Archdiocese calls on experienced priest, Neocatechumenal families and clergy as it builds a new parish from the ground up
By Bridget Spinks
Father Geoffrey Aldous, the first parish priest for the newly established parish of Baldivis, celebrated Christmas Eve Mass in a local government school last year.
There is neither a Catholic school nor a parish church in the area as yet, but up to 130 people attended the Mass at Settler’s Primary School in Settler’s Green, one of the Baldivis estates.
Fr Geoffrey Aldous invited all the parishioners of Perth’s newest parish to write down their contact details and has since then been visiting all the parishioners in the area.
“It’ll be a while before the buildings get going; the most important thing is to get people together,” he said.
“I’ve visited 20 odd families since Christmas and they’re very keen to get going.”
Parishioners are getting ready to find a place where they can have a regular Sunday Mass and there seems to be a lot of enthusiasm for that, he said.
Archbishop Barry Hickey canonically erected the parish of Baldivis on 8 December last year and appointed Fr Aldous, one of Perth’s most experienced priests, as parish priest on the same day.
The parish area is about 16km of rural or semi-rural land, Fr Geoffrey told The Record. It reaches as far north as Kwinana and as far south as Bunbury diocese’s Mandurah parish.
The urban part is developing rapidly and the population is projected to grow to 42,000 by 2030, he said.
Before this parish was established, Rockingham, Port Kennedy and Kwinana were the closest parishes. “It’s not as though they can’t get to Mass; it’s a 10-15 minute drive at most. But it’s nice to have a place to call your own and build community,” he said.
Fr Geoffrey came to Baldivis to take up the new appointment after spending three and a half years on loan to Geraldton Diocese as administrator of the Cathedral parish.
The newly established diocesan parish on the outskirts of Perth’s Archdiocese will work with three international mission families or missio ad gentes that are already living in the area.
These families are part of the Neocatechumenal Way and were sent to live in the Baldivis area 12 months ago to evangelise by their presence, imitating what the late Pope John Paul II in 1985 called the “very first apostolic model” and meet in the midst of people who are mostly not baptised.
Two of these families have seven children and another have nearly six and Fr Daniel Chama and Perth Auxiliary Bishop Donald Sproxton work with them, Fr Aldous said.
Fr Aldous also told The Record that they would have different ways of mission but that he and Fr Daniel Chama would work alongside each other and together.