently and tolerantly for decades on increasing access to pornography and increasingly pornographic entertainment, all the time denying that pornography has any actual or harmful effects on boys and men who consume it. That lie is now well and truly exposed. It is Australia, not the ADFA, which has produced boys who think it a lark to betray others for the entertainment of their mates in sex and intimacy.

And it is something approaching a tragedy to reflect that across the suburbs of the nation there are thousands of young men who have been raised by ignorance and in ignorance to think of pornography as naughty but not serious. In fact, exposing boys to pornography is the sexual abuse of boys. And unlike her colleagues, the young woman who exposed their betrayal had courage.

Real soldiers such as James Longstreet would have been shocked at what transpired at the ADFA, not because of outmoded 19th Century sensitivities but because a Longstreet would have understood immediately that youths who will despoil a young woman for sport are not the sorts of individuals who can be entrusted with anything, let alone the serious work of running an army, or fighting in battle if this ever needs to happen. Youths such as this are not likely to turn into real men capable of giving up their lives either for their country or within the confines of their own families for their spouses and their children. They are already damaged goods. After the Civil War, Longstreet concluded that the best way forward for the South was not hatred but reconciliation. For this he was excoriated by former colleagues, excommunicated from the ranks of the Confederacy. As the Military Governor of New Orleans during the period of Reconstruction after the war he was warned that white supremacist Confederate veterans, the grandfathers of the Ku Klux Klan, had intercepted a train carrying arms headed for New Orleans, stolen all its weapons and were marching on the city. Remarkably, the man who had fought so brilliantly for the Confederacy and its repulsive institution of slavery immediately formed a militia, made up of freed former black slaves, and fought a pitched battle against his former comrades in the streets of the city. In light of the ADFA scandal, which of these - Longstreet or the Aussie cadets - was the real soldier, the real man?

New prayers fine with me

The argument about Changes to the Mass of which I have little knowledge other than what I have just read in the 13 April issue of The Record are of no real concern. If Rome or Pope Benedict wants to change some words then so be it… for who am I to argue but a lay person that would gladly attend Mass daily if it was available.

The Mass is not about the people, or the priest, or the country, or the language, or the church, or the hierarchy of the church.

It is about us the people of God worshiping and giving Glory to our supernatural “God” by means of offering through the hands of the consecrated one (the priest) to “The Father” “His” own and only “Son Jesus His Body and Blood ” (the same one that we as sons of Adam nailed to the cross... crucified) It is supposed to be about reverence to “God”, not the performance of the people of “God” If I dare criticise our modern selves it would be to say that we have forgotten to be reverent, to adore “Our Creator” There is one master in our church “The One true God”

Terry McDonnell Yarloop

Echoes of the past

If it wasn’t for the recent letter of Cardinal Pell (who is not an expert on climate change but who had the common sense to base his arguments on the views of such an expert, Prof.Plimer: ‘Heaven and Earth’) I would have given up on ever coming across a rational statement concerning climate-change.

I’m a survivor from the times of Nazi-dominance in Europe and spent two years in the anti-Nazi underground from my 18th birthday untill the end of the war.

I remember all too well the efforts of Joseph Goebbels to convince us of the superiority of Nazism, including his instruction to his staffers in the Propaganda Ministerium that big lies are more effective than small ones.

I remember also the statements by the Club of Rome in the 1960s predicting global starvation by the 1990s because of population growth.

It was the beginning of the now common birth-control craze, which has decimated many countries to below the replacement-level.

In fact in the 1990s Europe was struggling to get rid of its stockpiles of food; and now it is struggling to prevent total economic collapse because of the shortage of productive people.

Last week I had an interesting discussion with a young woman, a devout convert to the ‘Green’ cause, who is working on her Ph.D. She said this field is really the only ‘politically-correct’ subject matter and if an academic is negative about it, research funding is cut.

Matt Bruekers Lesmurdie

The uncertainty of the weather

Afoundational basis for science is the need for objectivity; to make judgements on the basis of the known facts and to try to keep emotion out of debate. The letter by Patrick Walsh denigrating personally the views of those who question the so called science of global warming and the need for a carbon tax fails on both counts.

For someone who obviously thinks the science is already established he provides no facts apart

from the claim that based on global averages last year was very hot as was the last decade.

In terms of the earth’s history accurate temperature measurement on a world wide scale is only a very recent development and as critics have pointed out can be corrupted by heat sinks such as some of the huge cities that now exist.

Does he know that in the 1800’s the world was in the grip of a severe cold period to the extent that London’s Thames River was frozen for a considerable distance. The ice was so thick that ice fairs were an annual event on its surface. This raises the question what caused the temperature to rise and put an end to the ice fairs? There was virtually nil industrialisation then and the world’s population was far less than today.

In the late 900’s the Norseman Eric the Red settled in Greenland which then was a verdant agricultural region, hence its name. He and his descendants established thriving settlements throughout the area, until the climate began changing in the 1200’s and the increasingly cold conditions began the region’s depopulation. There was no industrial development around then to create the warming period and no cessation of warming influences to cause the extreme cold.

I wonder how he knows 97 percent of scientists believe it is our fault the climate is changing; if it is? Are they all climate scientists or perhaps as I’ve read elsewhere a high proportion have no or little qualifications in climate science? Our very own government appointed climate expert, Professor Ross Garnaut, has no qualifications in climate science. His expertise is in economics. Governments are not known for appointing ‘experts’ with known views counter to their own.

To further bolster his arguement Mr Walsh points out that General Motors is now making electric cars. They are, and readers might be interested to know that they arent selling too well either. GM is a capitalist enterprise and profit driven. When the US government started throwing US taxpayers money at the supposed problem GM saw an opportunity too good to miss and took full advantage of it. The cars dont live up to their hype and are not exactly flying off the dealer’s floors.

During the 1992 US presidential campaign Bill Clinton hung a sign in his office saying ‘Its the economy stupid’. The same could be said about hyperventilating over the weather.

Barry Morgan Albany

A climate for our children?

Isee that the “Letters’ Page “ has now moved into politics and pseudo religion and we are scolded for not believing the current excuse for religion, which the post-theistic secularists now peddle because they must hold on to something to believe in.

Patrick Walsh writes: “2010 was the hottest year on record based on global average, the second hottest

was 2009 – the last decade was the hottest on record”. No mention of the “J” curve? No mention of the temperatures in the Middle Ages?

Reputable figures tell us quite the opposite. For the last nine years the earth has actually cooled. It all depends on which “scientists” one believes.

I am minded of the psalmist who wrote “What is man that you should keep him in mind. Mortal man, and yet you have made him little less than a god”.

Unfortunately there are too many who believe that mortal man is indeed god and there is no other. This omnipotent man actually is driving changes in the world’s climate! Now it is a common belief especially among politicians who want to increase taxes in order to be able to throw more money away on silly schemes which will have no effect whatsoever on the climate which the real God has set in place.

I would like to be able to say that I believe that my grandchildren and theirs’ also, will have a world to live in, which they will enjoy. I fear that this will not be the case but I am absolutely certain that their circumstances will have absolutely nothing to do with mankind’s carbon emissions. Their circumstances will depend on the world finding that God, the real God, is the answer to mankind’s woes.

John Rayner Hillarys

The strong Gaia

Professor Richard Lindzen, a climate scientist who is acknowledged by Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery as reputable has said that the current alarmism and push for a Carbon Tax is “grotesquely dishonest”.

He also said that any such tax would be a “heavy cost for no benefit”, and this even well into the future.

How can a “price on carbon” change the climate when the major influences are the sun, the oceans, volcanoes, and other natural forces?

• CO2 constitutes 0.035 to 0.038 per cent of the atmosphere.

• Mankind contributes 3 per cent to the CO2 in the atmosphere, largely by breathing.

• Australia contributes a tiny 1 per cent of the world’s output of CO2.

• The biggest producers of CO2 (like China) are not seriously attempting to limit their emissions, despite what the “spin doctors” say.

• Even if the whole world limited its emissions to the “correct” level, the world’s temperature would only be altered, perhaps, by one degree over a few hundred years.

• The real-world temperatures have not acted as computer-models predicted.

How much is this ludicrous tax going to cost Australia, to achieve a one degree difference over the next few hundred years?

Commissioner Tim Flannery’s own views on the world and environment are extremely interesting. He is, for example, on record as saying: “...I think that within this century the concept of the strong Gaia will actually become physically manifest... This planet, this Gaia, will have acquired a brain and a nervous system. That will make it act as a living animal, as a living organism, at some sort of level...”

Both the Government and the Opposition need to scrap any plans to control the climate, and devote themselves to genuine environmental and human rights issues.

Mrs CV Phillips Southern River

Easter

...more than just a once a year experience

ARCHBISHOP BARRY HICKEY Archbishop of Perth

My dear people

There is no doubt that the whole credibility of our Catholic faith rests on the truth of the Resurrection of Jesus. If Jesus had not risen the world would have admired him as a great moral leader and acknowledged him as a martyr to truth.

We would have spoken of him in the past tense as a great man who lived in the time of the Roman occupation of Palestine/Israel. Christianity as we know it would not have existed and the Catholic Church would never have started.

I think we all know instinctively that the Resurrection of Jesus changed everything. That is why our churches start to fill from Palm Sunday onwards, and are full even beyond capacity on Easter Sunday. Even those who do not go regularly to Mass know Good Friday and Easter are of the greatest importance. Let us reflect on their importance over these days of Holy Week and Easter.

The resurrection of Jesus puts the death of Jesus in a completely new light. His death was not simply the death of someone the soldiers considered to be a criminal. It had cosmic dimensions.

In dying, Jesus the Innocent One, took on himself the terrible weight of the world’s sins, and allowed them to appear to triumph. His resurrection was the unexpected victory over sin and its consequences, death. If Jesus had not risen, this would not have happened.

The resurrection then is the trumpet call of victory, the glorious sign that evil did not and cannot conquer, and that we all have the hope and assurance that Jesus has freed us, and is with us to help us respond to this amazing sign of his love, and will raise us up on the last day. His resurrection also assures us that Jesus lives, that he is present now, that we can turn to him at any time.

He lives not as some sort of a departed spirit, but his humanity has now been taken up into the Godhead. Jesus has returned to the right hand of his Father. He is present to us in a completely new dimension of existence that we cannot comprehend. He is present to us as God is present to us as he and the Father are One.

All this is heavy going, but we need to think about it to know how absolutely important Easter is for our faith, our hope, our union with Christ and our daily lives.

We are lucky enough to live in a multicultural Australia where all religions are respected. However we should not think that they are all the same. The Christian/Jewish Messiah was entirely unique. No one expected the Messiah to die, far less rise from the dead. Jesus is the unique Saviour and our faith in him is unique.

Let us thank God for giving us such a Saviour and ask God to help us follow him faithfully as the Light of the World.

I wish you all a very Happy and Holy Easter.

BISHOP DONALD SPROXTON

Auxiliary Bishop of Perth

It is just on 70 years since my father was recruited into the special operations unit the 2/2 Commando Squadron.

He and those men with him formed strong, lifelong bonds as they saw action in Timor, New Guinea and New Britain. Among his closest comrades is George Greenhalgh who lives in Maclean in northern New South Wales.

They have maintained an almost daily communication, which has been a major source of mutual support, especially now as they are confronted by very serious health problems.

George recently has had to have both legs amputated and he is making the transition from independent living to aged high care.

Slowly as he recovers, his spirit of resilience is showing through, together with his good humour.

They share with the men and women of their generation those very important values that enabled them to put their hopes and dreams on hold when the world faced another catastrophic war.

They enlisted voluntarily to fight for the liberation of peoples in Europe and Asia, and the defence of their country.

Their readiness to risk everything for freedom reveals a drive that lies within each of us for that

which is better and for the transcendent.

Anzac Day falls on Easter Monday this year, which is fortunate, for we will be in the full after-glow of the great celebration of the Resurrection.

As usual, we will remember those who lived the experience of war and we will pray for those who died in the service of their countries for freedom and peace. Our prayer recognise their courage but more importantly it will be made in the faith that Christ has been raised so that we all may share in the Resurrection.

As we have been moving steadily towards Holy Week and the Passover of the Lord, we have followed the conflicts that have broken out in northern Africa and the Persian Gulf.

These popular revolts have been largely against dictators of repressive regimes who have sought to restrict the freedoms of their peoples.

One has to wonder if what is to replace these governments will be any better. Yet the spirit that shows itself again, seeking for something better, is good. Certainly our prayer this Easter must be for the peaceful resolution of this series of conflicts.

Our search for and abiding communion with God is helped by the common experience of the things in our lives that are larger than ourselves. It is at times when we have a sense of overwhelming joy, or when we decide to take responsibility for a global issue, or we find

within us an unconditional hope beyond all hopelessness that we touch what is transcendent.

