“These two men are that future. They are the next generation.”
With those words from his homily, Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, (now former) Administrator Archbishop Anthony Randazzo, captured the significance of a solemn evening at the Parish of St Ninian and St Chad in Mt Lawley, as Nigel McBain and Andrew Iswahyudi were ordained to the Diaconate on Tuesday 21 April 2026.
More than 350 people packed the Mt Lawley Church, witnessing a moment Archbishop Randazzo described as both a celebration of personal calling and a sign of hope for a jurisdiction that stretches from Perth across Australia and the Pacific to Guam and Japan.
Archbishop Randazzo, recently announced as Prefect of the Dicastery for Legislative Texts, was joined by Ordinariate Emeritus Ordinary Msgr Harry Entwistle, Vicar General Fr Stephen Hill as Principal MC, Fr Ian Wilson (Adelaide), Fr Scot Armstrong, Fr Ted Wilson and Fr Joseph Yamaoka as concelebrants, with Perth Archdiocesan priest Fr Connor Steadman as MC, and Ordinariate Deacon Brian Wehrle from Canada, assisting, together with several priests from the Archdiocese of Perth.
Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter, Bishop Steven Lopes has recently been announced as Administrator for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross.
The Diaconate Ordination took place on the Memorial of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, with Archbishop Randazzo linking a clear thread between the 11th-century theologian and the two men kneeling before him.
Like Anselm, he said, they were called not primarily to function, but to configuration.
“The diaconate is not first about function, nor even about ministry in the practical sense. It is about being configured to Christ the Servant.”
The two men who answered that call come from strikingly different worlds.
Deacon Andrew Iswahyudi’s path to the altar began in East Java.
The external St Charles seminarian was raised in a devout non-Christian family in Indonesia, he trained as a medical doctor before a gradual journey through faith communities led him first to an Anglican parish in Jakarta, then to Brisbane, and eventually to Catholic reception in Perth in 2014.
He credits two quiet influences above all others: the moment he instinctively raised his hand during a question posed to Indonesian orphan students about full-time service to God, and the witness of Oma Soes, an elderly family friend who converted to Catholicism later in life and attended daily Mass without fail, never once speaking about faith, but living it completely.
He entered the Catholic Church through the Ordinariate under the provision of Pope Benedict XVI’s 2009 apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, a pathway he describes as his “unique and only way” to full communion.
For him, the English patrimony carries a clear evangelical mandate.
“My calling is to evangelise in the frame of the English Patrimony of Catholicism,” he said, pointing to its characteristic marks: collaborative culture, evangelisation through beauty in worship and music, deep scriptural preaching, and attentive spiritual direction.
On the meaning of their shared ordination, both men pointed to the same reality.
“This is exactly the picture of our one true Holy and Apostolic Church: the diversities,” they said together.
“The faith, the Blessed Sacrament, is what unites us.”
Deacon Nigel McBain’s journey began in a local Anglican choir at the age of six, when his mother enrolled him to continue singing after his school choir was disbanded.
Faith and music became inseparable companions.
After becoming Catholic in 1996, he deepened his engagement with sacred music and liturgy, eventually discovering the Ordinariate while working as an organist and faith formator in the United States.
He attended the episcopal ordination of Bishop Steven Lopes in Houston in February 2015, where he first met Msgr Entwistle.
Returning to Australia, Nigel completed his studies at the Seminary of the Good Shepherd in Homebush, and has served in Perth for nearly seven years, most notably by fostering lay participation in the Daily Office of Mattins and Evensong.
“I find myself, having now been ordained, at the disposal of the Church and open to whatever comes next,” he said.
Archbishop Randazzo acknowledged the weight of the moment with candour.
He told the congregation that the first generation of Ordinariate priests who established the community are nearing the end of their active ministry, and that new enquiries are coming from New Zealand, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
The two new deacons, he said, inherit both a remarkable promise and a real responsibility.
“If you remain servants in this sense,” he said, “servants who seek, who love, and who surrender, then your ministry will bear fruit.”