Best-selling author and literary scholar Joseph Pearce. Images by Giovanni Portelli Photography © 2025 Best-selling author and literary scholar Joseph Pearce looks for beauty in places as diverse as the works of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky to ripples on a Monte Carlo biscuit in a Sydney school office. He has known plenty of ugliness in […]
NSW Premier Chris Minns popped in early, collecting a coffee from the van just as it opened at 7am. Images by Giovanni Portelli Photography © 2025 CatholicCare has held the grand opening of its third BariStars mobile café, located alongside St Mary’s Cathedral. BariStars is a social enterprise offering people with disabilities valuable life and career […]
It’s this unification of joy, faith, strength and pride through the streets of Sydney’s CBD, that has a profound impact on its participants every year. Photo: Alphonsus Fok. Every year, there’s a point on the Walk with Christ Eucharistic Procession that never fails to leave Fr Josh Miechel’s speechless. “As we turn that last corner […]
Bishop Peter Murphy as the 11th Bishop of Armidale. Photo: Supplied. The is the edited text for the homily for the Mass of ordination to the episcopate of Most Reverend Peter Murphy and installation as 11th bishop of Armidale at the Cathedral of Sts Mary and Joseph, Armidale, Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary […]
Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who has chosen the papal name Leo XIV, appears on the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican May 8, 2025, following his election during the conclave. He is the first American pope in history. (OSV News photo/Claudia Greco, Reuters) “Habemus papam” — we have a pope, a new […]
CATHEDRAL OF STS MARY AND JOSEPH, ARMIDALE, FEAST OF OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY OF POMPEI, 8 MAY 2025 Patrick White’s 1955 novel, The Tree of Man, chronicles the lives and fortunes of an Australian family and their society.[1] Stan Parker inherits an untamed patch of bushland, clears it by hand, builds a shack, and […]
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 2 MAY 2025 Alexander, the fourth century Bishop of Alexandria, once saw some kids playing by the sea, mimicking the ritual of Baptism. He asked who they were and discovered that the one playing bishop was called Athanasius. After questioning the boy-bishop, Alexander told him his baptisms seemed to be valid […]
ST MARY’S BASILICA, SYDNEY, 1 MAY 2025 “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the wise and learned, and revealing them to mere children” (Mt 11:25-26). Jesus’ words of thanksgiving tonight upend conventional wisdom: God’s revelation, He makes clear, is not first and foremost for the clever or […]
St Mary’s Catholic Church, Concord, 30 April 2025 Welcome to St Mary’s Church in Concord for the Pontifical Mass of Christian Burial for Fr David Coffey, a priest of the Archdiocese of Sydney. David was born in Lismore in 1934, one of four children to Leo and Mary. He was educated at St Joseph’s Mildura, […]
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 24 APRIL 2025 Formerly known as the Glebe Island Bridge, the longest cable-stayed bridge in Australia was completed in 1995. In a ceremony in 1998 it was renamed “the Anzac Bridge”, as a fitting memorial to those who had fought in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. In the year […]
ST MARY’S BASILICA, SYDNEY, 22 APRIL 2025 “Woman, why are you weeping?” the angels ask Mary Magdalene on Easter day (Jn 20:11-18). Her grief is profound, her tears sincere. With the execution of her Master and Friend, her world had been turned upside down. Now she has come to tend His corpse and her grief […]
A Statement from the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP The Church in Sydney and Australia joins with people throughout the world in mourning the passing of the Holy Father, Pope Francis. As priest, bishop and pope, he embodied Christ’s command to care for all people, especially the most vulnerable. He was a […]
ST MARY’S BASILICA, SYDNEY, 20 APRIL 2025 “I wonder if I am dreaming?” she asks after falling down a rabbit hole. In Lewis Carroll’s 1865 masterpiece, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the girl finds herself in a bizarre world where nothing makes sense anymore. Rabbits carry pocket watches, playing cards serve as soldiers, Cheshire cats disappear […]
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 17 APRIL 2025 Recently released, The Return recounts the final events in Homer’s epic The Odyssey. Odysseus, played by Ralph Fiennes, washes up naked on the shores of Ithaca after two decades away. He’d been a great success in the Trojan War, being the one who proposed the Trojan Horse and […]
St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, Maundy Thursday, 17 April 2025 “Naked and unashamed”—that’s how the Book of Genesis describes our first parents in the Garden of Eden (Gen 2:25). Yet after the Fall and through the rest of the Bible, nakedness is shameful. Gyms and nude beaches might be all very well in Australia, as in […]