St Augustine described his experience of the transcendent, and thus his experience of God, as restlessness. His restlessness of spirit brought him to the truth and to the full acceptance of Jesus Christ.

Easter has the power to reimmerse each of us into the life of God: to put us in touch once again with the God who seeks us.

It can give us the breathing space to look deep within and to remember the experience of God in those moments of exhilarating joy, boundless hope and even restlessness.

The amazing revelation by God in the Easter experience has been that life is not ended but changed.

The act of Christ’s obedience to do the will of the Father meant that he trusted that his life would be saved. The death Jesus suffered on the cross did not bring his extinction, but was to be the Passover to the fullest life.

His invitation is to follow him, by his way. Eternal life is available to all.

What is needed from us is our faith and desire to live according to that faith.

Easter proclaims that we are redeemed and we are given the Spirit of the Risen Christ to work for salvation, as we convert each day and are transformed to become more like Christ.

I wish you all a very happy Easter and I pray that we will all be renewed in faith.

Pieter Pauwel (Peter Paul) Rubens’ The Resurrection.

The journey from slavery to freedom

SLove, S e x and ex the An

ERIKA BACHIOCHI

Like most “reverts,” I was not initially interested in coming back to the Catholic Church. I was a committed pro-choice feminist, intellectually anti-Christian, and had every available misconception about Catholicism. All Catholicism had in its favour, as far as I was concerned, was its alleged institutional concern for the poor.

I had acted out the textbook behaviours of young girls who experience the divorce of their parents during their teens, and so guilty pride had caused me to turn a deaf ear to the Church’s views on sexuality. But unhealed wounds from my youth drove me to my knees as I neared college. And so, despite my intellectual protestations, I was being drawn into the reality of a personal God who had the power and the will to respond to my need for peace and healing.

The intellectual environment at college allowed me to flirt with the truth claims of Christianity in a way I never had before - and by my junior year, I was sneaking away from my “sexually liberated” feminist cohorts to debate my new Christian friends. The local parish priest came around at times, and as Providence would have it, he was a bit of an intellectual himself.

BISHOP JUSTIN BIANCHINI Bishop of Geraldton

ince the time after the Exodus, the Jews have celebrated the Passover annually. However, the Passover from slavery to freedom through the Red Sea was never far from their minds. In their prayers, and particularly the wonderful Old Testament Psalms, the Jews recall this great event time and time again. They call to mind, more importantly, the power of God displayed there to show His care and protection of them. The presence of God they saw in the “cloud by day” to hide them from the enemy and the “fire by night” to guide them on their journey in the desert.

They believe that the liberating power of God and His protective and guiding presence continues to be with them and now in their lives.

Our Easter is exactly like that. It is the Passover of Jesus from death to life. It is His rising to life from the suffering and death He endured.

We celebrate this at Easter; however, it is never far from our thoughts and our daily lives.

Each Sunday is a little Easter – not only because of the day but, more importantly, because on that day we, as the Church across the world, gather to celebrate the Eucharist. In this Eucharist, Jesus’ one and only death and resurrection is renewed and becomes present for us again.

Each day is an Easter. There are dyings and risings in our lives, and Jesus is part and parcel of each of them. The Eucharist is celebrated daily in most of our churches and certainly around our dioceses and the world daily.

Some people are able to join in the daily celebration of the Eucharist. Most are not and it is not an essential for Christian living. For the full Christian life, a regular weekly Eucharist is. It is then lived out during the week in the home and in what God has called us to in the world. We draw on that Sunday Eucharist as a real source of strength or fountain of nourishment for the week.

Each year, though, we have the Solemn Celebration of Easter. We go more deeply into this great mystery. The meaning of Easter also becomes clearer for us. Its reality becomes for us more like a guiding light. Easter time is a time when Jesus says something like this to us: “Look, I can pull life out of anything. I can do that with your sins. I can do that with tragedy. I can do it with suffering and death. I can do it even when things happen because of the sins and failings of others”.

Because of Easter, I never need lose hope. I can always put my faith in Jesus. I can respond to situations (even sin and violence) His way and know that He can pull life out of it.

It is a powerful belief. It’s not an abstract belief but one which touches the core of my being.

This risen life of Jesus is deep within me and this is much more than Jesus “just walking with me” in life. Jesus’ liberating power and protective presence is truly within me.

May this powerful belief become more felt and more a reality for us all this Easter.

Curious as to what such a smart man could see in Catholicism, I finally asked him on one occasion: “Why are you Catholic?” He answered, without missing a beat: “Because the Catholic Church is the easiest route to heaven.” At this response I was especially puzzled, because I had thought living according to Catholic teaching sounded quite hard -- and terribly unappealing.

I would come to learn that by this Fr John meant that God the Father, in His great love and affection for His children, established the Church on earth to show us the best means to attain intimate union with Him.

What I had assumed were restrictions on freedom, especially in sexual matters, were actually signposts along the way that marked off dangerous territory, that guided our desires away from those things that are always seductively appealing, but are fleeting, distracting - and damaging - so that we could be free to seek the only thing that truly fulfills our desires: union with God.

When my priest-friend said that the Catholic Church is the easiest route to heaven, he certainly did not mean that a life lived in accordance with Catholic teaching would be free from suffering. Indeed, I have come to discover over the years that Church teaching, on sex and marriage especially, recognises the profound reality that Jesus taught us by His death and resurrection: True love always comes by way of the cross.

The Demands of Happiness

Being chaste until and within marriage, committing day in and day out to the selfgiving and self-denial that lifelong marriage and childrearing require of us, being open to God’s gift of new life in a generous and responsible way, and in this day and age, even carrying to term an unexpected childthese are difficult tasks, and our fallen nature rebels against them.

The world recognises this natural rebellion, our desire to express human love in sexual intimacy, to seek pleasure and run from pain, to fulfill our own needs and desires while giving ill-attention to the needs and desires of others - in a word, to live our lives for ourselves. Mistaking these desires for human nature - rather than fallen human nature - the world’s response is to laugh at Church teaching, to make a mockery of the Church and her seemingly archaic rules on sex and marriage, because they are so difficult, because they require so much of us.

Yet those who seek to follow the way of Our Lord understand that much is required of us. This is precisely the point. God calls us out of our fallenness, out of our self-centredness and pleasure-seeking, to follow the way

of perfection, to live in a way that is, by natural means, difficult - at times, even impossible. Many complain that Church teachings on sex and marriage are unrealistic, that the Church is out of touch.

If we were meant to live by human means alone, to follow these teachings on our own strength, I would say the world’s complaints were absolutely right. Indeed, by my own strength, I failed at almost every one of them.

But God demands perfection of us - perfect chastity, perfect purity, and perfect love - not only because it is the way of life that will fulfill our deepest desires, but just as importantly, because when we fail at living this perfection (and we will fail), our heavenly and merciful Father wants us to fall to our knees, to realise our own human bankruptcy, and rely on Him and His grace to live and to love.

It is in our very failing to live as we ought that we are presented with the sublime opportunity to surrender ourselves to Godto ask Him, the Great Lover, to live selflessly in us and love selflessly through us. Through the push of the Church’s teachings that call us to live selflessly in our day-to-day dealings with others, we come to discover the utter need we have to meet God, the source of all selfless love, in daily prayer, frequent confession, and most especially in the Eucharist.

If only what was “natural” or “desirable” was asked of us in our lives, we would seem to have no need for God. It is not by coincidence that a culture that has rejected the Church’s difficult teachings on sex and marriage has, in great and public ways, rejected God.

And it is not by coincidence that the Church, whose teachings demand so much of us, would also be that Church in which God has revealed Himself most fully - the Church that Christ endowed with the responsibility of bringing His very Body to the world.

When we understand just what God does for us in the Eucharist, how He unites Himself with us in the most intimate embrace ever imagined in the course of history, we Catholics would not balk at how He asks us to live.

Love and Sacrifice

It is not just that uniting with the Great Lover in the Eucharist endows us with the strength to love selflessly in our most intimate relationships; the discipline, selfcontrol, and self-sacrifice that the Church’s

teachings require of and make them fertil transformation - the wants to bring about the Eucharist. God, O become other Christs the saints and doctor taught since the time to be broken before His true likeness. For Church teaching on s hair shirt is necessary. Pope Benedict XVI the intimate - and ne between self-denial a love in his first encycli Love is indeed “ecst of a moment of intox a journey, an ongoin closed inward-looking tion through self-givi authentic self-discover covery of God: “Who life will lose it, but who preserve it” (Lk 17:33), out the Gospels (cf Mt Lk 9:24; Jn 12:25).

In these words, Jes path, which leads thro Resurrection: the path that falls to the ground way bears much fru depths of His own sac that reaches fulfilment trays in these words th indeed of human life it Losing one’s life for of both love and life. precisely this point w sex and marriage: In st purity, and openness to (and our courtships), w to self.

Once we understan form - that we gain life will understand the tru on sex and marriage that we understand int sexuality is by its ver and procreative (desp have it otherwise), but We come to recogni of the authoritative tra in her insistence on the discover that it is prec that they are the mean Living these teaching at one point or anoth

Cross Cross... ...

reflection on how the Truth will set you free

us prepare our souls le, as it were, for the divination - that God in us as we receive ur Father, wants us to for the world. But as s of the Church have of Our Lord, we have He can remake us in Catholics who follow sex and marriage, no I beautifully captures ecessary - relationship and authentic human ical, Deus Caritas Est tasy,” not in the sense xication, but rather as ng exodus out of the self towards its liberang, and thus towards ry and indeed the disever seeks to gain his oever loses his life will as Jesus says through10:39; 16:25; Mk 8:35; sus portrays His own ough the Cross to the of the grain of wheat d and dies, and in this it. Starting from the crifice and of the love t therein, He also porhe essence of love and tself. others is the essence

The Church teaches when she instructs on triving to live chastity, o life in our marriages we cannot help but die d that reality is crucie only by losing it - we uth of Church teaching - not just in the way tellectually that human y nature both unitive pite modern efforts to deep in our core. se the dramatic beauty adition of the Church ese teachings when we isely in their difficulty ns of our sanctification.

gs causes each of us, her - when abstinence

seems too much or we are overwhelmed by the children we have, and another is on the way - to crawl on our knees to our God in the confessional and with a sense of urgency to the Eucharist.

And this is just how God intended it.

His only interest is in our becoming saints - and there is no other way to that eternal beatitude than Christ’s way, via the cross.

Built into our very vocation as married Catholics is the road to heaven, always paved, in part, by redemptive suffering. Herein lies the wisdom of Christ’s Church and her teachings.

But the cross is not about suffering for suffering’s sake. Rather, at the cross we are brought to see our human limitations; our weaknesses; our inability to love as we should.

When we confront the cross as spouses, as parents - during times of misunderstanding, cravings for personal time, when we witness our own selfishness - it is Christ there looking back at us, pledging that, if we allow Him, He can transform us as He did death itself; He can remake us to love as He loves. The Church’s restrictions on sex out of wedlock, contraception, abortion, and divorce afford individuals, spouses, and parents the opportunity to be transformed by Christ, by His cross.

These teachings are the catalyst by which God reveals to us our own weakness - and our utter need for His grace. As Paul writes, “Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10).

The world, of course, sees the idea of the cross as preposterous.

Hardship, sacrifice, and suffering must be avoided at every cost - even if lives must be taken or promises broken.And it has always been so; Christ’s crucifixion was itself “a stumbling block for Jews and foolishness for Gentiles” (1 Cor 1:23).

But as many of us have discovered in our own lives, running from the reality of the cross has its own consequences. Christopher West writes in Good News: “If we reject the cross of Christ, if we refuse to take the risk of loving as Christ loves, we will still eventually end up with what we resisted - suffering.

But the suffering that comes from resisting the cross is fruitless, empty, and despairing, while the suffering that comes from embracing the cross leads to the joy of the

resurrection, the joy of love and new life.”

Suffering, by the numbers

We now have many well-documented scientific studies that have begun to quantify the suffering caused by the decades-long human experiment called the sexual revolution - a revolution whose very purpose was to reject the notion that true love involves sacrifice. The data are voluminous, but here are a few snapshots of research documenting the suffering caused by divorce, abortion, teen sexual activity, and contraception:

● A recent report from a politically diverse group of family scholars concluded that intact marriages protect daughters from premature sexual activity, protect sons from delinquent and criminal activity, and protect children generally from higher rates of child abuse, substance abuse, psychological stress, mental illness, and divorce as adults (Why Marriage Matters, Institute for American Values, 2005).

● Numerous and varied medical studies show that women who have had abortions suffer an increased risk of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, suicide, and breast cancer, as well as placenta previa and preterm birth in subsequent pregnancies (D Readon, P Coleman, J Cougle, “Substance Use Associated with Unintended Pregnancy Outcomes in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth,” American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, vol 30 (2004), 369–383).

