When Maree Tyrrell began to organise the 80th birthday party of Fr Brian Morgan she wanted to do more than just honour the life of an inspiring, humble and still very active priest - she wanted the occasion to be a celebration of the priesthood. Her dreams were fulfilled when over 150 of Fr Brian’s friends, including 13 priests, gathered at the Doubleview Bowling Club on October 27 to gi...

Father David Callaghan knows what it is to speak the truth in new and interesting ways. The Canberra based Missionaries of God’s Love priest will be heading west in January to lecture at the Disciples Summer School (January 6-13) where he will present talks such as ‘Man Up’ and ‘Is my smart phone a brain-eating zombie?’ Fr David will speak directly to the challenges people face today....

Father Leon Anderson is a survivor. The Oblate priest celebrates 40 years of priestly life this year. It is a milestone he nearly did not reach by around 19 years. In August 1993, he survived a near-fatal car accident while returning from celebrating Sunday Mass at St John’s in Erica, an outstation of St Kiernan’s in Moe, Victoria. His car skidded on a wet road and hit a tree. Fr L...

The Ukranian Church of St John the Baptist in Maylands held a Holodomor memorial service this week to remember the millions of people who died during a peacetime famine in 1932. About eight million Ukrainians died of starvation during the man-made famine in Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933. A service was conducted by Fr Wolodymyr Kalinecki to remember the tragedy and was followed b...

Saint Luke’s Woodvale have a lot of diversity to celebrate and when they do, it’s a “riot of colour”, one St Luke’s parishioner told The Record this week. The parish has just held its annual ‘International Fun and Food Nite’, facilitated by the parish’s social committee to coincide with their spiritual patron, St Luke’s Feast Day. “[The event] reflects the rich multiculturalism of the...

Work has stopped on a new church in the Lower Chittering due to a lack of funds. The unfinished, Romanesque church is located in the expanding community of Maryville Downs, about 15 km north of Bullsbrook. Construction of the Divine Mercy Church will not recommence until the parish has sourced all of the funds it needs to complete the project. Parish Priest Fr Paul Fox and parish c...

Misconceptions about the Catholic Church’s global aid charity led Daniel Chan on a journey from ignorance to awareness, one that landed him the organisation’s top job in the state. Mr Chan is Caritas Australia’s new Diocesan Director for the Archdiocese of Perth and the Regional Engagement Coordinator in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. A member of St Vincent’s parish in ...

Domestic aid efforts by Caritas Australia have supported indigenous communities in developing themselves on their own terms for the past 40 years, the group leader of the First Australians program has said. Mark Green, who heads the Caritas Australian indigenous program, which recently changed its name to the First Australians program, told The Record the initiative was with the communit...

Bruno Cordier knows exactly where the money he is about to fundraise is going. The 33-year-old Perth based Frenchman is about to embark on a 3934 km cycle from Sydney to Perth to raise money for obstetric fistula, a terrible condition which causes birthing injuries for women, especially in developing countries. Mr Cordier was inspired by a recent visit to one of Dr Catherine Hamlin’s ...

Rats, fleas, famine and sand are just some of the aspects of Fremantle that spoiled Mary Ann Friend’s experience when she visited the Swan River Colony in 1830, according to her researcher Associate Professor Deborah Gare at the University of Notre Dame Australia’s Fremantle Campus. The location of Mrs Friend’s diary has been a mystery for years. Now the journal, which includes maps and ...