Almost two years after his priestly ordination in Melbourne, Fr Clement Baffoe SVD was finally able to return to his home village in Ghana to celebrate his Thanksgiving Mass with family, friends and parish community members.
Fr Clement, who was assigned to the SVD Australia Province, and is currently serving in the Ministerial Region of the Good Shepherd in Townsville, Queensland, says the trip back home, after the long pandemic separation, was a graced opportunity to give thanks to God.
The Divine Word Missionaries Australia Province has extended its commitment to being present in New Zealand and is ready to respond to any requests by bishops to provide more confreres as needed.
Provincial, Fr Asaeli Rass SVD, undertook a Provincial Visitation to New Zealand earlier this month, and said he was “very impressed” by the ministry of the four confreres who are currently assigned there.
The halls of Dorish Maru College, the SVD’s formation house in Melbourne, are once again ringing with life following the arrival of five new missionary students – the first big intake since international borders re-opened after the pandemic.
The students are from Vietnam and China. Also arriving recently are two SVD priests, who are studying English before beginning their ministry.
After two years of pandemic lockdowns and restrictions in Melbourne, the SVD students finally got the opportunity to hit the road and travel out of Victoria as a formation community during the recent winter academic holidays.
The students from Dorish Maru College visited SVD parishes and confreres as well as the Holy Spirit Sisters, shared their vocational stories and spent time with families in Queensland and New South Wales, while also having the chance to explore some of what the different parts of Australia have to offer.
In 2018, I attended the episcopal ordination of Bishop Ewald Sedu, in Maumere. Maumere is a very Catholic town, on the very Catholic island of Flores, in very Christian eastern Indonesia.
Synodality is ultimately about mission says internationally renowned theologian Fr Stephen Bevans SVD , who was in Australia recently to attend a major mission conference and deliver a presentation to the SVD community.
Fr Stephen, who is the Louis J. Luzbetak SVD Professor of Mission and Culture, Emeritus at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, was one of five Divine Word Missionaries attending the 15th Assembly of the International Association for Mission Studies at Morling College in Sydney this month, exploring the theme: ‘Powers, Inequalities, and Vulnerabilities: Mission in a Wounded World’.
The Catholic Church in Australia is about to celebrate Vocations Awareness Week from August 7–14. It’s a time to stop and listen in awe to the way God has worked in people’s lives and called them to walk different paths in service to God and others.
In the AUS Province we are blessed to once again have a ‘full house’ at our formation house, Dorish Maru College in Box Hill, Melbourne. The pandemic-related international border closures meant that for the past two years, the young men who had been due to start their theological studies here could not gain entry to Australia. It is a delight to now be welcoming them into our Provincial community.
The seminarians in the Divine Word Missionaries’ Australia Province have been hitting the road recently to spend time getting to know some of the youth in SVD parishes in Queensland and sharing their vocation stories with them.
The road-trip from Melbourne’s Dorish Maru College to the parishes of St Maximilian Kolbe in Marsden and St Mark’s, Inala, is part of the mission outreach of SVD Youth, which was established in the Province earlier this year.