● Statistics show that teens who are sexually active are more likely than their sexually abstinent peers to be depressed, attempt suicide, get STDs, procure abortions, have children out of wedlock, and find themselves in unstable marriages as adults (Robert E Rector et al, The Harmful Effects of Early Sexual Activity and Multiple Sexual Partners Among Women, The Heritage Foundation, 26 June 2003; Robert E Rector et al, Sexually Active Teenagers Are More Likely to be Depressed and to Attempt Suicide, The Heritage Foundation, Centre for Data Analysis Report, 3 June 2003).

● According to research by leading economists and sociologists - who, in this case, are neither Christians nor social conservatives - the widespread availability of contraception has led to an increase in sexual licence, abortion, out-of-wedlock births, and divorce - especially among the poor. University of Virginia sociologist Bradford Wilcox writes that social science data have largely vindicated Catholic teaching: The dignity of both man and woman is best understood and respected when sexual intimacy takes place within the protections of permanent, lifegiving, monogamous marriage (W Bradford Wilcox, “The Facts of Life and Marriage,” Touchstone (January/February 2005)).

We who, by grace, seek to follow Church teaching on sex and marriage are generally spared such disastrous consequences.

We also are blessed with the delight of authentic love - for our spouse, our children, and our God. And we are humbled by the recognition that our God wants this joy for us, not just for eternity, but now. Our loving Father permits us to suffer difficulties, to trip upon our own weakness, to abhor our selfishness, while He stands ready all the while to heal and transform us.

The Church’s teachings on sex and marriage may seem daunting to the man of the world who has been taught to seek happiness in himself, his pleasure, and his illusions of independence.

But to those who have been graced with the desire to live in accordance with Church teachings, they come to signify God’s great love for us. For not only do these teachings protect us from much emotional, physical, and spiritual harm but, by them, God guides us to our eternal home.

This article originally appeared in Crisis Magazine. Erika’s book Women, Sex and the Church - a case for Catholic Teaching, is available from The Record Bookshop. (08) 9220 5900 or bookshop@therecord.com.au

God’s promise of everlasting life

ABISHOP C HRISTOPHER SAUNDERS Bishop of Broome

s you read the Scriptures after the events of the Passion of Christ and His glorious Resurrection, you cannot help but note the puzzlement that overtakes many of the disciples. They want to believe that the story of Jesus is not over; that there is more to come. But doubt bothers them and continues to surround them, causing hesitation and bewilderment. Only the Spirit that enables and transforms God’s children is able to lift them up and set them on a new pathway to life in the service of God. Only the Spirit confirms in them their faith of Jesus’ Resurrection which promises new life.

Our liturgies and ceremonies as constructed for Holy Week begin with the Institution of the Eucharist, source of our nourishment and heart of our communion with God. Good Friday immerses us in the mystery of suffering and death while at the Great Vigil on Saturday evening the fire bursts into life to dispel the darkness and in holy triumph Christ is once more proclaimed as “our light”.

The Holy Week story contains the entire range of human feelings – joy, celebration, suffering, anger, despair, hope, confusion, doubt and betrayal, but it is love that triumphs in the end. And that is the whole point of why we continue to remember year after year the mystery of Easter. Love has triumphed. Hope is real, not imagined. And God’s mercy is without end. Life is indeed for us the gift God always intended it to be. With joy and humility, in praise and worship, we continually give thanks to God.

In a society remarkably non-religious, like our own in Australia, it is very easy to take on board the holiday syndrome. To be impressed by Easter as a bonus vacation moment designed to break up the monotony of the year. It is very tempting to let slip the faith expression that indeed Easter has always been in the life of the Church and in the life of Christian nations.

If we have been living out the opportunities and challenges of Lent, preparing for the Easter feast, Easter will certainly mean so much for us. The Church has been encouraging us in this penitential season to examine ourselves closely, to discover our strengths and weaknesses, to aspire to turn over a new leaf. Prayer, fasting and Christian almsgiving are the means we have been encouraged to use to set right our relationship with God and our relationship with our fellow human beings. To attend more to public prayers and devotions such as the Stations of the Cross has been a useful exercise but the call to prayer is also a call to private prayer and meditation. Fasting has heightened our awareness and focused our attention on what Jesus Christ has done for us.

Sadly, in our world, too many people continue to be bewildered and puzzled about who they are and what the purpose of life might be for them. They want the good stories to continue but they cannot comprehend the joy of the Cross or the wonder of Christ’s passion. Nor can they comprehend that only the Holy Spirit can enkindle the fire of our love for God and strengthen our faith in Him. Our openness to this gift of the Spirit, which flows from the grace of Easter, is the difference between our reaching our full potential as humans or our remaining numbed to the possibility of a fullness of humanity as God has intended.

May the enduring love of God made present to us through the joy of the first Easter, continue to fill your hearts with hope and love. And may you be to the world, through the power of the Holy Spirit, a witness to God’s promise of everlasting life.

SJOG Murdoch’s $234m expansion

SAINT John of God Health Care is investing $234m at its Murdoch Hospital, significantly increasing its capacity to provide health services in Perth’s south metropolitan area.

The Murdoch expansion will increase the number of beds at the hospital from 357 to 522 which, combined with more treatment facilities, will allow for an additional 25,000 patients.

Murdoch Hospital’s Chief Executive Officer, Peter Mott, said the Sisters of St John of God showed vision in choosing Murdoch as the hospital’s location over 20 years ago.

The group has invested $325 million in expanding healthcare facilities over the past decade, with another $300 million, including the Murdoch redevelopment, to be invested in Western Australia over the next five years.

“From its origins as a 210-bed hospital in 1994, Murdoch has grown every few years. The current redevelopment plan takes a long-term view to meeting anticipated growth in demand, with three stages of capacity growth over the next decade,” Mr Mott said.

The redevelopment will also add 165 beds, eight theatres, medical clinic, and comprehensive cancer centre by 2015.

Mr Mott said he expected stage one of the development to create around 200 jobs for clinical and support staff.

Building will commence

in early 2012, with new services coming online from 2013 through to 2015, coinciding with the opening of the Fiona Stanley Hospital in 2014.

Jesuit movie critic speaks on mission

IN the spirit of Easter, the Catholic Mission office in Perth has invited Fr Richard Leonard SJ to give a public lecture on finding God amidst personal tragedy and terrible human suffering in the world today at St Thomas More Church in Bateman on 19 May at 7.30pm.

Fr Leonard, director of the Australian Catholic Film Office and Catholic Church Television Australia, is also a consultant to the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Media Committee and a film critic for all the major Catholic newspapers on the eastern seaboard. He also lectures in cinema and theology at the United Faculty of Theology and the University of Melbourne. He has recently authored a book entitled Where the Hell is God, which examines God’s presence amidst the experience of grief and suffering.

“As Catholics, we are called to be missionary, to be messengers of the Resurrection,” a Catholic Mission statement said. “This public lecture offers us an opportunity to invite those outside our parish and Church community to accompany you to listen to some words that may reinforce solace and hope this Easter season. With the help of the Holy Spirit, who knows where this may lead.”

RSVP the Catholic Mission office on 9422 7933 or email cm@perthcatholic.org.au.

Priest challenges flock with Lenten pilgrimage

BY ANTHONY BARICH

FORTY-EIGHT City Beach parishioners had their faith challenged during a day of prayer and reflection at three pilgrimage sites on 8 April, which also served to build the spiritual community.

Holy Spirit Parish priest Fr Don Kettle organised a pilgrimage to three sites where participants reflected on and renewed their Baptismal vow and think on the theme put before us: “How much does God love us?”

Those participating were both old and new parishioners and the age spectrum was young to those in their twilight years. Fr Kettle said that to build a community of Catholic, like-minded people, “there has to be something more than the Sacraments to bind the parish together. Parishioners need a mix of liturgical and social functions to be able to communicate at all levels with their fellow Catholic journeymen”.

The day started after the normal 7.45am Mass on a bus journey first to Bullsbrook’s The Virgin of the Revelation shrine and Church where pilgrims were given brief informative history of the shrine and its worldwide following under Her title of the Virgin of the Revelation then a time of private prayer was available.

From there Fr Don escorted all to Fr Fox’s Bindoon Church

Hands blessing takes on new dimension

The importance of hands in healthcare celebrated

IMPROVING the quality of rehabilitation for burn survivors has been the focus for the past 15 years for Royal Perth Hospital’s senior physiotherapist, Dr Dale Edgar.

Dr Edgar was this year’s keynote speaker for The University of Notre Dame Australia’s annual Blessing of Hands ceremony held at the Fremantle Campus on 6 April.

Hosted this year by the School of Physiotherapy, the ceremony is in the past tradition of when the hands of kings, priests and prophets were anointed with oils to signify those who were set aside as agents of God - a symbol of healing and strength.

Led by Campus Chaplain Fr John Sebastian, students from the Schools of Health Sciences, Medicine, Nursing and Physiotherapy, as well as students from the School of Arts and Sciences’ Behavioural Science and Counselling programmes, had their hands anointed in recognition that interaction and helping people

are key elements of each of these professions’ practicums. During his presentation, Dr Edgar shared the focus of his research which is the provision and improvement of burn survivor rehabilitation, developing models and protocols for burn care.

“The most important thing is to not underestimate the power of the hands and the impact hands can have in the interaction with patients and other staff,” Dr Edgar said.

“Hands are involved in diagnosis and all aspects of our treatment of patients.”

In his research, Dr Edgar has identified the lack of validated clinical assessment tools in burn care. This has markedly hindered burn research and translation of results into universal practice.

To address the issues around research progress and data driven change in practice, his PhD thesis established a validated measurement battery of both acute and long-term, post-burn outcomes.

Dr Edgar has also directed his energy into burn prevention and preparedness as well as pre-hospital management of burn patients.

His burn prevention activities involve community education opportunities and the development

of international and bi-national burn registries in his past and present roles for the Australian and New Zealand Burns Association.

Dean of the School of Physiotherapy, Professor Peter Hamer, said the ceremony related strongly to the practical and physical nature of physiotherapy where hands formed a central knowledge focus.

“We use our hands across so many areas of practice, from teaching abdominal muscle contraction with the pregnant mother, to helping children with cystic fibrosis clear their lungs, to manual mobilisation of joints and facilitation of function through guidance, touch and resistance of movement,” Prof Hamer said.

“The Blessing of Hands brings to the foreground the power of our hands in our clinical profession.”

Fourth year Physiotherapy and Exercise Sports Science student, Gemma Nevin, said she felt privileged to have taken part in the ceremony.

“Having worked in aged care, I saw hands as the key personal and emotional symbols of support and guidance for the elderly,” Ms Nevin said.

New NSW Bishop daunted but optimistic

BY ANTHONY BARICH

A US-born priest appointed to lead the Maitland-Newcastle diocese is optimistic about the future despite his predecessor retiring early after he admitted to feeling “battered and worn out” after dealing with the sexual abuse scandal.

Our Lady of All Nations. The Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary were recited travelling between the two destinations giving all time to ponder ‘How much does God love us?’ “The tranquil surrounds was conducive to reflect and pray,” Fr Kettle said.

Next stop was the Benedictine town of New Norcia. On the journey there Fr Kettle led the singing of the Divine Praises in which “all were reminded that God does love us and He reminds us all in this beautiful prayer. The motto of the Benedictines is PAX and certainly we felt the peace of God and His Blessed Mother with us here especially”, Fr Kettle said.

“Lunch served as a great way for all pilgrims to mix, talk and exchange ideas on various diverse subjects and to build relationships that will bind Holy Spirit parish even closer together,” he added.

All who were able to join Fr Kettle have stated independently and as a group that they were moved by the day spiritually, their Faith was challenged and because of this it has grown and importantly they met and got to know their fellow parishioners better.

It has been suggested by participants that a further pilgrimage be undertaken later this year to the new Bunbury Cathedral of St Patrick. This pilgrimage set goals that were met and participants, because of this, are seeking more.

Maitland-Newcastle Bishop Michael J Malone, now 71, wrote to the Pope in 2009 appealing for an early retirement and a coadjutor Bishop, or successor, after struggling to cope with the Church’s sexual abuse crisis for “15 difficult years”.

While no coadjutor Bishop had since been named, Pope Benedict announced on 4 April that Fr William Wright, 58, will take up his appointment as the eighth Bishop of Maitland-Newcastle within two months, to be consecrated at Sacred Heart Cathedral on 15 June.

Bishop-elect Wright was born in Washington DC on 26 October 1952 while his father Jack was on a two-year secondment as an economist for the Australian Central Bank (now the Reserve Bank).

Bishop Malone said, in a 4 April statement, he feels “great relief” to retire, and that the diocese “presents the new leader with difficult issues.”

In a communiqué issued 3 February to his diocese, Bishop Malone wrote: “While our diocese has achieved much in recent years, the profile of the Church has suffered and our mission has been compromised because of the events we have faced.”

