The Eastern Catholic Churches in Australia have journeyed from being listed as migrant chaplaincies to being accepted as integral within the Catholic Church, Melkite Bishop Robert Rabbat has said. During their May plenary meeting in Sydney, members of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference gathered in Mary MacKillop Memorial Chapel for a Mass celebrated in the Melkite tradition. Melk...

Australia’s Catholic bishops have been told Myanmar is going through a “polycrisis” five years after the military coup. Speaking on the opening day of the biannual plenary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference in Sydney on 8 May, Cardinal Charles Bo, Archbishop of Yangon, said his country was going through simultaneous economic, employment, social, health and education crises. Pr...

The recent Open Day at St Charles Seminary attracted more than 40 participants Photo: Supplied. In recent years, the Perth Archdiocese has experienced an upswing in interest from young men considering a vocation to the priesthood. This encouraging trend continued this year with the recent Open Day at St Charles Seminary attracting more than 40 participants. Organised by the Perth Vocatio...

By Carol Glatz The Catholic Church is the guardian of hope, whose members are called to speak clearly against all evil and in defence of human life, Pope Leo XIV has said. The Church, as "the pilgrim people of God on earth," he said during his general audience in St. Peter's Square on 6 May, "reads and interprets the dynamics of history through the Gospel, denouncing evil in all its form...

Representatives of more than a dozen Christian denominations joined with members of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference on Tuesday 12 May for an historic ecumenical worship service. Chair of the Bishops Commission for Christian Unity and Interreligious Dialogue, Bishop Michael Kennedy, led the gathering in Sydney’s Mary MacKillop Memorial Chapel. The service was adapted from resou...

By Jessica Kenny The Focolare movement in Perth has been celebrated at a Mass led by Auxiliary Bishop Don Sproxton on Vocations Day. Joining Bishop Don as concelebrant was Fr Anthony Rathinim, parish priest at St Denis Church, Joondanna. While the closing of the Focolare Centre marks the end of an era in Perth, the community will continue to foster and share the unity they have been nour...

Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe’s LifeLink Day for Catholic Schools Initiative will hold extra significance in 2026 with commemorative prayer cards provided to every Catholic school student, teacher and member of staff across the Perth Archdiocese. Gifted to the Perth Catholic school community by Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB and Auxiliary Bishop Don Sproxton, a total of 85,000 prayer...

Eric Besnard’s Jean Valjean is a quiet, intimate reimagining that trades the grand scale of Les Misérables for something far more personal and reflective. Set against a beautifully captured countryside, the film uses its natural landscapes not for spectacle, but as a backdrop to a deeply human story about judgment, faith, and the possibility of change. It sits comfortably alongside Besna...

Next month, the Wanneroo Parish community will gather in prayer, song, procession and celebration in honour of their patron saint – as they have done for the past 93 years. Shaped by the migrant story of the Church in Western Australia, the annual feast or festa of St Anthony has been celebrated in Wanneroo since the original St Anthony of Padua Church opened in 1932. In the early days, ...

The Record Editor Jamie O'Brien speaks with Bishop Makysim Ryabukha from the Exarchate of Donetsk in Ukraine, a region currently under Russian occupation. Since being installed as Auxiliary Bishop in December 2022, some 10 months into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Bishop Makysim has driven more than 50,000 kilometres near the largely occupied areas of Eastern Ukraine to tend to ...