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.

More than 10,000 members of Australia’s Vietnamese Catholic community came together in Sydney recently for a three day festival to celebrate Mary, the Mother of God.

Fr Manh Le SVD, a Vietnamese Chaplain in Sydney, says that the NSW Vietnamese community has celebrated a festival each October, the month of the Rosary, for some years, but this was the first time that Vietnamese chaplaincy communities from right around Australia came together for the days of prayer, faith formation, music and friendship.

The Vietnamese migrants living and working in New Caledonia will have a comforting presence amongst them for Christmas, with Fr Truc Quoc Phan SVD arriving to help them celebrate.

With only few Vietnamese priests in the Pacific countries, Fr Truc, who is the SVD AUS Province Mission Secretary and was born and raised in Vietnam, pays regular visits to New Caledonia to help meet the faith needs of the migrant people.