The SVD has established a new Melbourne District in a bid to provide the best pastoral care to its growing number of missionaries engaged in a range of different ministries in Victoria.

The new District was inaugurated on the Feast of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, a special feast for the Universal Church and for the founder of the Divine Word Missionaries, St Arnold Janssen, who dedicated the first SVD house to the patronage of St Michael in Steyl, Holland in 1875.

The Sydney Catholic Slovak community and the Divine Word Missionaries recently celebrated 50 years of pastoral relationship with a special thanksgiving Mass.

“The celebration strengthened and confirmed the relationship that’s been there for all those years,” says Fr Henry Adler SVD, the chaplain to the Slovak community in the Archdiocese of Sydney.