National Child Protection Week 2024
August 22, 2024National Child Protection Week (NCPW): 1-7 September 2024
The continuing theme that:
Is complemented with the 2024 message that:
Hope has two beautiful daughters
The Wellington Archdiocese Ecology, Justice and Peace Commission’s Integral Ecology Committee initiated two workshops in early August. The workshops were to offer and lead people to creative resources celebrating the Season of Creation during September. A highlight of each workshop was the inspiring presence of two women witnessing to ‘Courage’ with their lives. Amanda Joe, Young Vinnies Co-ordinator and Di Buchan, Queens Service Medal/Justice of the Peace, passionately seeing that things do not remain as they are through hopeful initiatives undertaken in their communities.
Glorious Lives: Mary MacKillop – A docu-film by Shalom World
August 14, 2024
Premiering on Mary MacKillop’s feast day (8 August), Shalom World shared a docu-film on the life and legacy of Mary MacKillop as part of their Glorious Lives series. Shalom World shares the remarkable story of Sisters of Saint Joseph co-founder and Australia’s first and only canonised saint, Mary MacKillop.
A Glimpse into the Past
August 8, 2024
Senior students at St Joseph’s Primary School Numurkah recently visited the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Bendigo, particularly the statue of St Mary of the Cross. The statue was commissioned to celebrate the canonisation of Mary MacKillop, Australia’s first and only canonised saint in 2010.
Mary MacKillop opened St Joseph’s Primary School in 1890 which was the first Josephite School in Victoria. The Sisters of Saint Joseph, otherwise known as the Josephites, are the Sisters co-founded by Mary MacKillop.
Mary MacKillop Today’s Community Grants Program
Reaching people and communities at the margins in Australia
Applications for the Mary MacKillop Today Community Grants Program 2025 will open at 9:00am on Monday 12 August and close at 5:00pm on Friday 20 September 2024.
International Youth Day
On 12 August, we will be celebrating International Youth Day. For this day, Violet shares a reflection on the Josephite Action Group (JAG), a community of young volunteers.
As we look around our world, we see countless challenges that demand our attention and action. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, to believe that one individual’s efforts couldn’t possibly make a difference, but this is where young minds, hearts and fresh passion can take a stand.
Let’s Rejoice in our Life Call
August 7, 2024
In Australia, we commemorate National Vocations Awareness Week from 4-11 August 2024.
In 2013, in Gaudete et Exsultate Pope Francis called us to “rejoice and be glad” and to live holiness in today’s world. The 2019 General Chapter of the Sisters of Saint Joseph called us, “Let’s rejoice in our vowed religious life”. Divine love present in us calls us constantly, yet are we awake? The late Jesuit Pedro Arrupe called us to “Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything”.
In scripture, the term ‘rejoice’ is used to express a deep sense of joy, happiness, and gladness, often in the context of celebrating God’s goodness, salvation, or blessings.
Julian Tenison Woods – ‘A Man of God’
On 9 June 1974, the Minister for Lands in Queensland, the Hon. Mr Wallace Rae MIA, officiated at the ceremony which named the highest peak in the D’Aguilar Ranges, forty-eight kilometres north-west of Brisbane, ‘Tenison Woods Mountain’.
In his tribute to Fr Julian, Mr Rae described Julian as “one of the most picturesque personalities of Australia’s early history”:
He led a strangely varied and adventurous life. He achieved distinction in many totally different spheres. He was a distinguished scientist in separate fields, a noted explorer, a writer and a missionary. But in assessing his achievements he seems to stand most prominently as a mystic and a man of God. [1]