One of Bishop Malone’s first acts upon being consecrated Bishop of Maitland-Newcastle in 1995 was to end the priesthood of one of the Hunter region’s most notorious paedophile priests, Denis McAlinden,

letters obtained by The Newcastle Herald revealed.

Bishop-elect Wright admitted that while it is “daunting” being appointed Bishop of a diocese that “has been one of the Australian hotspots” for sexual abuse issues, he is optimistic about the future.

“It’s not an enormous black cloud. You don’t go into these things with a martyr complex, but I’m taking up this new position conscious that there are great challenges in it,” he told The Record on 5 April.

“A good deal of damage has been done but there are a good number of great people of faith and good-

ness dearly wishing that such bad things never happened.

“There are many people who have great will and resource to do their best for the future of a community that believes in and represents the best in human life,” Bishop Wright said.

There are people who want to build a new future for the Church - “not as an interest group but for the Church as a community of people who support each other though good and bad and stand for something good and wholesome in life. That means recovering from lots of shocks to the system,” he said.

Bishop-designate William J Wright, 58, pictured in a 2009 photo, was named the new Bishop of Maitland-Newcastle by Pope Benedict XVI on 4 April.

PHOTO: COURTESY AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS CONFERENCE

Pope’s plans for China stifled

Cardinal Zen: Vatican officials have blocked Pope’s plan for Chinese Church

BY BENJAMIN MANN

WASHINGTON DC (CNA/ EWTN News) - During his recent visit to Washington, DC, Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun told reporters that mistakes and misunderstandings on the part of key Vatican officials, and a desire for “compromise at any cost,” have undermined Pope Benedict’s intentions for the Catholic Church in China.

“In the year 2007, the Holy Father issued a letter in which he gave a very clear direction. But those directions were not followed,” said Cardinal Zen, in a 7 April press conference at Washington, DC’s Hudson Institute.

“There was even a wrong interpretation by some experts, like a certain Fr (Jeroom) Heyndrickx, which misled many people.”

These experts, according to Cardinal Zen, encouraged all Chinese Catholics to seek government recognition as members of the “official” or “open” Church, a step that would require them to join the government-run Catholic Patriotic Association.

“That wrong interpretation said that the Holy Father ‘wants everybody to come into the open,’” the Cardinal explained. “This is not true at all.” Although the Patriotic Association contains many Bishops in communion with Rome, Pope Benedict warned “underground” Bishops to be careful in approaching it.

“The Holy Father cautioned people in the underground,” Cardinal Zen pointed out. “Because when you want to come out, the letter says: in no few instances, indeed almost always, the government will impose conditions which are not acceptable to the Catholic conscience.”

The Pope’s letter ultimately left the matter of government recognition up to individual Bishops, while warning that the Catholic Patriotic Association’s founding principles –especially its claim of independence from the Vatican – were “incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”

Now, Cardinal Zen believes that a rush for government recognition, combined with misguided Vatican policies, has emboldened authorities in Beijing, and even swayed many Chinese Catholics to the government’s side.

“Recently, unfortunately the people in the Congregation for Evangelisation even followed a wrong policy, the wrong strategy – which is the old Ostpolitik,” he

observed. The term refers to Pope Paul VI’s controversial policy of accommodating Communist governments in an attempt to obtain better conditions for Catholics behind the Iron Curtain during the 1960s and 70s.

“This policy of Ostpolitik –which is compromise at any cost, to please the government always, to always avoid confrontation – led to the present situation, the events at the end of November and the beginning of December,” Cardinal Zen said.

In November of 2010, the Chinese government ordained a Bishop without the approval of the Holy See, at a ceremony in which several Bishops loyal to Rome were reportedly forced to participate. In December, police officers rounded up a large number of Bishops and escorted them to a Dtate-sponsored meeting of an unauthorised “Bishops’ conference.”

“It is no more our Church,” Cardinal Zen lamented. “They carried out one more illegitimate ordination, and then they had a big assembly which is completely against the doctrine of the Church. It was like a slap in the face of the Holy Father.”

“But unfortunately, these people in the Congregation for Evangelisation, and this expert, still believe that they must carry on the policy of compromise.”

Fr. Jeroom Heyndrickx, who has worked extensively in China on behalf of the CICM missionaries, wrote in a March 2011 essay that the illicit consecration and Bishops’ assembly should not get in the way of seeking “unity, through dialogue and reconciliation.”

Cardinal Zen hopes that the influence of Fr Heyndrickx and

other voices for compromise, including Cardinal Prefect Ivan Dias of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, may be reaching an end. He sees signs of a “new beginning” that would allow the Pope’s intentions for the Chinese Church – particularly a reconciliation of “underground” and “official” Catholics – to be authentically realised.

“Fortunately, the Holy Father, who has been so patient all this time, has taken some action, especially the appointment of the new Secretary for the Congregation for Evangelisation,” the recentlyordained Archbishop Savio Hon.

“He is Chinese, he knows the reality, and he is also a good theologian. So we have hope for a new beginning. But it will be very difficult, because now the difficulty is not only to face a government, but to face our own people, who are already more on the side of the government than on the side of the Church. That’s the very sad reality.”

Cardinal Zen told CNA that the first and most important task, at present, would be to revisit Pope Benedict XVI’s Letter to Chinese Catholics and acquire a correct understanding of the principles it sets out as non-negotiable.

“Everything is laid down in the letter of the Holy Father,” he said. “You have to explain to the government that we cannot go all the way with them. That means we cannot agree on an independent Church. That’s our bottom line, because we are the universal Catholic Church.

“They must accept that the Church is run by the Bishops, and they must give real power to the Bishops. Now, the Bishops are nothing, they mean nothing. They are being humiliated.”

Vatican reaches wit’s end with stubborn Beijing

Vatican commission expresses deep concern over relations

BY JOHN T HAVIS Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY - A Vatican commission on China expressed deep concern over worsening relations with the Chinese government and appealed to authorities there to avoid steps that would aggravate Church-State problems.

Specifically, the commission urged Chinese authorities not to persist in imposing new government-backed Bishops who do not have the approval of Pope Benedict XVI.

Titled a Message to Chinese Catholics, the text was issued on 14 April following a three-day annual meeting of the commission at the Vatican.

The commission expressed joy at the news that the Diocese of Shanghai was launching the beatification cause of Paul Xu Guangqi, a Chinese scholar who worked closely with the famed Jesuit missionary, Father Matteo Ricci, in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Pope Benedict met with commission members at the end of their encounter, praising Chinese Catholics’ desire for unity with Rome and underlining the importance of spiritual formation in confronting present challenges.

The commission’s message began by noting the “general climate of disorientation and anxiety about the future” of the Church in China, following recent setbacks in Church-State relations.

It said that given the numerous vacant dioceses in China, the selection of new Bishops was an urgent necessity and at the same time “a source of deep concern.”

“The commission strongly hopes that there will not be new wounds to ecclesial communion,” it said.

“We look with trepidation and fear to the future: We know that it is not entirely in our hands, and we launch an appeal so that the problems do not grow and the divisions are not deepened at the expense of harmony and peace.”

The message said the ordination of a new Bishop of Chengde last November - the first without

papal approval in four years - was a “sad episode” that had inflicted a “painful wound” on Church unity. It emphasised that the Church considers the appointment of Bishops a religious, not a political matter, which rightly falls under the Pope’s “supreme spiritual authority.”

The message said the Vatican, while it does not have reason to regard the ordination in Chengde invalid, does consider it “gravely illegitimate” because it was conferred without the papal mandate. As a result, it said, the Bishop’s exercise of ministry is also illegitimate.

The message also addressed the fact that several other Bishops, including some in communion with the Pope, took part in the Chengde ordination.

Because these Bishops may have been forced to participate, excommunication was not automatically incurred, the Vatican commission said.

But it called on all Bishops involved in the ordination to explain themselves to the Vatican and to their own priests and faithful, to help “repair the external scandal” caused by their participation.

The message also criticised the Chinese government-controlled National Congress of Catholic Representatives that was held in Beijing from 7-9 December. Many Bishops, priests, Religious and laypeople were forced to take part in the assembly against their will.

The commission cited Pope Benedict’s 2007 letter to Chinese Catholics which said Catholic doctrine cannot accept that statecontrolled organisations outside the structure of the Church can guide the life of the Catholic community.

The commission’s message said the Church was open to “sincere and respectful dialogue with the civil authorities” in order to overcome the present problems.

Specifically, it said the Vatican was ready to sit down and consult with Chinese authorities on the question of the redrawing of diocesan boundaries in China.

The message asked the whole church to pray for Chinese Catholics, in particular on 24 May, the feast of Our Lady, Help of Christians, which Pope Benedict has designated as a day of prayer for the Church in China.

Notre Dame rewards Catholic ethos promoters

FIRST year Medicine student

Amy Rosario is the inaugural recipient of The University of Notre Dame Australia’s (UNDA) Saint Mary MacKillop Award for her outstanding contribution to the advancement of the Catholic mission and the Objects of the University on the Fremantle campus.

Miss Rosario was congratulated for her achievements in front of academic staff, fellow students and family members at the UNDA Awards Ceremony held at the Fremantle Campus on 12 April.

The St Mary MacKillop Award

was one of four service awards presented which recognised students’ commitment, dedication and enthusiasm to pastoral care at university and in the wider community.

Amy Rosario

The Award was established in recognition of St Mary MacKillop’s canonisation on 17 October 2010 – the only Australian to be recognised by the Catholic Church as a saint. It adds to Ms Rosario’s growing number of accolades including the Dianne Wansborough Scholarship for Nursing in 2008 and the St John of God Health Care Outstanding Student Award in 2009. On campus, Ms Rosario has also been a student mentor, a student ambassador, a member of

the Student Affairs Committee, President of the Nursing Society and part of the Mary MacKillop Festival in 2010.

“With all the work I did to get the Festival happening, to actually have an award named after her is so amazing and to be the first recipient is a huge honour,” Miss Rosario said.

“I think it’s really important to enjoy your undergraduate degree as it’s one of the only times in your life where you have the opportunity, time and flexibility to do all these beautiful things Notre Dame offers you.”

The Archbishop Foley Award

was presented to Vincent Restifo, who co-founded a Philosophy and Theology club for students with Tammy Nguyen and Rosemary Parker. The Faulkner Award went to Mardi McNamara and Sarah Crute won her third Service Award at Notre Dame as she received the Helen Lombard Award. Ms Crute has been the President and Vice President of UNDA’s Students for Social Justice and is currently the national representative for the St Vincent de Paul Society. The University Medal was won by 2010 Bachelor of Commerce graduate Gemma Roddan.

Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun of Hong Kong blesses newly ordained Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai during an ordination Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican on 5 February.

PHOTO: CNS/PAUL HARING

Fertility ‘shouldn’t be feared’

Holy See points to flawed population control policies at United Nations

NEW YORK (Zenit.org) - The Holy See’s permanent observer to the United Nations is challenging the erroneous view that human fertility and population growth is something to be feared.

Archbishop Francis Chullikatt stated this Tuesday in an address to the 44th Session of the Commission on Population and Development in a meeting on Fertility, Reproductive Health and Development.”

He noted, “Unfortunately, many discussions in the present day continue to be led by a false notion that, in the context of population growth, the very act of giving life is something to be feared rather than affirmed.”

“Such thinking is based on a radical individualism,” the prelate said, “which sees human reproduction as a commodity that must be regulated and improved in order to encourage greater market efficiency and development.

“How can such a view be consistent with the objectives of the United Nations? Put most candidly, it cannot.”

The Archbishop asserted that “this flawed understanding leads to the distorted view that population growth, especially among the poor, must be decreased in order to address poverty, illiteracy and malnutrition.”

“It is also based upon the consistently disproven theory that population increase will devastate the environment, lead to global competition and confrontation for resources and undermine the ability of women to interact fully with society,” he said.

“These apprehensions contribute to the advancement of forms

of reproductive technology which denigrate the nature of human sexuality,” Archbishop Chullikatt noted.

He observed that “the combination of these misconceptions has led some national governments to adopt laws and policies which discourage parents from exercising their fundamental and non-derogable right to have children free of coercion and which even make it illegal for mothers to give birth in some cases or for a child to have one’s own brothers and sisters.”

“Instead of focusing political and financial resources on efforts to reduce the number of poor persons through methods which trivialise marriage and the family and deny the very right to life of unborn children, let us instead focus these resources on providing the promised development assistance to the approximately 920 million people

living on less than US$1.25 per day,” the Archbishop told the United Nations.

“Let us feed the nearly one billion people who are malnourished, and let us provide skilled birth attendants at every birth to reduce the incidence of maternal and child mortality. Let us achieve our promise of providing primary education to the 69 million children who risk becoming another generation without such basic assistance. These children of today will be the citizens of tomorrow who have much to contribute to the welfare and common good of all.

He said international programmes of economic assistance aimed at financing campaigns of sterilisation and contraception, as well as the subordination of economic assistance to such campaigns, are affronts to the dignity of the person, the family and the human community.

