Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP

Dame Margot, Sir Richard and Sir John, My Lord Bishop Ingham, Mr Justice Kunç, Vice Chancellor, Deputy Vice Chancellor, professors and friends all

Welcome to St. Mary’s Basilica in Sydney for the Funeral Mass for Sr Mary Paul OLHC, last surviving member of our the Congregation of Our Lady Help of Christians.

“Let us not despair; it is a blessed cause, and success, ere long, will crown our exertions. Already we have gained one victory: we have obtained, for these poor creatures, the recognition of their human nature, which for a while was most shamefully denied.

‘All humanity is being put to the test’ says the Vatican’s bioethics thinktank, the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV), in Global Pandemic and Universal Brotherhood: Note on the Covid-19 Emergency.

Dare we hope in a world that is suffering? It can seem impossible, even insensitive, to talk of hope when people are sick or dying, anxious or isolated, unemployed or otherwise burdened.

I welcome today’s exoneration of Cardinal George Pell in a unanimous decision of the High Court of Australia.The Cardinal has always maintained his innocence and today’s decision confirms his conviction was wrong.

Dear brothers in ministry and brothers and sisters in Christ. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all in this time of pandemic.

With respect to the Celebration of Mass and other Liturgies. Many people are already self-selecting to stay at home and attendance at many Masses will predictably be under 100.

Apocalypse now? Drought, fires, storms and now plague. It can feel like the end of the world is coming. In a sense it is.

One in five Australians suffers some form of psychological illness in any particular year, and nearly half do so at some stage in their life. It affects all age groups, sexes, ethnicities, beliefs, professions. The figures are staggering, and mean a lot of people are hurting out there, many of them silently, without professional help

On 13 October last the Church canonised a man whose life and work has been described by Pope Benedict XVI as ‘one great commentary on the question of conscience’, who was praised by St John Paul II for his “deep intellectual honesty [and] fidelity to conscience and grace”

Christmas tells us we are valued, we are wanted, we are loved. Each one of us is precious, irreplaceable, made for greatness. It might sound overblown, even vain. But that’s what Christmas says. You matter so much, that God would become one of us – for your sake!