ST Vincent de Paul Society frontline homeless support worker Melissa Hankin has seen more elderly Australians turning to Vinnies in housing crisis in recent months on the Gold Coast. Ms Hankin said it was saddening to see more elderly Australians coming for help, but particularly an increase in older women seeking their services. “Most of the women tend not to ... Read More »
THE Plenary Council 2020 has delivered six national themes for discernment for discussion. Br Damien Price has written a reflection on each of the six themes. I WOULD imagine that most of us – at one time or another – have belonged to a group that was “on fire”. Perhaps “on fire” is too strong an expression; perhaps you felt ... Read More »
A BRISBANE father-of-three shudders when he thinks of the terror inside Eritrea. “It is a dictatorship, a brutal dictatorship,” former Eritrean Catholic school teacher Tek Tesfaldet said. “The country is a big prison. I got out.” Mr Tesfaldet (pictured) fled Eritrea without a passport 15 years ago, spending time in neighbouring Sudan, before eventually reaching Australia with the help of ... Read More »
IN 1996 Philip Nitschke tinkered in his shed in Coolalinga, just outside Darwin in the Northern Territory, working on a customised contraption that would become known as “the death machine”. One of Mr Nitschke’s patients would be the first to use it – delivering their own deadly injection – in the world’s first legal case of euthanasia, in the Northern ... Read More »
JESSICA Laidler’s life changed when she journeyed to the war-weary nation of Timor Leste on a school trip. At the time she was a teenager from the Gold Coast and remembers it as an eye-opening experience, not just to see a developing nation up-close but to be with the people and to engage with them. “And really from that, that’s ... Read More »
HOMELESSNESS is on the rise in Australia and work is being done to fight it, but Vinnies warns there are factors that often remain hidden from public view. St Vincent de Paul Society National Council of Australia chief executive officer Toby O’Connor welcomed the Federal Government’s focus on emergency accommodation for a growing number of Australians. But he said housing ... Read More »
A PANEL of three judges has retired to consider whether there are grounds to quash a sexual assault conviction against Cardinal George Pell. During a two-day hearing in Victoria’s Court of Appeal, prosecutors maintained a guilty verdict should stand against 77-year-old Cardinal Pell, who is three months into a six-year gaol term for assaulting two choirboys, in 1996 and 1997, ... Read More »
THE Church is pushing ahead with historic safeguarding measures aimed at tightening protection and governance – in line with recommendations of Australia’s Royal Commission into child sexual abuse. The National Catholic Safeguarding Standards – containing 10 criteria – is the latest tool to be adopted and, according to the presidents of Catholic Religious Australia and the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, ... Read More »
CARDINAL George Pell’s lawyer has told an appeal court that his client had a “strong, credible” alibi and that crimes of sexually abusing two choirboys in St Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne were “literally and logically” impossible. One the first day of an expected two-day hearing in the Victorian Court of Appeal, barrister, Bret Walker SC, said the timing of the ... Read More »
The Catholic Leader Keeping Faith with You
