AS I write, the stand-off between the United States Congress and President Donald Trump over his campaign commitment to build a “big and beautiful wall” along the border with Mexico continues. Trump would not be the first leader to erect a protective barricade of this kind. There have been many such structures across the ages. Partially effective in their own ... Read More »
I ONCE worked in a school with a rowing program. I was in awe of the students’ ability to get up long before dawn and be on the water by 5am. Occasionally I would accompany them in the coaches tinny and loved the early-morning freshness of the Brisbane River at dawn. These same students would put their bodies through so ... Read More »
ON my way to night lectures at the University of Queensland many years ago I often paused to read an inscription emblazoned on the wall above the entrance to the Forgan Smith Building: “Great is truth and mighty above all things”. A quotation from the First Book of Esdras in the Hebrew Scriptures (4:41), it is an appropriate proclamation of ... Read More »
LEADER, teacher, village ambulance driver – Christian Brother Frank Hennessy has laboured for the best in people from Ballarat to East Timor. Br Hennessy was recently in Brisbane for the final thanksgiving at St Joseph’s Gregory Terrace as the Christian Brothers withdrew from East Timor. He worked in East Timor for five years as ministry leader where he changed the ... Read More »
“BLESS yourself before you go”, my mother often said to me as I left for St Anthony’s School in the Brisbane suburb of Kedron. It was a perfectly natural thing to do; for, as Catholic primary-level pupils in those days, we lived in a world of blessings. Before school business began we chanted a long, drawn-out greeting to our teacher: ... Read More »
CHRISTIAN Brothers associated schools from around Australia, and one school from New Zealand, sent their finest leaders to Brisbane for a three-day intensive workshop on student leadership. The conference, run by Edmund Rice Education Australia, brought fifty-four students together at St James, Spring Hill on Wednesday, January 16. The students spent the next two days of the conference at St ... Read More »
SINCE 1999 the Christian Brothers have ministered to the “poorest of the poor” in East Timor but, due to an aging core of brothers, it was decided they should withdraw from the country and pass their ministry into new hands. A Mass celebrated at St Joseph’s Gregory Terrace last Saturday marked the end of their ministry, with brothers coming from ... Read More »
THE Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has heard Catholic Church authorities have paid $276.1 million in victim compensation, treatment and other costs in the past 35 years. Counsel assisting the commission Gail Furness, told a commission hearing on February 16 that Church authorities had made the payments to thousands of child sexual abuse victims who came forward ... Read More »
The Catholic Leader Keeping Faith with You
