Mar 14, 2024

Iftar Dinner By St Mary’s Cathedral House, 14 March 2024

ٱلسَّلَامُ عَلَيْ  As-salamu alaykum, Peace up upon you. Welcome to St Mary’s Cathedral House for our 14th annual Iftar dinner, honouring especially our Muslim leaders and people, but bringing together people of many faiths for feasting and friendship. My sincerest apologies for not being there is person: I have a light dose of Covid, and didn’t want to risk giving it to any of you, so we must meet through the ether…

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Aug 08, 2023

Catechesis on ‘Integral Ecology’ for World Youth Day 2023

Lately there’s been plenty of talk about UFOs, aliens, and interstellar travel: a former US official has even claimed under oath that government is in possession of a non-human spacecraft with some intact alien biological material! I don’t pretend to know the rights and wrongs of all of this, but I wonder what an alien species would make of a million plus adolescent humans…

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Jun 14, 2023

Michael Moore Farewell

My Lords Bishop Columba Macbeth-Green, Richard Umbers and Danny Meagher, Reverend Fathers, Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Friends all: Welcome to my place. It’s a delight to have you all here this evening, as we bid farewell to Michael Moore as Director of Finance of the Archdiocese of Sydney. I welcome him and Elizabeth (his long-suffering better half), their daughters Jacinta and Adriana with Thomas, and Michael’s sister Maria…

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Mar 31, 2023

Iftar Dinner 2023

Welcome to St Mary’s Cathedral House for our 13th annual Iftar dinner, honouring especially our Muslim leaders and people, but bringing together people of all faiths for feasting and friendship.

Representing our First Australians, I welcome Dr Lisa Buxton who heads our Aboriginal Catholic Ministry. Together with her I acknowledge the elders past and present of the Gadigal clan of Eora nation, traditional custodians of the land on which we meet…

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Feb 10, 2023

Blessing + Opening of Hartford College

I’m delighted to be with you all this morning for the blessing and opening of Hartford College! The foundation of a new school is always a cause for celebration and hope, and I want particularly to congratulate the founding parents who had the vision and courage to bring this school to reality. I salute Board Chair Tim Mitchell, Penny Wright and the other directors, Principal Mr Frank Monagle and the growing teaching staff…

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Jan 11, 2023

DEATH OF HIS EMINENCE GEORGE CARDINAL PELL

Today we have lost a Cardinal of the Church, a former Archbishop of Sydney, a fine priest, a good Christian soul.
The Church in Australia and around the world is deeply saddened at the sudden passing of Cardinal George Pell, the former Archbishop of Sydney and of Melbourne.
Cardinal Pell’s episcopal motto was ‘Be Not Afraid’ and through good days and bad, he lived up to these words…

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Jan 03, 2023

MEDITATION FOR CHRISTMAS CONCERT 2022

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet.”[1] So asks the heroine in Shakespeare’s romance-tragedy. Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet could be Jack and Jill Smith for all she cared, as long as they were the same people, and they should resist the attempts of families and culture to pigeonhole them. Yet as romantic and postmodern as this might sound, it raises all sorts of metaphysical…

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