US targets Holy See over family planning stance

NEW YORK (C-FAM) - The contrast between the priorities of the developed and developing world was as clear as night and day. “It is detrimental to not have adequate family planning resources,” a US delegate told the room. “Why is there a resistance to acknowledging access to family planning as a necessity?”

The delegate from the small island nation of St Lucia replied, “How do we get our fertility rate to rise? We were told we needed to reduce our fertility rate –now we have an ageing population.”

Both voices spoke out during a UN panel hosted last week by the Holy See, Honduras, and Malta called Secure Human Development: Marriage, Family, Community. Laurie ShestackPhipps, a US representative to the UN, castigated the Holy See and other organisers for not being “comprehensive” in their approach to the panel, specifically mentioning family planning and abortion. She complained further about high fertility rates in the poor countries of Africa.

Shestack-Phipps said: “How can you say that you value family, community, and marriage, but not bring into the picture that both men and women have a right to a healthy life, to be able to avoid unsafe abortion, and have access to the highest attainable standard of reproductive health, and to decide how many children they should have?”

The exchange between

Shestack-Phipps and Sarah Flood-Beaubrun of St Lucia points up an irony at the UN. On the one side are rich countries demanding poor countries reduce their fertility rates, and on the other, the poor countries saying they need higher fertility rates for not just development, but survival.

Almost half the countries in the world are facing what has come to be known as demographic winter where fertility rates have fallen so dramatically that populations are rapidly ageing.

The US delegate’s castigation on family planning, which ignored the demographic realities and actual desires of developing countries, is a microcosm of the current UN debates on population and development.

The documents that guide this year’s Commission on Population and Development admit that most nations have achieved low fertility, yet the UN continues to ask donor nations for more and more money for family planning services and for what the UN euphemistically calls commodities: condoms, pills, and injectibles that prevent pregnancy.

Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America, further underscored the incongruity. She has visited many medical clinics in Africa and the doctors there told her of medicine cabinets that are empty of essentials like penicillin but overflowing with condoms – so many that children have taken to blowing them up like balloons and playing with them as toys. “So much attention is given to family planning that it drains resources away from what the desperate needs are,” she explained.

Egypt has but two choices: Patriarch

ROME, Italy (CNA/EWTN News) - “We don’t have an intermediate choice” between Islamism and democracy, says Cardinal Patriarch Antonios Naguib about the future of Egypt.

For the head of Catholics in Egypt and the Pope’s right-hand man on the ground, Egypt is destined to be either a nation where freedom, equal rights and democracy prevail, or a Muslim state in which these values are intrinsically compromised.

The head of Coptic Catholics in Egypt spoke openly to CNA about the high stakes transition that comes on the heels of the Tahrir Square protests that forced Hosni Mubarak to resign his 30-year presidency.

Cardinal Naguib was relaxed as he took a coffee break from his second day of meetings with fellow bishops to hammer out the concluding documents for last October’s Vatican synod for the Middle East. He now calls that two-week long meeting about the present and future of Christianity in the Middle East a “prophetic vision and voice,” in light of the widespread uprisings in Middle Eastern and North African nations.

The synod called the people of the Middle East to strive for the shared values, said the Cardinal.

One recurring theme of the synod discussions was the fundamental importance of a healthy space between religion and govern-

ment to allow for the protection of religious and personal freedoms.

A referendum passed by the large majority of Egyptians on 19 March shows there is a hesitation in the nation to separate government actions from a religious foundation.

Nearly 78 per cent of the population voted in favour of an partial amendment of the constitution which concentrates on modifying the powers of the president. Those who oppose it say it does little to bring about the civil and social

change demanded by the February and March protests in Cairo.

Cardinal Naguib said the referendum result shows the deep influence of Islamists in society.

“Unfortunately, it was presented in a religious light,” he said. “Instead of speaking about political and social choice, religious vision and choice was spoken of - which for me and for many falsified the orientation of this movement for change.”

Before the vote, an “Islamist cur-

rent” presented the referendum in the streets and the mosques as a choice for or against Islam - a vote for or against an afterlife in paradise, said the Cardinal.

Put in such a way, “the overwhelming choice was for religion and paradise - which is very normal,” he observed.

“This approach confused the orientation and direction of the process” and twists the original scope of the movement that brought about the change, he said. The Coptic Cardinal explained that he sees the fusion of the religious and political realms as “a mistaken vision.”

In a recent speech to the German parliament, the Cardinal said that from the moment it became clear that the protests would be successful “we have seen figures and forces, completely absent at the beginning, appear and even dominate the scene.”

“The most visible of these are the Muslim Brothers who seem to wish to confiscate the revolution.”

The original objective of the movement, he told CNA, was “democracy, a civil state, equality, a state and an order based on equal rights and responsibilities for all, on the real participation of all, the exchange of government and authority. All of the components of a modern civil state.”

Twenty-two percent of voters asked for this through a complete overhaul of the constitution. They included Muslims and politicians

who harshly criticised an unwillingness to bring about greater change.

The fact that more than 40 percent of the voting population turned out for the vote was also very significant. This “massive participation” - by Egyptian standards - was unprecedented and could have never happened under the previous regime, said the Cardinal.

Still, those who hope for a democratic state are looking to the future with what he described as “a bit of apprehension.”

The Islamist influence witnessed before the referendum vote “causes a little fear for those who don’t want the process to be guided by a religious vision, pressure, and authority ... And, this is the fear for the future which is also repeated for the successive phases.

The Cardinal is putting a lot of weight on these “future phases” in which he hopes a definitive change of the constitution will be carried out.

After parliamentary elections in September, a commission will be formed to address the scope of the modifications. From this step will come the guidelines for the new president.

“These are the three stages, three moments that are definitive for the future,” Cardinal Naguib said.

The elections, he concluded, will have an effect on the entire Middle East, which looks to Egypt as a model.

Archbishop Francis Chullikatt, who heads the Vatican’s permanent observer mission at the United Nations, addresses the congregation during an interreligious prayer service at Holy Family Church in New York in late September 2010.

PHOTO: CNS/GREGORY SHEMITZ

A Muslim girl chants slogans and holds up a Quran and a cross during a rally to demonstrate unity between Muslims and Christians in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt on 11 March. The rally took place after recent sectarian clashes left 13 people dead.

PHOTO: CNS/MOHAMED ABD ELGHANY, REUTERS

Translation scramble after embarrasing error in youth Catechism

Vatican to organise corrections to be made to new youth Catechism

BY CAROL GLATZ Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY - The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will set up a special working group to collect reported errors and distribute corrections in translations of a new catechism created for young people.

The move came after the catechism’s Italian edition was found to have a translation mistake concerning the Church’s teaching on contraception.

Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, who oversaw the creation of YouCat , a recently released supplement to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, told journalists at a Vatican news conference on 13 April that many translations of the original German text of the new catechism were still underway.

YouCat was expected to be published in 13 languages, including Chinese and Arabic, by the end of 2011 and in 25 languages by 2012.

While the original German version had been studied and approved by the doctrinal congregation before its publication, the other language editions did not pass through the doctrinal office after they were translated by different publishing houses.

“For each translation, we had an agreement with the publisher and we, the Austrian Bishops’ conference, asked that a Bishop who had theological and catechetical expertise act as guarantor of the translation in his language,” Cardinal Schönborn said.

Citta Nuova, the publishing arm of the Focolare lay movement, handled the Italian edition of the catechism.

It was translated by Pietro Podolak and translation revisions were overseen by Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice.

Sometimes translators get a meaning wrong or editing mistakes are made, Cardinal Schönborn said, and for that reason “we need a second or third edition” that gets reviewed.

He said publication of the French edition has been halted because of a discrepancy with the original German text concerning the Church’s view of other religions.

The Cardinal said he met with the head of the doctrinal congregation, Cardinal William Levada, on 13 April to discuss “how to proceed” with current and any future discoveries of translation errors. He said the congregation will be setting up “a small working group to collect all the observations, all the corrigenda coming in concerning the various translations and also the original German.”

The working group will study each of the mistakes or suggestions, then compile a list of corrections for subsequent printings, Cardinal Schönborn said.

Distribution of the YouCat Italian edition was temporarily suspended on 12 April because a translation erroneously left the impression that Catholic couples could use “contra-

ceptive methods.” The Italian copies distributed at the 13 April news conference had the misleading section crossed out in black pen and a photocopied slip of paper with the corrected text tucked between the pages.

The 300-page book uses a question-and-answer format to talk about what the Church teaches.

Question 420 of the Italian edition reads: “Can a Christian couple turn to contraceptive methods?”

The answer reads: “Yes, a Christian couple can and must be responsible about their capacity of being able to give life.”

The answer in Italian goes on to explain - in line with Church teaching - that the Church does not accept artificial means of contraception, but does allow regulation of fertility through natural methods.

The corrected question now reads in Italian: “Can a Christian couple turn to methods that regulate fertility?”

The error was not found in the original German text of YouCat, nor in the US English edition, which was published by Ignatius Press.

The English translation of the question and reply is: “May a Christian married couple regulate the number of children they have?

Yes, a Christian married couple may and should be responsible in using the gift and privilege of transmitting life.”

Jesuit Fr Joseph Fessio, founder and publisher of Ignatius Press, said the original German term is “a little vague,” as it means the regulation of conception, though not in the sense of suppressing or being anticonception.

The Vatican spokesman, Italian Jesuit Fr Federico Lombardi who is fluent in German, said German “is not an easy language for everyone and, therefore, every so often there are misinterpretations as we have seen in another recent case.”

Fr Lombardi was referring to an error made in an Italian translation of a book-length interview in German with Pope Benedict XVI, Light of the World: The Pope,

Austrian Church’s 837 abuse cases

AUSTRIAN Church officials have received 837 reports of alleged sexual abuse by Catholic priests since opening an investigation last year. The commission created to probe complaints has settled 200 cases, and paid damages to 192 victims. Most of the complaints involve incidents that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s—the same time period that accounted for the greatest number of abuse cases in the US. In Austria, as in America, the vast majority of the victims were male.

Spiritual awakening in Japan

THE recent earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters in Japan are leading to a spiritual awakening there, according to a missionary priest. “The catastrophe which struck the country has awoken consciences and spiritual needs and values,” said Scalabrinian Father Olmes Milani. “The people are stopping to pray in Shinto and Buddhist temples. They all pray that the emergency volunteers and the victims of the tsunami will be helped. Also in our Catholic churches there is an influx of non-Catholics who stop to pray.”

“The Christian faith remains, at a cultural level, a foreign religion, and therefore it will be difficult to overcome that barrier,” he added. “But in the meantime there is growing cooperation and collaboration between believers of different religions to consciously contribute to the wellbeing of society.”

History channel claims crucifixion nails found

A HISTORY channel documentary hosted by Simcha Jacobovici claims that there is “compelling” evidence that the nails used in Christ’s crucifixion have been discovered. The nails were discovered in what may have been Caiaphas’ tomb, but their origin is debated.

“There is no proof whatsoever that those nails came from the cave of Caiaphas,” said archeologist Gaby Barkay of Bar Ilan University. “There is no proof that the nails are connected to any bones or any bone residue attached to the nails and no proof from textual data that Caiaphas had the nails for the crucifixion with him after the crucifixion took place and after Jesus was taken down from the cross.”

the Church and the Signs of the Times, released in November. The translation said a prostitute using a condom was an example of where condom use can be “justified.”

Fr Lombardi said at the time that the Italian translation was an error. The Pope did not say its use was justified but that it may be a sign of moral responsibility in some specific situations when the intention is to reduce the risk of AIDS.

The YouCat Italian edition came out in bookstores on 30 March and sold 14,000 copies in five days, a Citta Nuova press release said on 6 April. At that time, Citta Nuova said some 46,000 copies had already been printed and more than 27,000 copies ordered.

Cardinal Schönborn said it was proposed that a corrigenda be inserted in the already published Italian editions containing the error.

Fr Fessio said the English edition sold 13,000 copies in the first four days after its release.

He said it will be “a great source for confirmation material,” which is lacking, and is proving to be of interest even to older adults wanting to learn more about the faith.

Some 700,000 copies of YouCat were to be distributed in at least 10 different languages to young people taking part in World Youth Day 2011 in Madrid.

An electronic version also will be available.

Pope Benedict wrote the book’s foreword and said he wanted to supplement the Catechism of the Catholic Church by translating it “into the language of young people.”

A group of German and Austrian youth who developed many of the questions and ideas in the book greeted Pope Benedict at the end of his weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square on 13 April.

One young man spent a few minutes showing the Pope how the YouCat application worked on an iPhone.

The free app, which lets users build a social network around the new catechism and World Youth Day events in Madrid, will be active after 1 May.

In addition, a spokesman for the Israel Antiquities Authority said that nails are commonly found in tombs.

