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Commemorating 100 Years  (1920 - 2020)

"This year (2020) we celebrate 100 years since the first German SVD missionaries began our SVD mission in Epping, NSW. It started as a Mission Procure and recuperation house for PNG missionaries when they bought a piece of land in Epping in 1920, with the help of the local diocesan parish priest, Fr Moore, on September 8th, the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady.

This booklet affirms that signing up for life does not make any of us immune to the pain and sadness of serving a broken world loved by God. God chooses ordinary peoples to serve his mission and the qualification is simple, availability and faith in His providence."

Click the cover image below to launch the booklet

Read our mission magazine Society Matters

Click the cover image below to read each issue in English or Vietnamese or click here to view the archive.

The Divine Word Missionaries are celebrating 100 years since arriving in Epping, Sydney, a significant development in the mission to Australia and Papua New Guinea, which was overseen by St Arnold Janssen himself.

“The first chapter of the SVD in Australia is a story of hard years, 45 of them: just like the 40 years of Israel in the desert. They were years of going around in circles, wondering do we have a place of our own or a future in this country, or are we simply an adjunct to the German New Guinea Mission of the SVD,” writes Fr Frank Gerry in a history of the SVD AUS Province.