Addresses and Statements

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…

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…

“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…

United with Pope Francis and Christians throughout the world, the Church in Sydney and Australia mourns the passing of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, one of the greatest theologian-popes in the Church’s two-thousand-year history.

For more than 70 years, as priest-theologian, bishop-pastor, cardinal-prefect, teacher-pope and finally pope-emeritus, Joseph Ratzinger selflessly…

After a year of terrible war in Ukraine and disastrous floods closer to home, in which people have lost loved ones, homes, livelihoods, where are they to find security and hope? Amidst fragile recovery from pandemic and rising cost of living, how do we deal with anxiety and uncertainty?
At Christmas, God comes to us as a newborn baby, the most vulnerable…

When St John baptised Our Lord in the Jordan, the Gospels tell us the Spirit of God descended upon Jesus. One might have expected thunder, lightning and quake, a pillar of cloud and of fire, a fearful voice from a burning bush, a vision splendid and stupefying of God upon a lofty throne surrounded by seraphim…

Earlier in the year at our Mass commemorating the 200th anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone of St Mary’s Cathedral, I spoke of the towering influence of some Irish pioneers of the early Church in Australia, the most prominent one going by the name of “Therry.” This Therry was…

Welcome to our Christmas at the Cathedral celebration at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney. I acknowledge our hosts St Mary’s Cathedral and the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney. I thank our sponsors, especially Paynter Dixon, the NSW Government, and CommBank; our collaborators Electric Canvas and Epic Team; our media partner Channel 7; and those providing music, entertainment or prayer here in the cathedral forecourt…

In the liturgical calendar, today is the memorial of the dedication of two churches: the Basilicas of St Peter in the Vatican and of St Paul also outside the Aurelian walls. Why, we might wonder, do we have another feast of Peter and Paul in a calendar already overloaded with the feasts of the Conversion of St Paul on 25 January, the Chair of St Peter on 22 February, and St Peter and Paul on 29 June? It is understandable that Peter…

Thank you, Ms Hastings. It’s a pleasure to be back with you for this feast, both liturgical and culinary!

This week our nation, the Commonwealth of nations, and the world beyond are mourning the greatest woman leader of modern times. Whatever our views of monarchy and democracy, of the past or present role of Britain and its children in the world, of colonisation …