In 1911, the Catholic Encyclopedia noted that “very little reliance can be placed upon the authenticity of the thirty or more holy nails which are still venerated, or which have been venerated until recent times, in such treasuries as that of Santa Croce in Rome, or those of Venice, Aachen, the Escurial, Nuremberg, Prague, etc. Probably the majority began by professing to be facsimiles which had touched or contained filings from some other nail whose claim was more ancient. Without conscious fraud on the part of anyone, it is very easy for imitations in this way to come in a very brief space of time to be reputed originals”.

N Korea imprisons 50,000 Christians

OVER 50,000 Christians are being held in prison in North Korea, according to a Fides news agency report. Juche, the State ideology developed in the 1950s by Communist dictator Kim Il-Sung, is the only system of belief permitted in the nation. A recent UN human rights report highlighted the torture and forced labour that take place in the Communist nation’s prison camps.

Psychology should draw on Church Fathers’ wisdom: Russian Orthodox

THE writings of the Church Fathers have much to teach the world of modern psychology, according to a Russian Orthodox Church official.

“Modern science has not absorbed or insufficiently absorbed a wealth of heritage left by the early Christian spiritual and intellectual tradition,” said Vladimir Legoyda, head of the synodal information department. “Christian ascetics made such great discoveries in human nature that Freud couldn’t even dream of … Christianity has gathered unparalleled experience analysing the human soul which is undoubtedly indispensable to modern science.”

Bishop: do not arm Libyan rebels

THE apostolic vicar of Tripoli has urged the international community not to provide weapons to the rebels who are seeking the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

“The risk of providing weapons to rebels in Benghazi is a way of not ending the war, [but] rather a way to lengthening it,” said Bishop Giovanni Martinelli, who wishes “dialogue to prevail in the truth without getting caught by so many vested interests.”

“We hope that in our small way we can grow the seed of reconciliation which only the power of God can give.”

Vladimir Legoyda

Bishop Martinelli

Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna and a delegation of youth carrying a YouCat banner leave St Peter’s Square after attending Pope Benedict XVI’s general audience at the Vatican on 13 April. YouCat is the recently released young people’s supplement to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

PHOTO: CNS/PAUL HARING

St Patrick’s a sign of Christ’s peace

BISHOP GERARD HOLOHAN Bishop of Bunbury

Anumber of people have expressed surprise that our new Cathedral is larger than the old one. Comments have ranged from: ‘The new cathedral reflects faith that the numbers going to church will grow again’ to ‘The size of the new cathedral is an exercise in denial: religious practice is dying.’

The second view does not understand Easter.

The real picture

It is true that religious practice currently is in a phase of decline in affluent countries. Jesus warned that the ‘lure of riches’ would choke people’s faith in the Parable of the Sower. However, we know from our 2000 years of Church history that this is not the first time such a phase has been experienced in a portion of the Church. Nor will it be the last. The real picture is that decline in religious practice in Australia is one of a range of symptoms that seem to reflect a broader social trend. There are other examples - the breakdown in married and family life: the growth in loneliness, particularly in the younger generation: the confusion in people about themselves, their direction in life and their relationships.

Then there is the decline in social involvement, particularly among younger people. Sports clubs struggle to make up teams; organisations which have contributed enor-

mously to society in the past, such as Lions, Rotary and the Country Women’s Association, struggle to find members under sixty; community service groups increasingly find ‘it is the same people who do everything’. The Church is not immune from these symptoms for it is part of society. We too see declining numbers in our worship and in our organisations.

What does all this mean?

Such trends reflect a society that is moving away from satisfying the basic needs of the human heart. Our basic yearnings for love, the desire for committed relationships, the yearning for true happiness –and for God - are a few examples.

In the words St Augustine wrote so long ago: ‘You made our hearts for yourself, O Lord, and they cannot rest until they rest in you’.

And does not history show that societies which fail to satisfy the needs of the human heart either

fragment gradually, or renew themselves by returning to the basic values and practices that satisfying these needs? This includes religious values and practice. There are many signs of troubled hearts in our society. Drugs and other addictions, such as those to alcohol, sex and gambling; growing violence and vandalism; the accelerating need for psychologists and counsellors; young people finding it easier to relate through Facebook and Twitter, rather than to relate in face to face relationships; the growth in suicides by 15-25 year olds – these are a few examples.

In our own diocesan Catholic schools, the number of psychologists has almost doubled this year because of the needs of an increasing percentage of troubled students. There are those who suggest that our society is ‘enlightened’ and ‘advanced’ – but how can increasing unhappiness reflect either enlightenment or advancement?

What does it say about our society that so many young people

Pope’s step by step guide to sainthood

To be holy is to love God, others, Pope says at audience

By Cindy Wooden Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY - Everyone is called to holiness, which is simply striving to imitate Christ, particularly in loving God and loving others, Pope Benedict XVI said.

Ending a long series of general audience talks about saints and Doctors of the Church, the pope spoke about the meaning of holiness and how it is achieved.

Addressing an estimated 12,000 people in St Peter’s Square on 13 April, Pope Benedict said there are three simple rules for living a holy life:

● “Never let a Sunday go by without an encounter with the risen Christ in the Eucharist; this is not an added burden, it is light for the entire week.”

● “Never begin or end a day without at least a brief contact with God” in prayer.

● “And along the pathway of our lives, follow the road signs that God has given us in the Ten Commandments, read in the light of Christ; they are nothing other than explanations of what is love in

specific situations.” The Pope said he knows most people, aware of their limits and weaknesses, think it wouldn’t be possible to be a saint.

The doubts, he said, are one of the reasons the Church proposes “a host of saints - those who fully lived charity and knew how to love and follow Christ in their daily lives”to be remembered on specific days throughout the year. The saints come from every period of the church’s history, every part of the world, every age group and every lifestyle, he said.

“I must say that, personally, for my faith, many saints - not all of

imagine the only real solution to their personal problems is to try to escape reality through drugs or worse?

‘Peace Be With You’

Christ’s Easter greeting was ‘peace be with you’ [John 20:20, 26]. It is his peace that satisfies the human heart. A single unhappy human heart is not the desire or intention of God.

Christ’s peace brings deep inner harmony. This harmony grows with the deepening personal relationship with God Jesus makes possible. It is a deep peace that remains, even when we experience emotional turmoil and conflicts. It is a peace we can tap into to strengthen us in times of personal crisis, illness and difficulties.

Growing in Christ’s peace

Jesus Christ left a number of ways for us to deepen in our relationships with God through him, and to grow in his peace. The Easter sacraments are prime examples.

Through Baptism, Christ frees us from original sin. This is the root cause of all human weaknesses, failings and temptations to do wrong. It is also the root cause of all unhappiness and loss of personal peace.

Personal weaknesses, failing and temptations to do wrong decline as the influence of the divine grows within us. Those who repent and believe grow in freedom from selfishness, greed, judgementalness and other causes of personal, relationship and other levels of unhappiness.

Through Baptism, Christ shares with us his own life, ‘eternal life’ or the life of God. We share in his divine nature. We are empowered to

love, to forgive and to live Christ’s ideals – which lead to peace.

We are empowered to live his ideals as wives and husbands, as family members and friends, as members of our societies. The power of Baptism grows in us as we nourish it in the ways Jesus taught – particularly through daily prayer about our lives and the Eucharist.

Through the Eucharist, Christ offers us guidance for our lives, healing and forgiveness, strength against temptations and power to live as he taught. He nourishes the spiritual gifts we received through Baptism and Confirmation so that the influence of the divine grows in us. Through Reconciliation, Christ restores our personal relationships with God. As a result, inner harmony grows, as does harmony in our relationships.

Let us proclaim Christ’s peace

Christians are called to share in the mission of Christ to the world.

In our troubled age, we need to help family members and friends, work colleagues and fellow students, acquaintances and sports lovers to know that Christ’s is another way –the way that leads to true peace and which satisfies of the needs of the human heart.

Let us help them to appreciate how they can draw on Christ’s peace in a troubled society – particularly through the Easter sacraments.

As heart-felt discontent continues to grow in our society, many will yearn for another way, the way of Christ Our new cathedral is a sign of God’s desire to satisfy the needs of the human heart, including that for inner peace.

It is a sign of hope that our society will return to the means through which Christ taught that God will do so.

MacKillop feast day raised to solemnity

them - are true stars in the firmament of history,” the Pope said.

“But I also want to say that for me it is not just the great saints, who I know well, who show me the path to follow, but the simple saints - the good people who I have known in my life and who will never be canonised.”

The unnamed saints “are people who are, so to say, ‘normal,’ without visible heroism, but in their goodness each day, I see the truth of the faith, this goodness that has matured in the faith of the Church”, the Pope said.

“For me, their goodness is the surest form of apologetics for the Church and a sign of where truth lies,” Pope Benedict added.

“It is in the communion of the saints - canonised and not canonised - that the Church lives.

“We enjoy their presence, their company and we should cultivate the firm hope of imitating their journey and of joining them one day in the same blessed life, eternal life.”

Pope Benedict said the Holy Spirit wants to transform each and every Christian into “tiles in the great mosaic of holiness that God is creating in history.”

“How great and beautiful and also simple is the Christian vocation seen in this light. All of us are called to holiness,” he said.

THE Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has approved a request from the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference that the liturgical observance of its first saint be raised from a “feast” to a “solemnity.”

Each year on 8 August the feast day of Mary MacKillop has traditionally been marked in parishes and a special Mass is often offered, particularly in places where the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart, which St Mary co-founded with Fr Julian Tenison Woods in 1866, have a presence.

Pope Benedict XVI canonised her as St Mary of the Cross - her professed Religious name – on 17 October, 2010 in Rome.

A solemnity is a feast day that is celebrated with greater fanfare due to its significance for the whole Church or a specific place. The Mass for the new St Mary MacKillop solemnity will include a second reading as well as the Gloria and the recitation of the Nicene Creed.

Australian Catholic Bishops Conference President, Adelaide Archbishop Philip Wilson, said this honour is a recognition that the story of and devotion to St Mary has a prominent place in the Catholic community in

Australia. “As Australia’s first saint it is fitting that the liturgy of the Church in Australia on her feast day should reflect that by having the highest liturgical rank”, he said.

“Many of the Bishops of Australia and 8,000 of the faithful went to Rome last year, and many more celebrated, in locations around Australia, the Canonisation of our first Saint”

“For all Australians, whether Catholic or not, Mary MacKillop is seen as a woman of heroic virtue, and this goes a little further toward honouring her great example.”

It is expected that on 8 August this year, parishes around Australia will celebrate with special Masses to mark the occasion.

The newly completed St Patrick’s Cathedral.

PHOTO: PETER BUI

Pope Benedict XVI

No such thing as a perfect marriage?

Celebrate Love Love

By Stephen & Carmen Court

What is the perfect marriage? Is there such a thing? Some couples believe they have a perfect marriage.

They seem happy, peaceful and content. Their perfect marriage operates at a somewhat efficient level as there is a perception that everything is OK. For them “OK” is perfect. The marriage, whilst efficient and convenient, it is at times a bit bland and often mediocre. Some couples may be in this place and think “that this is all there is to marriage and it therefore must be normal”.

Have these couples inadvertently redefined “perfect” as average? Do some couples aspire to the perfect marriage, but either look in the wrong places or simply don’t know where to look? Or do some couples do nothing at all?

Although some may say that “the L word” is all that is needed for a great marriage, do they fall short of drilling down into how love is actually expressed?

Do they leave the term “love” floating around in the ether? Where are the guidelines that help couples live love out in practice?

Over our marriage of 30 years

we have learnt about and worked at trying to achieve some level of perfection in our relationship. We have, at times, struggled and stumbled in looking for ways to enrich our marriage. We have learnt to engage in better communication by being honest and open in expressing our feelings, trusting and relying on each other.

We try to be attentive to each other on a day to day basis. Despite constant demands, we spend quality time together by making an effort to go out, have a weekend away, a walk on the beach, or a coffee and chat. We try to make decisions based on what is best for our relationship.

We cherish and respect each other in our interactions and in wider family or social contacts. We have endeavoured to import good, and reject poor, behaviours which have been experienced or “learnt” from our respective families of ori-

gin. As a result, we set common and agreed priorities and objectives. We honour sexual intimacy as a deep and exclusive physical expression of our love.

Our romance and passion has been reignited. Sharing our spiritual intimacy is still a work in progress for us. But we know it will enable us to deepen our personal union with each other, so we keep trying. We are by no means perfect. For us, the journey continues! But what we have discovered is that the more we talk through and learn about these ways of deepening our relationship, the deeper and better our relationship actually becomes.

Marriages today are under a constant barrage of social expectations.

These expectations often determine the actions of married couples. You must have 2.4 kids, two jobs that pay well, a big house and plasma screens, each spouse must have their own circle of friends, designer clothes, the “ideal” body, getting the kids to sport, music and dancing and the list goes on! There is nothing fundamentally wrong with these social expectations, unless they become the central focus and obsession of the marriage. In a marriage where the focus is genuine love these expectations are, therefore, no longer the goal.

