VIOLENT witch hunts are not a strange thing of the past – they exist today in many countries including neighbouring Papua New Guinea. During Holy Week last April in PNG’s Southern Highlands province, three village women were accused of sorcery, strung-up and tortured by fire. They were then forced to take responsibility for the death of a man who had ... Read More »
WHEN the villagers of impoverished Bereina need to quell their famine, they reach for the noxious betel nut. In the town of Bereina, in the Central Province of Papua New Guinea, the addictive seed, which is prohibited in Australia, is often the only food source for the local villagers. It is an unfathomable sight for Sr Anna Pigozzo, a missionary ... Read More »
MARIAN Valley will host about 80 Port Moresby Catholics to pray alongside the Brisbane Papua New Guinea Catholic Community for the blessing and opening of a chapel dedicated to Blessed Peter To Rot on January 19. PNG Cardinal John Ribat will fly from Port Moresby to lead the celebration and blessings, coinciding with 25 years since Blessed Peter was beatified ... Read More »
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 »
BISHOP Tim Harris has pledged to continue to deepen Townsville diocese’s relationship with Port Moresby archdiocese following a recent visit to the Papua New Guinea capital. In 2012, the late Bishop Michael Putney and the Archbishop of Port Moresby signed a significant and unique sister diocese agreement. The agreement allowed for the co-operation between the two dioceses in areas like ... Read More »
“ONE day we buried twelve children …” – victims of war and famine, and as Fr Pat Doran thinks of them almost 60 years later the memories come flooding back, and so do the tears. Those children and thousands like them are close to the heart of the Holy Spirit Father nearing retirement from his Brisbane parish. In the little ... Read More »
ON a recent family trip to Caloundra, acclaimed foreign correspondent Sean Dorney shuffled down the beach to the surf, assisted by his wife and daughter, unable to raise his legs more than a few centimetres above the sand. “If you are walking behind me the tracks look as if a turtle has been scraping through the sand,” Mr Dorney said. ... Read More »
PAPUA New Guinea’s first indigenous person raised to beatification in the Church, Blessed Peter To Rot, will have a shrine built in his memory near Brisbane. Located in Marian Valley in the Gold Coast Hinterlands, it will be the first shrine in Australia dedicated to Blessed Peter To Rot, a lay catechist who was murdered for his defence of marriage ... Read More »
DURING the welcome Mass for Cardinal John Ribat late last year, many people spoke kindly of the shepherd who was now the first cardinal to be appointed from Papua New Guinea. Apostolic nuncio for Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands Archbishop Kurian Mathew Vayalunkal said: “We are here to share our joy and express our gratitude to God for ... Read More »
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