The Catholic Leader Keeping Faith with You

AFTER earthquakes and tribal violence in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands, 270,000 people need immediate life-saving assistance, almost half of them children, while security remains “unpredictable”, according to a United Nations report. “Access to clean water, food, sanitation, nutrition and health services remain immediate concerns,” a report by the UN’s child relief agency, UNICEF, said. UNICEF has grave concerns for the ... Read More »

THE Catholic Church in Australia has officially launched the Plenary Council 2020 – with support and blessings from Pope Francis – setting off a three-year conversation about the future shape of the Church and its mission. Launched on the feast of Pentecost, May 20, the plenary council will culminate in gatherings in 2020 and 2021 to consider the Church’s governance, ... Read More »

Updated: May 25 at 1:10pm ADELAIDE Archbishop Philip Wilson has announced arrangements for the running of the archdiocese, after he was found him guilty of concealing child sex abuse in a case that dates back to the 1970s. After a guilty verdict in a New South Wales court on May 22, Archbishop Wilson said he would stand aside from his role, but ... Read More »

ADELAIDE Archbishop Philip Wilson has been found guilty of concealing child sex abuse in a case that dates back to the 1970s. Appearing in Newcastle Local Court on May 22, magistrate Robert Stone handed down the verdict following a magistrate-only trial, finding Archbishop Wilson, 67, guilty of concealing a serious indictable offence of another person between April 22, 2004 and ... Read More »

WHEN mum Nicole Cooper was diagnosed with incurable, stage-four bowel cancer last year, her oncologist prescribed her two things – chemotherapy and exercise. Old-school medical advice would have been to rest and avoid activity while chemo treatment was undertaken – but not any more. In between bouts of chemotherapy and surgery, the 33-year-old started lengthy runs and gym sessions using ... Read More »

THE latest church bombings in Indonesia show the same trademark of fear that gripped the country almost a generation ago, and now once again threatens Christians, many of whom are from the ethnic Chinese minority, and make up about nine per cent of Indonesia’s 260 million people. Wind the clock back to Christmas Eve 2000. Orchestrated attacks on churches in ... Read More »

EVANGELISATION is a priority mission for the Church, Pope Francis told a mass gathering of members of the Neocatechumenal Way, including about 500 Australians, to mark the 50th anniversary of the group’s arrival in Rome. “It is easier to stay home,” Pope Francis told 150,000 people at the Tor Vergata university campus on the outskirts of Rome on May 5, ... Read More »

BRISBANE Archbishop Mark Coleridge says he will be “working to make sure Jesus is at the heart of everything” as he prepares to lead Australia’s Catholics through the sexual abuse crisis and the upcoming historic plenary council. “This will mean helping the Church find a distinctively Gospel voice in the great social debates – not fighting ideology with ideology, but ... Read More »

AN Australian Labor Party push to deprive its members in the Queensland Parliament of their right to vote according to their conscience on the decriminalisation of abortion has been criticised by Cherish Life Queensland. A pro-abortion group within the ALP, Labor for Choice, is pushing for this change to the party platform at the next national conference in July. “Freedom ... Read More »