It is no doubt the year 2020 will be remembered as one of the strangest and perhaps the most challenging in recent history.

Western Australia has emerged relatively unscathed by COVID-19, with Premier Mark McGowan announcing via Twitter, “Thank you Western Australia, we are leading the nation because of you,” in the second week of May, when official announcements were made that on the 18th of that month, Australians would finally be able to enjoy an easing of quarantine restrictions.

With a great sense of humour, Floreat Wembly parishioner, Mary Therese O’Leary, also known as Tess, recently celebrated 100 years on 24 May.

This year’s Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) candidates, who were set to be received into the Catholic Church at Easter, have been rewarded for their patience after the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the process by more than four months.

Glendalough parishioners Paul and Laura Catalanotto know a thing or two about organising and hosting a wedding – particularly in the middle of a global pandemic. With many engaged couples postponing or outright cancelling their weddings during the COVID-19 pandemic, Paul Catalanotto, who hails from New Orleans in the United States of America, explains the couple’s decision to go ahead with the wedding two months earlier than planned, and how they coped.

Doorstep Dinners II – the second phase of St Pat’s Community Support Centre’s project collaboration – has commenced earlier this month and expanded to include participants from the Perth metropolitan area.

At the best of times, working in the ICU requires a strict attention to detail and the ability to walk the line between life and death, COVID-19 shifted existence in this tenuous purgatory to the next gear, and made that thinnest of lines a precarious tightrope walk.

Students across the country experienced the COVID-19 pandemic’s disruption first-hand with changes and uncertainty in schooling this year, however some CEWA students have also turned their focus to local businesses affected by the economic consequences of the virus.

The University of Notre Dame Australia and WA Country Health Service (WACHS) have teamed up to offer regional and rural nurses the opportunity to take the acclaimed School of Nursing & Midwifery Adult Deterioration: Assessment; Prevention; Treatment (ADAPT) course.

The Knights of the Southern Cross Cathedral Branch 28, in conjunction with the Rotary Club of Elizabeth Quay, have heroically led the charge to restock St Vincent De Paul’s “Vinnies food hamper supply” – a supply that has been drastically depleted responding to the Australian bushfires and the local impact of the Coronavirus pandemic.