When couples make their marriage a mission to love, the mission for each husband and wife is to love their spouse fully, freely, fruitfully, faithfully and forever. Love becomes the driving force.

Perhaps the definition of the

“perfect marriage” is not an end point, but rather the ongoing journey or mission in which couples share by genuinely engaging each other in talking and learning more about their marriages.

On the weekend of 2 and 3 April, married couples from around the Archdiocese of Perth gathered at the Newman Siena Centre in Doubleview to experience another successful Celebrate Love marriage enrichment seminar. The Celebrate Love seminar progressed through a number of topics.

The seminar explored and celebrated the differences between men and women and looked at how passion can energise and give life to relationships. It also looked at how ‘family of origin’ has influenced understanding of who we are (as man or woman) and our expectations as husband or wife.

The presenters also shared their own marriage experiences to help explain how men and women approach intimacy differently.

Drawing on the insights of Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, Celebrate Love explored the sacred nature of marital intimacy.

It also examined ways in which couples can affirm and influence those with whom they interact, especially their children, friends and family.

We were also delighted, privileged and appreciative that Auxiliary Bishop Donald Sproxton celebrated the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Mass with the group on Saturday evening.

Comments from couples who

participated in the April 2011 Celebrate Love marriage enrichment seminar:

● “We are very committed to our marriage but do find certain challenges beyond our own ability to overcome. It was great to be given techniques which seem certain to help a great deal in these situations.”

● “The weekend has helped us profoundly. We feel a huge weight has been lifted from us.”

● “I was worried that we would have to share details of our marriage in a group! But the seminar was structured so that all discussion was private, just between the two of us.”

● “Reminded us of the sacramental aspects of married life.”

The next Celebrate Love marriage seminar weekend for Perth is being held on 20 and 21 August 2011 at the Newman Siena Centre in Doubleview.

For more details call Carmen Court on 9316 4434 or 0419 945 277 or check the web site www.celebratelove.com.au for more information. Advance registrations for the weekend are essential and can be done on-line. An early bird discount applies for registrations before 1 August.

Stephen and Carmen Court have been married for 30 years and have five children. They are members of the Applecross Parish and have been involved with the Celebrate Love marriage enrichment seminar as presenters for 4 years. They are also a mentor couple for the Embrace programme which prepares engaged couples for marriage using a tailored version of the Celebrate Love seminar programme.

Struggling to live and love as Easter rolls on

By Mark Baumgarten

Spring has officially arrived in Rome, although it’s actually been disturbingly like summer at times of late (so much for the lovely four-month springs back home). This marks the first time I am having Lent during the Spring which, while being the normative experience for most of Christian history, nonetheless feels a little strange for me.

I’m used to having falling leaves and darkening skies help me get into the penitential Lenten mood.

I suppose the blooming flowers and singing birds will make a fine backdrop for Easter, but at present I’m trying not to bask in all the new life too much just yet!

While on the theme of significant changes, I should report that I have recently had a change of universities. During first semester I was studying at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross (Santa Croce), which is run by Opus Dei and has classes solely in Italian.

I very much enjoyed studying there, and it was particularly edifying to get to know some of the fine Opus Dei priests and laypeople who taught us. Suffice to say, their friendly, down-to-earth nature was nothing like the group’s stereotype in the popular imagination.

However, my Italian language proficiency was not making as much progress as I had hoped (it was probably the thing that suf-

fered the most during the New Man Show saga), and I was subsequently struggling to keep pace with the lectures.

Furthermore, the North American College’s presence at Santa Croce is smaller and more recent than it is at the other universities, and as such a comprehensive English notes system to aid the weaker Italian speakers has yet to be established. While I managed to pass all of my units, I did not feel like I had learned much actual theology, which is obviously the main priority.

As such, between semesters I decided to change my enrolment to the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum), which is run by the Dominican Order and has the option of classes

in English. I’m now a few weeks in and I’m really glad to have made the switch. It’s a relief to be able to comprehend everything and to have mental energy left over to wrestle with the material, particularly given how much I know I still have to learn.

I have also been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the lecturers, given the stereotype among some regarding the supposedly basic standard of the Angelicum’s English track.

The clear highlight has been the opportunity to take a unit taught by Fr Wojciech Giertych OP, who is the current Theologian of the Papal Household (ie he checks the theological clarity of speeches written for the Pope among other things).

In addition to his obvious intellect, his ability to explain complex themes with clarity, humour and humility is both impressive and appealing.

Meanwhile, even though the seasons here are different, I have had an external aid to help me embrace Lent: a broken finger sustained during a basketball game a few weeks ago (thankfully on my non-dominant hand). I guess I’ve had a fairly blessed upbringing health-wise, as this has been the first time I’ve ever needed surgery.

The combination of German surgeons and an Italian hospital made for some amusing moments, though I was glad that I couldn’t make out what was being said between them while the cutting, drilling, and such was taking place (I also managed a rather groggy Rosary to help distract myself from the gory details).

The ensuing brace and bandages on my hand would make many routine daily tasks - such as dressing and bathing - exceedingly difficult.

And yet, while the situation has been frustrating at times, it has also resulted a greater appreciation of things that I would so often take for granted, particularly each time I regained the ability to do something seemingly basic such as tying my shoes.

Furthermore, my temptations towards self-pity have been tempered by the awareness of the countless poor folks both here and around the world who lack access to the kind of quality medical care I have received.

As I have noted previously, poverty and homelessness is more inyour-face here in Rome than it is back in Perth. One’s reactions can range from sincere sympathy

to suspicion of charlatanry, and the regularity of such encounters sometimes leave me struggling to discern how best to respond, particularly given the limits of my Italian proficiency. One somewhat amusing result of my injury was that, while I was wearing the brace, I noticed a slight but perceptible difference in the way that some of the beggars on the streets of Rome interacted with me.

In a seeming case of “duelling sympathies” it was as though they considered their efforts at eliciting sympathy to be wasted on me, given my own apparent case for sympathy (to the point that pained expressions were sometimes put on hold until I had passed by, at which point they were resumed).

Nonetheless, despite the periodic elements of performance that can be observed, there remains a poignant reality behind the amount of homelessness that one encounters here.

Indeed, almost by way of a reminder of how fortunate I really am, my broken finger occurred as I began volunteering at the Vatican soup kitchen run by Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity.

It has proved to be a good icebreaker in my halting attempts at conversational Italian with the guests who come for meals, and the friendly Sisters would always make sure that it did not prevent me from being able to contribute to the work at hand.

Anyway, the finger is more-orless back to normal now. Winter gives way to Spring, Lent gives way to Easter, and the life of a seminarian in Rome rolls on with its continuous struggles to live and love with the integrity befitting the Christian vocation. Apud Deum omnia possibilia sunt.

Richard and Deborah Geddes at the April Celebrate Love retreat.

Missionaries of Charity Sisters help a homeless man on the streets of Rome.

PHOTO: MARK BAUMGARTEN

GOOD FRIDAY, 22 APRIL

Passion Play

9.45am at Holy Spirit Oval, 2 Keaney Rd, City Beach. Dramatised Stations of the Cross. 35 Actors. Enq: Janny 0420 635 919.

Divine Mercy Novena

3pm at Lot 375, Holy Family Parish, Alcock St, Maddington. Every day until 30 April. Adoration, Divine Mercy formation and healing prayers. 2.30pm Reconciliation. Enq: Fr Parackal 9493 1703.

Good Friday Ceremonies

11am at Catholic Agricultural College, Bindoon. Begins with Stations of the Cross. 2.30pm will be a solemn ceremony - The Lord’s Passion. 10.30am Reconciliation. Enq: Fr Paul 9571 1839.

Stations of the Cross in Italian (Via Crucis)

7.30pm at St Lawrence Church, 392 Albert St, Balcatta. Will be held outside on the front lawn of the Church. Enq: Rosalia 9344 7066 or www.stlawrence.org.au

HOLY SATURDAY, 23 APRIL

Passion Play – 35 Actors

11.30am Fremantle High St Mall. Enq: Janny 0420 635 919.

TUESDAY, 26 APRIL

“He is Risen!” Seminar

7-8pm at St Benedict’s School Hall, Alness St Applecross. ‘The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is living in us. How do we live this new life day by day?’ by Norma Woodcock. Collection to cover costs. Enq: 9487 1772 or www.normawoodcock.com.

THURSDAY, 28 APRIL

D.R.U.M.B.E.A.T Seminar

7pm at Infant Jesus Parish Centre, 47 Wellington St, Morley. ‘Discovering Relationships Using Music, Beliefs, Emotions, Attitudes and Thoughts’ by Morley Mental Health Support and Wellness Group. Opportunity for you to have fun and learn about yourself and others. No cost. Bring a plastic or tin rubbish bin, of any size. Enq: Con 0431 246 894 or Barbara 9328 8113

SATURDAY, 30 APRIL

Live Ministries - Charismatic Healing

6.30pm at Sacred Heart Parish, 64 Mary St, Highgate. Come and get prayed over and be healed from past and present issues or stand in for a loved one who may be ill or facing problems at this time. Team includes Fr H Thomas, Fr D Watt, Fr P Bianchini, Fr D Harris. All welcome. Enq: Fr Hugh or Gilbert 0431 570 322.

SUNDAY, 1 MAY

Centenary of Kellerberrin Parish, St Joseph’s Convent Reunion

11am at St Joseph’s Parish, Kellerberrin. All present and past parishioners are invited to the parish Centenary celebrations. Mass celebrated by His Grace, Archbishop Barry Hickey, followed by a catered luncheon at the Kellerberrin shire hall. St Joseph’s Convent reunion All ex-students of the Convent and Preventorium are invited to a ‘get together for the Parish Centenary celebrations. Any memorabilia of school days is keenly sought. RSVP by Saturday, 2 April for catering purposes to Christine Laird 9045 4235 or fax 9045 4602, or Audrey Tiller 9045 4021, or stmary@westnet.com.au.

2011 Busselton Rosary Celebration

12.30pm at Queen of the Holy Rosary Shrine, ‘Bove’s Farm’, Roy Rd, Jindong, Busselton. Celebrant: Bishop Gerard Holohan. Mass followed by Rosary procession and Benediction. Tea provided. All welcome. Bus booking and Enq: Francis 0404 893 877 or 9459 3873.

Divine Mercy Feast

3pm at Lot 375, Holy Family Parish, Alcock St, Maddington. Solemn procession of Divine Mercy Icon, Adoration, Mass and fellowship dinner. All welcome. Enq: Fr Parackal 9493 1703.

Divine Mercy Sunday

1.30pm at St Mary’s Cathedral, 17 Victoria Sq, Perth. Rosary, Reconciliation, chaplet of Divine Mercy and prayers to end abortion. Benediction and Veneration of two first-class relics of St Faustina. 2.30pm Concelebrated Mass. Main Celebrant and Homily: Mgr Kevin Long,

Rector of St Charles’ Seminary. Parking for clergy at ground level. Enq: John 9457 7771.

Special Devotion of Divine Mercy Chaplet

3pm at St Thomas More Parish, Dean Rd, Bateman. Regular devotions will continue on the second Sunday of each month, with the next devotion on 11 May 2011. Enq: George Lopez 9310 9493 or 9325 2010(w).

TUESDAY, 3 MAY

“An Oasis in the Desert” Seminar

7pm at Emmanuel Centre, 25 Windsor St, Perth. ‘Challenges in the Desert and discovering your oasis’ by Emmanuel Centre Mental Health Support and Wellness Group. Dealing with challenges and strategies. Come and listen, share and learn. No Cost. Followed by tea and biscuits. Enq: Barbara 9328 8113.

SATURDAY, 7 MAY

Day with Mary

9am-5pm at St Peter the Apostle Parish, 91 Wood St, Inglewood. Day of prayer and formation based on the Fatima message. 9am Video; 10.10am Holy Mass; Reconciliation, Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, Eucharistic Adoration, Sermons on Eucharist and Our Lady, Rosaries and Stations of the Cross. BYO lunch. Enq: Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate 9250 8286.

MONDAY, 9 MAY

Pilgrimage for 17 days

Vietnam and Cambodia tour until 25 May. Includes the Centre for Handicapped Children, the opening of a new church on 12 May. $3,800 per person twin share. Enq: Francis 9459 3873 or 0404 893 877.

SATURDAY, 14 MAY TO SUNDAY, 15 MAY

Catholic Faith Renewal Weekend Retreat

9am- 6pm (daily) at James Nestor Hall, Catholic Education Centre, 50 Ruislip St, West Leederville. “ Living life to the fullest in Christ” by Fr Henriques. Admittance by registration only. Enq: Kathy 92950 913, Ann 0412 166 164 or Rita 9272 1765, catholicfaithrenewal@gmail.com.

