For possibly the first time in Perth in years, if not decades, the forgotten practice of the ‘rite of betrothal’ was brought to life at the engagement mass for James Chua and Lisa Aarts, featured on the front cover of this edition of The Record. Father Joseph McShane FI celebrated the mass, and the rite of betrothal began with the priest bidding the couple to join their right hands while...

When Chris De Sousa made the decision to discern a Religious vocation with the Somascans, most people were more than a little confused. “‘What are you doing? Are you serious?”, that’s what most people said,” Mr De Sousa, 28, told The Record. He had been practising law for five years, steadily working his way up from office dogsbody, just after graduating, to the level of Associate. ...

Each time when I ponder over how the Lord has led me in life to embrace my vocation as a Norbertine Canon, I feel drawn back to Jeremiah 29: 11 – 14. These verses were given to me when I was at a retreat discerning my life’s direction a few years ago. Praying over them now often leave me pondering and wondering at how true the Lord has been to His promises by leading and shaping me to...

The Venezuelan native is a long way away from his home city of Barinas, close to the Andes, and many years have elapsed since fear of a very concrete kind gripped him as a younger man. Victor Lujano was 19 when he stepped forward at a gathering of the Neocatechumenal Way to say he felt called to ordained ministry but for five years afterwards, he was plagued by a mysterious neurological ...

To say St Charles’ Seminarian Mariusz Grzech made a decision to become a priest, would be to get things the wrong way around, he told The Record earlier this week. The 35-year-old former accountant is now in his third year at St Charles Seminary at Guildford. Like a lot of men at the seminary, to all outward appearances, his life before entering was a highly successful one. He had ...

In this homily from Sunday, July 29, Archbishop Costelloe lays out his hopes for Perth’s seminarians. When I became a bishop one of the gifts I was given was a book entitled “Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops.” Along with what I learnt when I went to what some people irreverently call “Baby Bishops School” in Rome soon after my consecration in Melbourne, this book has bec...

Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB had some direct and encouraging words to say to St Charles’ seminarians when he joined them for evening prayer, last Sunday. Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB made the most of his first opportunity to address archdiocesan seminarians directly when he attended Solemn Vespers and Benediction at St Charles Seminary last Sunday. After welcoming words from S...

Deacon Patrick Moore received a strange phone call one Monday morning last month. The Stella Maris Seafarers centre in Fremantle which he adminsters has no shortage of phone calls, with around 600 seafarers seeking solace through its doors, each and every month, but this call was a little different. The Australian newspaper’s Chief of Staff was on the other end of the line, saying he ...

Fr Peter Porteous says he has never been more content than where he is right now. That, for the Parish Priest of the central Perth suburb of Joondanna, is no mean feat, given the demanding picture he paints of the priesthood. But it is a vision no less compelling than it is daunting and the only one, he says, that could ever deliver the fulfillment a priest seeks and the ministry God’...

Senior Western Australian Catholic Education bureaucrat Dr Tim McDonald has been appointed the new Director of Catholic Education in WA. Dr McDonald will replace the outgoing Director of the organisation, Ron Dullard, in early November. A panel of six people, which included a representative of the Bishops of Western Australia, unanimously made the key WA Catholic appointment of Dr McDona...