“My priesthood has been a beautiful way of life and I wouldn’t change a moment,” Father Stephen Cooney OPraem reflects with a distinct but faded Irish lilt. It is an impressive statement considering his vocation has extended over five decades and half the globe.

The nearly 3 million pilgrims who swept across Copacabana beach during the six-day celebration of World Youth Day returned home at the beginning of August with “clear instructions” from the Pope Francis.

The University of Notre Dame’s Dawn Darlaston-Jones will join a team of leading researchers in an exciting and unique project designed to increase the number of Indigenous psychologists in Australia.

Archbishop Emeritus Barry Hickey joined many Sisters of Mercy, friends and volunteers in the meeting room at St Mary’s Cathedral on July 31 to bid farewell to Sr Dolores Coffey RSM.

It might be surprising to learn that Lewis Carroll’s character Alice in Alice in Wonderland would ever be the basis of a Catholic retreat, but the titular character’s question ‘Who Am I Really?’ was the focus of participants at the young adults retreat sponsored by Catholic Faith Renewal (CFR) recently.

CATHOLIC students around Western Australia completed the annual Bishops Religious Literacy Assessment last week. Students from Years 3, 5 and 9 at Catholic schools throughout the State took part in the assessment, which is developed by the Catholic Education Office of WA and was introduced in 2006. The test examines students’ ability to recall content about the Catholic faith and asse...

DOMINICAN pr iest Fr Christopher Dowd OP celebrated his Silver Jubilee of ordination to the priesthood on July 30 at St Anne’s Catholic Church in Belmont. A large crowd gathered for the Solemn High Mass, celebrated with Fr Michael Rowe as deacon and Fr Tim Deeter as sub-deacon. The Mass was followed by dinner in the parish hall where Fr Dowd was presented with a gift and card that par...

BRENNAN Sia’s journey from pharmacist to priest will soon be complete, as he prepares to be ordained for the Perth Archdiocese on September 27. The 31-year-old admits he hasn’t been thinking too much about the occasion, preferring to keep his mind focused on his role as deacon. “At the moment I’ve been more occupied with the work in the parish but I think very soon I’ll have to start ...

TWENTY-three couples took part in a special Mass at Bateman parish on August 3 to celebrate reaching significant wedding anniversaries this year. About 300 people gathered for the annual Mass, which had a particular focus on marriage, and the married couples and their families shared dinner in the parish hall at its conclusion. Each of the couples present, who were celebrating 25, 30,...

Being a good priest is about giving – giving until it hurts. So says the parish priest of Good Shepherd Lockridge, Father Francis Ly, some 32 years after arriving in Australia as a Vietnamese refugee and a year shy of his 30th year in the priesthood.