Surprising the synod

Long-time commentators on family, Mavis and Ron Pirola, made world-wide headlines with their address to the recent Synod on the Family.

A wide-ranging talent

Artist Martin Tighe is not much into self-promotion, happy to let his art do the talking. And there’s much to be said about his work, particularly his portraits and his most recent exhibition of bread paintings, which he calls religious icons

Bread, broken for you

On the final day of his three-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land in May 2014, Pope Francis celebrated Mass in the Upper Room—the Cenacle—in Jerusalem. In his homily he referred to the power of the gift Jesus left us through the Eucharist

Soul Matters

As I pen this from Hong Kong on the last day of October, the feast day of famous Jesuit brother, St Alphonsus Rodriguez, I realise that I am not only a long way from home but also a substantial time from the publication of this Autumn edition

The Bread of Life

Our Community of Prayer - June, July, August

The Pope's prayer intentions, calendar of saints and reflections on the liturgical readings for each day of the month. Click here to visit the website

Nostalgia and memory

The process of memory is such a complex field of human existence that it is difficult to know where to begin in trying to grasp its conceptual slipperiness. And yet it is hard to find a more basic element in our lives than they way the past is present to us in the here and now

Lion and flowers

n Melbourne, in Carlton’s Lygon Street, come across the usual run of urban resources: the restaurants, the supermarket, the butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers. And if you did this some time late in 2003, you might have noticed, on the narrow divider in the middle of Lygon Street, a very simple fountain, which, several days running, had fresh flowers in its bowl.

Founder of a place of healing

Dom Rosendo Salvado's community at New Norcia supported the local aboriginal community in numerous ways.

The secret ministry of frost

Coleridge’s poem Frost at Midnight is one of my favourite poems, and I love the turning of the seasons that brings me to my battered old paperback each year to rediscover it

An Aboriginal voice crying in the wilderness

William Barak was born around 1824, becoming the last chief of the Yarra Yarra Tribe. He was often called ‘King William’, or ‘Beruk’ (meaning white grub in a gum tree, and he belonged to the Wurundjeri-willam people. Their country lay along the Yarra and Plenty Rivers

What we all have in common

What we all have in commonNostra Aetate is the Vatican II Declaration on the Church’s Relationship to Non-Christian Religions (1965) was one of the most influential and celebrated documents issued by the Council