On this Australia Day weekend, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference is asking parishes across our country to support the St. Vincent de Paul Society with the Bushfire Appeal.  The response of the ACBC is a long time after many of you have contributed by the ‘tap and go’ machine or given directly to Vinnies.  All loose money on the second collections this weekend will add to the Bushfire Appeal.  Canberra/Goulburn has introduced other ways for supporting parishes in affected areas but from my experience, Vinnies, as our agency, is the best way to distribute money to the most needy.  The St. Vincent de Paul Society in Australia consists of 60,000 members and volunteers who operate on the ground through over 1,000 conferences located in individual parishes across the country.  Donations can also be made by visiting the Vinnies website.

Graeme Hocking is in Oecusse, Timor Leste, for the next three weeks.  He works for Yass/Gunning Belun, at no cost to us, as an expert in connecting water to villages.  Our work has been acknowledged by the TL Government who are prepared to supply all materials to equip fifteen schools with guttering and tanks, if our people do the work.

I was speaking to a parishioner this past week, who was advised by a legal firm in Canberra, that a donation she wanted to set aside in her will, needed to go to the Archdiocese of Canberra/Goulburn.  This is incorrect, as the lawyer should have known she was able to leave money specifically to St. Augustine’s or St. Francis Xavier