Parishioners of Mary Mother of the Church parish in Macquarie Fields came together recently for the first Multicultural Day celebration since before the COVID pandemic, carrying flags from more than 50 countries in a spectacular procession which highlighted the parish’s unity in cultural diversity.

The Multicultural Day has been a popular part of the parish’s tradition over many years and parishioners and visitors were delighted to see it return.

The Janssen Spirituality Centre in Boronia, Victoria, was host recently to a series of five workshops on interculturality, attended by both interested lay people and religious, including SVD students from Dorish Maru College.

The workshops were presented by Sr Cathy Solano RSM, who has a background in education and spent several years working in Africa. She also has a Master’s in Intercultural Studies from Catholic Theological Union, Chicago.

The SVD has signed up to The Sydney Statement, an interfaith charter for building bridges between people from different religions and is looking forward to supporting its aims in a variety of ways.

The Sydney Statement was developed by Youth PoWR (Parliament of the World’s Religions), a coalition of young adults from different religions, following two years of consultation and drafting.

Christians in Indonesia are called to be an interreligious and intercultural people if they are to be “Church-in-Mission”, according to visiting Indonesian theologian and missiologist Fr Raymundus I. Made Sudhiarsa SVD.

Fr Raymundus was visiting the AUS Province recently as guest speaker for the annual Mission Day activities hosted by the Divine Word Missionaries at Yarra Theological Union's Study Centre in Box Hill, Victoria. He also visited Sydney, where he spoke to confreres at Marsfield.

Fr Bosco Son SVD’s new assignment at the bustling Macquarie Fields Parish couldn’t be further away from his previous ministry in the small indigenous community of Santa Teresa in Central Australia, but he says his aim remains the same – simply to the love the people.

“Before taking up my position at Santa Teresa, the former Provincial, Fr Tim Norton SVD, asked me to try to do two things: one was to try to love the people and the other was not to create a problem,” he says.

I have just returned from a trip to South-East Asia, taking in the Philippines, Thailand and Myanmar, the latter two countries of which are part of the SVD AUS Province.

Whenever I go to Thailand and visit our ministries there, I am struck by the reality of our commitment as Divine Word Missionaries to breaking down cultural and religious barriers.

Fr Alejandro Jose De la Sotta Dominguez SVD is a long way from his home in Chile, but says the “incredible diversity of cultures” that he’s found at St Mark’s Parish, Inala is enriching his life, his faith and his ministry.

Fr Alejandro, who is relatively new to the AUS Province, is Acting Parish Priest at St Mark’s while Fr Stephen Pilly SVD enjoys his home leave in India.

The Janssen Spirituality Centre (JSC) in Boronia, Victoria, is headed for a new lease of life which will embrace and develop the original vision for the Centre to be a place of welcome for interfaith and intercultural relations.

The JSC, named in honour of St Arnold Janssen SVD, was opened in January 2008, as a venue dedicated to the promotion of inter-religious and cross-cultural relations. The Centre was dedicated to mutual understanding and enrichment, respect and collaboration, among followers of various cultures and faith traditions.