The Fifth Plenary Council of Australia and the global Synod on Synodality were key discussion points for Australian Catholic Bishops Conference President and Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB and Pope Francis when they met in October.

“It’s all about recognising that we all have a part to play,” Archbishop Costelloe said, explaining that Pope Francis, throughout his pontificate, has been striving “to shift the Church’s culture to one of active engagement in this task of being the visible sign that Christ is with us.”

Secretary of the Vatican Dicastery for Legislative Texts, Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, said the updated document was based on four years of experience operating under the previous version, but the update also was needed to incorporate changes Pope Francis made in 2021 to the Code of Canon Law’s “Book VI: Penal Sanctions in the Church.”

Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB, President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference is a member of the commission and brings with him the experience of the four-year process of the Australian Plenary Council, which concluded in July 2022.

Pope Francis kisses the hand of residential school survivor Alma Desjarlais of the Frog Lake First Nation during a welcoming ceremony at Edmonton International Airport 24 July 2022. Photo: CNS /Paul Haring. By Justin McLellan Establishing clear procedures for protecting vulnerable people against abuse "must become a priority in every local church," Pope Francis said. In a message to p...

Speaking in the third video for the Liturgical Renewal and Formation program, Mildred Rego explained that over the years, meaningful signs and symbols have come to occupy a key place in the Church that remind us of the history, teachings, and traditions passed down to us as followers of Jesus,

“Each time we celebrate a liturgical ritual of the church, it is an opportunity for us to open ourselves to the words and actions of each part of the ritual and allow ourselves to be transformed by the presence of Jesus Christ,” Centre for Liturgy Director, Sr Kerry Willison has said.

Lent is the time, Pope Francis has said, “to proclaim that God alone is Lord, to drop the pretence of being self-sufficient and the need to put ourselves at the centre of things, to be the top of the class, to think that by our own abilities we can succeed in life and transform the world around us.”

In launching a new program of Liturgical Formation and Renewal this week, Perth Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB says it is important the Perth Catholic community reflect on what it means to be a Christ-centred Church that is prayerful and Eucharistic.

Over the next four weeks, video messages highlighting an understanding of Sacramentality, Why we Gather to celebrate Liturgy, Signs and Symbols in the Liturgy and What is Liturgy, will be shown in our parish communities.

Exhorting South Sudanese Christians to be the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world,” as the day’s Gospel reading called them to be, Pope Francis told the people, “This country, so beautiful yet ravaged by violence, needs the light that each one of you has, or better, the light that each one of you is.”