St Mark’s Catholic Parish in Inala is well-known for its multicultural richness, and that cultural diversity underpins the faith life and missionary outreach of the parish community.
The relationship between St Mark’s parish and the Divine Word Missionaries goes all the way back to the start when Fr Aloysius Kasprus SVD was appointed the first parish priest in 1956.
Mary Mother of the Church Parish in Macquarie Fields on Sydney’s southern outskirts is a warm and vibrant multicultural community of faith, which aims to keep growing in mission and love.
Parish Priest, Fr Bosco Son SVD, says the parish, which is part of the Diocese of Wollongong, is both geographically and numerically large, and continues to grow and expand because of new housing developments, and it is this growth which helps make it such an active parish.
Christmas is being celebrated in a range of different ways throughout the SVD Australia Province, but at the centre of it all is the birth of the Christ-child in Bethlehem.
Several parishes across the Province held Christmas carol gatherings, while in others parishioners donated Christmas hampers for those in need, and in poorer parts of the Province, basic food staples were given to parishioners to help them celebrate.
Parishioners of Mary Mother of the Church parish in Macquarie Fields came together recently for the first Multicultural Day celebration since before the COVID pandemic, carrying flags from more than 50 countries in a spectacular procession which highlighted the parish’s unity in cultural diversity.
The Multicultural Day has been a popular part of the parish’s tradition over many years and parishioners and visitors were delighted to see it return.
Whenever I hear the account of Pentecost day as told in the Acts of the Apostles, where the apostles, all filled with the Holy Spirit, are speaking in foreign languages, I think of our multicultural and intercultural SVD communities, where a great variety of languages are always present, but also a unity in the Spirit.
For most of the history of the SVD Australia Province, the Divine Word Missionaries have been blessed with a heterogeneous blend of confreres from different racial, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds.
The newest arrivals in the SVD Australia Province have taken a deep-dive into Australian life, attending the province’s Summer Acculturation Program, which they welcomed as an opportunity to know more about the place and the people and also to grow further as missionaries.
The Janssen Spirituality Centre in Boronia, Victoria, was host recently to a series of five workshops on interculturality, attended by both interested lay people and religious, including SVD students from Dorish Maru College.
The workshops were presented by Sr Cathy Solano RSM, who has a background in education and spent several years working in Africa. She also has a Master’s in Intercultural Studies from Catholic Theological Union, Chicago.
The people of Holy Family Parish came together in Ingleburn recently to welcome their new parish priest, Fr Henry Adler SVD.
Holy Family Parish is a big, vibrant, multicultural parish on Sydney’s south-western outskirts, comprised of the two communities of Ingleburn and Minto.
The St Mark’s Inala community came together in all its multicultural richness recently at a special Mass to celebrate the 65th anniversary since the establishment of the parish.
The day was extra joyful because it marked the first time since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that the church was filled to capacity.
A new community centre for the Vietnamese Catholic Community of Brisbane will signal a new beginning, filled with hope, and promote an environment of faith, care for each other, and cultural enrichment.
The Vietnamese Catholic Community Centre development at Inala was put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic, but is now back underway, with construction beginning on the church and the centre’s office.
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