SVD student Shehan Fernando has become the first person from Sri Lanka to become a Divine Word Missionary, after taking his first vows in Melbourne on Sunday.

Shehan took his vows at Dorish Maru College (DMC), in the presence of his formators and fellow students, while friends and family at home in Sri Lanka watched online.

Australia has gained its first Divine Word Missionary bishop with the episcopal ordination of Bishop Tim Norton SVD as Auxiliary Bishop of Brisbane.

Bishop Tim was ordained at St Stephen’s Cathedral on February 22 by Archbishop Mark Coleridge, who said the appointment of an SVD bishop was in some ways unexpected, but timely, because the Church needed to be more missionary.

On January 19, 1909, four days after the death of St Arnold Janssen, his successor, Fr Nicholas Blum, wrote a letter to all the congregations founded by St Arnold with this request: to keep Arnold Janssen’s memory alive, to continue and expand his work in his spirit, reflected SVD Superior-General, Fr Budi Kleden SVD in a YouTube message on St Arnold's feast day recently.

His life-force, his spirit, is well-formulated in the prayer he passed on to us as his legacy: “May the holy triune God live in our hearts and in the hearts of all people”.

The SVD Australia Province has launched a special appeal to raise funds for relief and rehabilitation activities for people hit by Typhoon Rai in the southern Philippines in December.

The Provincial appeal supports a worldwide fundraising effort by the Divine Word Missionaries to assist those in the Philippines who lost lives, homes and livelihoods when the typhoon caused widespread devastation.

Divine Word Missionary communities throughout the AUS Province and the world have had much to celebrate in January, with the commemoration of two SVD saints – St Arnold Janssen and St Joseph Freinademetz.

St Arnold’s feast day was on January 15, the date of his death in 1909 in Steyl, Holland. He was the founder of the Divine Word Missionaries, as well as two orders of Religious Women, the Servant Sisters of the Holy Spirit and the Servants of the Holy Spirit of Perpetual Adoration.

The SVD has established a new Melbourne District in a bid to provide the best pastoral care to its growing number of missionaries engaged in a range of different ministries in Victoria.

The new District was inaugurated on the Feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, a special feast for the Universal Church and for the founder of the Divine Word Missionaries, St Arnold Janssen, who dedicated the first SVD house to the patronage of St Michael in Steyl, Holland in 1875.

The Divine Word Missionaries AUS Province had cause for great celebration earlier this year when five young confreres from three different countries made their Final Profession of Vows and were ordained to the Diaconate.

The young men making their commitment in Melbourne were Nicholas Duc, Marius Razafimandimby, Francois D'Assise Andrianihantana, Edward Okletey Teye, and Hai Nguyen. They are from Ghana, Madagascar and Vietnam.

After years serving the sick and the poor through his vocation as a nurse, a doctor and an SVD brother, Br Ruel Bancoro SVD is about to begin a new chapter as he takes up Theology studies for the priesthood.

Br Ruel will undertake his studies through the University of Divinity in Melbourne – although due to COVID border closures, he will begin the first semester online from the Philippines.

The SVD Lay Partners group at Marsfield recently took part in an international meeting of Lay Partners via Zoom, where they continued to deepen their formation and grow in understanding of their mission in the Arnoldus Family.

AUS Province Mission Secretary, Fr Viet Nguyen SVD says the meeting, hosted by the SVD Generalate in Rome included Lay Partners from SVD provinces in Asia and the Pacific.

The AIDS Education Program run by the SVD’s Mother of Perpetual Help Centre in Thailand has expanded to include not only school students and teachers, but now parents and care-takers as well.

The program, based in Nong Bua Lamphu, in northeast Thailand, started 18 years ago with youth in schools and later included the training of teachers and other interested government personnel with the aim of giving AIDS awareness education to villagers and groups.