WEDNESDAY, 25 MAY

‘An hour for Sheen’ Variety Concert

7.30pm at Gibney Hall, Trinity College, East Perth. Featuring St Joseph’s Chamber Choir; Yan Kee soprano; Daniel Mullaney baritone; June Glen poet and raconteur; John Meyer pianist. Part of the proceeds to two overseas missions and the supporting of the Cause of Servant of God Archbishop Fulton J Sheen. $27.50 inc supper. Pensioner and Senior discount. Credit card payment facilities available. Ample parking. Enq and tickets: Daniel 9291 8224, sheensociety@globaldial.com.

EVERY SUNDAY

Gate of Heaven Catholic Radio

Join the Franciscans of the Immaculate every Sunday from 7.30-9pm on Radio Fremantle 107.9FM for Catholic radio broadcast of EWTN and our own live shows. Enq: radio@ausmaria.com.

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.

EVERY FIRST SUNDAY

Divine Mercy Chaplet and Healing Prayer

3pm at Santa Clara Church, 72 Palmerston St, Bentley. Includes Adoration and individual prayer for healing. Spiritual leader: Fr Francisco. All welcome. Enq: Fr Francisco 9458 2944.

EVERY SECOND SUNDAY

Healing Hour for the Sick

6pm at St Lawrence Parish, 392 Albert St, Balcatta. Begins with Mass, Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and prayers. Enq: Fr Irek 9344 7066 or ww.stlawrence. org.au.

EVERY 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.

EVERY MONDAY

Evening Adoration and Mass

7pm at St Thomas Parish, Claremont, Cnr Melville St and College Rd. Begins with Adoration, Reconciliation, Evening Prayer and Benediction. Followed by Mass and Night Prayer at 8pm. Enq: Kim 9384 0598, claremont@ perthcatholic.org.au.

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.

Spirituality and The Sunday Gospels

7-8pm at St Benedict’s school hall, Alness St, Applecross. The power of the Gospel message; How can we live meaningful and hope-filled lives? Presented by Norma Woodcock. Donation for The Centre for Catholic Spiritual Development & Prayer. Enq: 9487 1772 or www.normawoodcock.com.

Bible Teaching with a difference

7.30pm at St Joachim’s Parish Hall, Shepparton Rd, Victoria Park. Exciting revelations with meaningful applications that will change your life. Novena to God the Father, followed by refreshments. Bring Bible, a notebook and a friend. Enq: Jan 9284 1662.

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: 0423 907 869 or hsofperth@gmail.com.

Holy Hour at Catholic Youth Ministry

6pm at 40A Mary St, Highgate, Catholic Pastoral Centre. 5.30pm Mass followed by $5 fellowship supper. Enq: Stefania 9422 7912 or www.cym.com.au.

EVERY FIRST WEDNESDAY

Holy Hour prayer for Priests

7-8pm at Holy Spirit Parish, 2 Keaney Pl, City Beach. All welcome. Enq: Linda 9341 3079.

SECOND WEDNESDAY OF THE MONTH

Chaplets of the Divine Mercy

7.30pm at St Thomas More Church, Dean Rd, Bateman. Chaplet will be accompanied by Exposition followed by Benediction. Monthly event. All welcome. Enq: George 9310 9493 or 9325 2010 (w).

EVERY THURSDAY

Divine Mercy

11am at Sts John and Paul Church, Pinetree 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.

Fr Corapi’s Catechism of the Catholic Church

7.30pm at St Joseph Church, 20 Hamilton St, Bassendean - Parish Library. Enq: Catherine 9329 2691.

FIRST THURSDAY OF THE MONTH

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 invited. Enq: Joan 9448 4457 or Office 9448 4888.

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.

Catholic Faith Renewal Evening

7.30pm at Sts 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.

Communion of Reparation All Night Vigils

7pm-1.30am at Corpus Christi Church, Lochee St, Mosman Park. Enq: Vicky 0400 282 357 and at St Gerard Majella Church, Ravenswood Dr and Majella Rd, Mirrabooka, Enq: Fr Giosue 9349 2315, John or Joy 9344 2609. The Vigils consist of two Masses, Adoration, Benediction, Prayers and Confession in reparation for the outrages committed against the United Hearts of Jesus and Mary. All welcome.

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.

Healing and Anointing Mass

8.45am at Pater Noster, Myaree. Reconciliation, followed by Mass including Anointing of the Sick, Praise and Worship to St Peregrine and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. All welcome. Enq: Joy 9337 7189.

EVERY FIRST SATURDAY

Healing Mass

12.35pm at St Thomas, Claremont Parish, cnr Melville St and College Rd. Spiritual leader: Fr Waddell. Enq: Kim 9384 0598, claremont@perthcatholic.org.au.

FRIDAY, 8 TO WEDNESDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER

Cruise on the River Nile

14-Day package. Includes Tour/Sightseeing of Jordan and Egypt. Cost: $4,900 per person twin share (22 people). Accompanying priest: Fr Joe Carroll. Itinerary and Enq: Fadua 9459 3873 or 0404 893 877.

FRIDAY, 11 NOVEMBER TO TUESDAY, 22 NOVEMBER

Pilgrim Tour To The Holy Land

Jordan, Israel and Egypt. Spiritual Director, Fr Sebastian Kalapurackal VC from St Aloysius Church Shenton Park. Enq: Francis – Coordinator, 9459 3873 or 0404 893 877 or Skype ID: perthfamily.

PILGRIMAGE TO PRAGUE, POLAND AND AUSTRIA

St Jude’s parish, Langford is organising a 13-day pilgrimage departing 1 October. Pilgrimage will include visits to the Shrines of Divine Mercy, Infant Jesus, the Black Madonna, St Faustina, the birthplace of Pope John Paul II and the Museum at Auschwitz. Total cost per person $5,800. The Spiritual Director, Fr Terry Raj. Enq: Co-ordinator John Murphy 9457 7771, Matt 6460 6877 mattpicc1@gmail.com.

DAILY SERVICE, MAY

Honouring our Lady of Fatima 7pm-8.30pm at Holy Cross Parish, Cnr Ommanney and Carter St, Hamilton Hill. Saturdays the novena will start at 6pm and on Sundays at 8am. Enq: Connie 9494 1495.

Page 19 THE PARISH 20 April 2011, The Record

ACROSS

4 “Lord, ___ us to pray” (Lk 11:1)

9 St. Catherine of ___

10 ___ Meal

11 “…I will make you fishers of ___” (Mk 1:17)

12 Vestment worn under the alb

13 Non-Jew

14 A Sunday in Lent

17 Catholic actor of Cocoon fame, Don ___

19 Female members of religious orders (abbr.)

21 “___ you destroyed our death…”

26

DOWN 1 Another name for Jacob

2 Father of Joseph (Lk 3:23)

3 “…hallowed be thy ___”

4 “…as for ___, they will cease” (1 Cor 13:8)

6

LAST

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.

OPPORTUNITIES

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY

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

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.au.

BOOK BINDING

NEW BOOK BINDING, General Book Repairs; Rebinding; New Ribbons; Old Leather Bindings Restored.

Tydewi Bindery 0422 968 572.

ACCOMMODATION

HOLIDAY ACCOMMODATION

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

MATURE AGE single gentleman looking for a room. Non-smoker, and works fulltime at Royal Perth Hospital. Has been a house friend for two elderly people over the past 20 years, carrying out light house-duties and gardening when required. If you can help, please call Greg O’Brien on mob: 0413 701 489.

Deadline: 11am Monday

TRADE SERVICES

BRENDAN HANDYMAN

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

PROPERTY MAINTENANCE. Your handyperson. No job too small. SOR. Jim 0413 309 821.

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.

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.

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 VESTMENTS

Quality hand-made and decorated vestments: Albs, Stoles, Chasubles, Altar linen, banners, etc. 12 Favenc Way, Padbury. By appointment only. Ph Vicki on 9402 1318 or 0409 114 093.

OTTIMO

Convenient location for Bibles, books, cards CD/DVDs, candles, medals, statues and gifts at Shop 41, Station St Market, Subiaco. Fri-Sun 9-5pm.

APRIL

21 Mass of the Lord’s Supper, 7pm, St Mary’s Cathedral – Archbishop Hickey

22 Solemn Celebration of the Lord’s Passion, 3pm, St Mary’s Cathedral – Archbishop Hickey

23 Easter Vigil, 7.30pm, St Mary’s Cathedral – Archbishop Hickey

24 Solemn Sung Mass of Easter, 11am –Archbishop Hickey

25 Anzac Day Parade and Commemorative Service, Perth – Mgr Brian O’Loughlin VG

DONATIONS

WE ARE SEEKING DONATIONS OF OLD CHALICES AND PATENTS for parishes in the Philippines. If you could assist, please contact Fr Robert Carrillo on 9456 5130. Thank you.

WE ARE SEEKING DONATIONS OF SCHOOL UNIFORMS for under-privileged schools in the Philippines. If you could assist, please contact Fr Robert Carrillo on 9456 5130. Thank you.

REAL ESTATE

REAL ESTATE FOR SALE

Completely fully furnished. 3 bedrooms 1 bathroom villa. Close to good Shepherd Church Lockridge. Phone (08) 93784384.Price Market value.

PILGRIMAGES

JOIN SISTER ISABEL BETTWY ON A 13 DAYS (INCLUDES

TRAVEL TIME) PILGRIMAGE TO POLAND IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF ST. FAUSTINA; The 70th anniversary of the martyr death of St Maximilian Kolbe. Celebrate the 80th anniversary of Jesus appearing to Faustina Kowalska. Attend the Mass and closing of the World Apostolic Congress on Divine Mercy in Lagiewniki. Departing Perth on Wed. 28

Sept. 2011

Cost: AU$4,900 per person twin share (minimum 18 people) + AU$ 800:00 single supplement. Francis Williams (tour coordinator).

T: 9459 3873 (after 4.00pm)

M: 0404 893 877 (all-day)

E: francis@perthfamily.com

Skype ID: perthfamily88

FURNITURE REMOVAL

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

28 Opening of Centrecare, Kalgoorlie –Bishop Sproxton

30 True Love Waits 10th Anniversary Mass, Highgate – Archbishop Hickey

MAY

1 Polish Franciscan Fathers’ Celebration of Beatification of Pope John Paul II, Maylands – Archbishop Hickey Celebration of Beatification of Pope John Paul II, St Mary’s Cathedral – Archbishop Hickey 60th Anniversary Mass Sr Joan Paul RGS –Archbishop Hickey

100th Anniversary Mass of St Joseph’s Church, Kellerberrin – Bishop Sproxton

25, 27 David anointed

Rev 1:5-8 Sins washed away

Lk 4:16-21Jesus anointed

EASTER TRIDUUM

21Th HOLY THURSDAY Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper

Wh Ex 12:1-8, 11-14 The flesh to be eaten

Ps 115:12-13, 15-18 Cup of Salvation

1 Cor 11:23-26 I passed on to you

Jn 13:1-15 Jesus’ perfect love

22 F GOOD FRIDAY Celebration of the Lord’s Supper

Red Isa 52:13-53:12 A man of sorrows Ps 30:2, 6, 12-13, 15-17, 25 I take refuge

Noah’s Ark Activity Book

Tomasz Kruczek & Magda Bloch

RRP $33.95

Apart from providing great fun, Noah’s Ark helps small children to develop vocabulary skills and dexterity. The soft foam pages allow children to explore on their own, and the amusing rhymes encourage them to exercise their little fingers while peeling off the puzzle pieces. These fun pairs of animals (a colorful parrot and grey-headed sparrows, busy monkeys and a lazy sloth, a big elephant and a tiny mouse, a fast tiger and a slow turtle) will enrich children’s vocabulary and introduce them to opposing meanings.

3D POP-UPS Noah’s Ark

RRP $19.95

See Noah’s fantastic story of the animals in amazing 3D. There’s lots to do and see. Help Noah build the ark and count the animals.

$19.95

Catholic Book of Bible Stories

RRP $41.95

This beautifully illustrated Bible storybook retells fifty well-known Bible stories just for children ages four to eight. Each story ends with a ‘God’s Blessing,’ ‘Faith to Grow,’ and a prayer. And for extra fun and hands-on learning, you and your child can enjoy the activities section included at the end of the storybook. Features include: * 50 stories retold from Scripture * ‘God’s Blessing’: helps emphasise the key message from each Bible story * ‘Faith to Grow’: personalises the story and ties it to the Catholic faith and traditions, and ends with a prayer * Four-colour artwork throughout by Doris Ettlinger, artist of the Little House on the Prairie books * Fun crafts and activities

BUT NOW AM FOUND

Trouble finding The Record bookshop on the map? Catch the Red Cat from Perth train station to bus stop number 16968 beside Royal Perth Hospital and follow your way round Victoria Square to find us.

For any help, just phone us on 9220 5900 and we will assist you as best we can.