The Perth Catholic community is invited to join Perth Auxiliary Bishop Don Sproxton to celebrate the annual Aboriginal Sunday Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral, Sunday 18 October at 5pm.
This year’s Mass in Perth falls six weeks before the 40th anniversary of Saint John Paul II’s address to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at Blatherskite Park in Alice Springs, on Saturday 29 November 1986.
“You are part of Australia and Australia is part of you,” the then Pope John Paul II told the crowd.
“And the Church herself in Australia will not be fully the Church that Jesus wants her to be until you have made your contribution to her life and until that contribution has been joyfully received by others.”
The Bishops Commission for Relations with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Catholic Council (NATSICC) have urged parishes, schools and other Catholic entities to mark the anniversary “in ways which are appropriate to their local community”.
Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB, President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, said the “enduring lesson” of the address is that the Church in Australia “is called not simply to minister to Aboriginal peoples, but to joyfully receive from them”.
NATSICC chair Shirley Quaresimin said it was timely to “look back at what has been achieved in the past 40 years but also be honest about what has not progressed”.
The day after Alice Springs, the Holy Father Pope St John Paul II arrived in Perth and celebrated Mass at Belmont Park racecourse.
Aboriginal Catholic Ministry had by then served Perth for 12 years. Archbishop Launcelot Goody approved it in 1974 as the Archdiocese’s official outreach to Aboriginal families.
ACM Director Donella Brown is a Yawuru woman, born in Derby, and a former Principal of Clontarf Aboriginal College. Her own involvement with the ministry began in the late 1980s.
“Saint John Paul II told our people we do not have to be divided into two parts. We can be Aboriginal and Catholic, and our families have held on to those words for 40 years,” Ms Brown said.
“The Aboriginal Sunday Mass is a sharing of gifts. Our families bring their culture and their faith to the Cathedral, and the whole Archdiocese is welcome to come and pray with us.
“People who come will hear the stories of this land and see Aboriginal families at Mass in their own Cathedral. That visibility matters to our people.”
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sunday is typically celebrated on the first Sunday of July. In Perth, the Cathedral Mass has been held in October in recent years.
More than 500 people attended the 2024 Mass on Sunday 20 October. Wadjuk Noongar Elder Robyn Collard spoke the Welcome to Country, local Wadjuk Noongar youth Thairon Jansen and Tryce Rioli played the didgeridoo, and Bishop Sproxton blessed the congregation with gum leaves.
A smoking ceremony was held outside before Mass.
“This has been an important ritual of welcome, purification and healing for tens of thousands of years in our land,” Bishop Sproxton said in his homily.
He said a lot of work had been done in recent years to understand the ancient rituals and symbols of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait peoples, and some had been taken into Christian celebrations “because of the common understandings and meaning they have and for what they communicate about our relationship with our Father, the people and the earth”.
“We are brothers and sisters because of our faith,” Bishop Sproxton said.
“Jesus teaches us. He teaches us to become servants, not dictators. But He does not use words alone to teach: He shows us how to be servants and He offers us the power or grace for us to have a change of heart.”
At the Cathedral Mass closing NAIDOC Week in 2017, Bishop Sproxton called St Mary’s “the mother church of our Archdiocese, and as such is the church where anyone can come and find a welcome”.
The full video of St John Paul II’s 1986 speech can be found on the ACBC YouTube.
The full text of St John Paul II’s 1986 speech can be found at the Vatican website.