Well greetings, friends! This month’s message for our In the Word E-News comes from me, Fr Raas, rather than from Fr Henry, who is taking his home leave at the moment.

Do you remember Pope Francis’ encyclical letter, Laudato Si? It gave us so much food for thought about how we should care for our common home, but what have we done to take up the challenges it contained?

Mission and culture are essential characteristics of an SVD; and with the two years Cross-Cultural Training Program, I was given a taste in different ministerial settings.

They included teaching English at the local high school, working with Vietnamese migrant workers, visiting the poor, engaging in parish ministries, and helping HIV/AIDS patients, in particular, teenagers living with HIV at The Mother of Perpetual Help Foundation in Nongbualamphu, Thailand.

Recently, I had a chance to spend some time with a good friend whom I have not seen for a long time. My friend, as best as I could tell, is a decent human being. He is a faithful husband to his wife, a loving father to his children, a responsible employee in his company, and most importantly, a God fearing man. 

But when our conversation recently turned to my writings on religious environmentalism, my friend was not impressed ...

An enthusiastic group of parishioners from St Mark’s Parish, Inala, celebrated the Jubilee Year of Mercy and the 60th anniversary of the Parish recently, with a pilgrimage to Marian Valley, at Canungra in the Gold Coast hinterland.

The Marian Shrine, a ministry of the Pauline Fathers, is one of the Brisbane Archdiocese’s designated pilgrimage destinations.

The SVD AUS Province is blessed to have the friendship and support of many lay people throughout Australia, New Zealand and Thailand, and now moves are underway to explore the possibility of starting an SVD Lay Associates’ Group.

A feasibility study into the formation of a Lay Associates’ Group kicked off this week, with the first meeting of the working party.

Way back in 1969 I came to Ledalero, the major seminary of the Divine Word Missionaries, in Flores, Indonesia. I was a seminarian, coming to study theology and preparing for priesthood. I was ordained in early 1973, and then worked for about 3 years on a small island in the Flores Sea called Palue. 

In 1976, I returned to Australia, taking-on a number of jobs in the following years in Australia, New Zealand and Tonga. Then, when my second term as parish priest of Sacred Heart Parish, Preston, in Victoria, was coming to an end, I accepted an invitation to return to Ledalero. 

The Vietnamese migrants living and working in New Caledonia are a long way from home and their faith plays a big role in keeping them together as a community in a new land.

With only one Vietnamese priest in the Pacific country, the SVD AUS Province Mission Secretary, Fr Truc Quoc Phan pays regular visits to New Caledonia to help meet the faith needs of the migrant people.

The young people of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Parish in Alice Springs received a dynamic boost to their faith recently when Fr Rob Galea came to town for a shared experience of high energy musical praise and worship.

Fr Rob, who was born and raised in Malta, is a priest of the Diocese of Bendigo, and is well known and loved for his ministry of reaching out to young people through music and song writing. His visit to Alice Springs was part of a wider tour of the Top End, taking in Darwin and the Tiwi Islands.

More than 20 young SVD missionaries and SSpS Sisters gathered in Sydney recently for a workshop which explored different aspects of interculturality, both in the community life of a missionary and in ministry.

All of the young missionaries who attended have been in vows for 10 years or less, or are recent arrivals in the Province.

The General Visitation from the SVD leadership in Rome has found the SVD AUS Province to be young and vibrant, with hope for the future, and focused on its role serving multi-ethnic parishes, indigenous communities, intercultural living, formation, and inter-faith dialogue, according to the SVD Vice Superior General, Fr Bob Kisala.

Fr Bob has spent a month visiting all the places in Australia, Thailand and New Zealand where the Divine Word Missionaries are in ministry.