For the people of Nhulunbuy in isolated East Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, a regular Catholic priest has been hard to come by in recent times, but after providing priestly supply services there, and seeing the need of the people, Fr Jan Szweda SVD offered to move in as Parish Priest, and despite the challenges, he’s loving it.

Bishop Eugene Hurley appointed Fr Jan as Parish Priest of Nhulunbuy and Groote Eylandt earlier this year and since then, Fr Jan has been doing his best to build a parish community – not an easy task in a largely transient mining population.

Fr Henry Adler SVD has been re-elected as ProvinciaI-Superior of the Divine Word Missionaries AUS Province for a second three-year term.

Fr Henry was re-elected Provincial by his confreres for a second three-year term and the election was approved recently by the SVD Generalate in Rome.

Well greetings, friends! This month’s message for our In the Word E-News comes from me, Fr Raas, rather than from Fr Henry, who is taking his home leave at the moment.

Do you remember Pope Francis’ encyclical letter, Laudato Si? It gave us so much food for thought about how we should care for our common home, but what have we done to take up the challenges it contained?

Mission and culture are essential characteristics of an SVD; and with the two years Cross-Cultural Training Program, I was given a taste in different ministerial settings.

They included teaching English at the local high school, working with Vietnamese migrant workers, visiting the poor, engaging in parish ministries, and helping HIV/AIDS patients, in particular, teenagers living with HIV at The Mother of Perpetual Help Foundation in Nongbualamphu, Thailand.

Recently, I had a chance to spend some time with a good friend whom I have not seen for a long time. My friend, as best as I could tell, is a decent human being. He is a faithful husband to his wife, a loving father to his children, a responsible employee in his company, and most importantly, a God fearing man. 

But when our conversation recently turned to my writings on religious environmentalism, my friend was not impressed ...

An enthusiastic group of parishioners from St Mark’s Parish, Inala, celebrated the Jubilee Year of Mercy and the 60th anniversary of the Parish recently, with a pilgrimage to Marian Valley, at Canungra in the Gold Coast hinterland.

The Marian Shrine, a ministry of the Pauline Fathers, is one of the Brisbane Archdiocese’s designated pilgrimage destinations.

The SVD AUS Province is blessed to have the friendship and support of many lay people throughout Australia, New Zealand and Thailand, and now moves are underway to explore the possibility of starting an SVD Lay Associates’ Group.

A feasibility study into the formation of a Lay Associates’ Group kicked off this week, with the first meeting of the working party.

Way back in 1969 I came to Ledalero, the major seminary of the Divine Word Missionaries, in Flores, Indonesia. I was a seminarian, coming to study theology and preparing for priesthood. I was ordained in early 1973, and then worked for about 3 years on a small island in the Flores Sea called Palue. 

In 1976, I returned to Australia, taking-on a number of jobs in the following years in Australia, New Zealand and Tonga. Then, when my second term as parish priest of Sacred Heart Parish, Preston, in Victoria, was coming to an end, I accepted an invitation to return to Ledalero. 

The Vietnamese migrants living and working in New Caledonia are a long way from home and their faith plays a big role in keeping them together as a community in a new land.

With only one Vietnamese priest in the Pacific country, the SVD AUS Province Mission Secretary, Fr Truc Quoc Phan pays regular visits to New Caledonia to help meet the faith needs of the migrant people.

The young people of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Parish in Alice Springs received a dynamic boost to their faith recently when Fr Rob Galea came to town for a shared experience of high energy musical praise and worship.

Fr Rob, who was born and raised in Malta, is a priest of the Diocese of Bendigo, and is well known and loved for his ministry of reaching out to young people through music and song writing. His visit to Alice Springs was part of a wider tour of the Top End, taking in Darwin and the Tiwi Islands.