World Book and Copyright Day
2022-04-23 00:00 - 23:59 (Australia/Sydney)
Did you know that this date was chosen by the United Nations because it was on this date in 1616 that Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare and Inc Garcilaso de la Vega died?

Read the UNESCO resolution proclaiming the day here.

Access resources for celebrating the day here.

ANZAC Day
2022-04-25 00:00 - 23:59

ANZAC Day
2022-04-25 00:00 - 23:59
Detail from Poppy Fields in Summer by Laurentiu Lordache.

For Reflection

“…nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2: 4).

Anzac Day has come to be considered one of the most sacred days in the year for many Australians, honouring the sacrifice of those who gave their lives so that others could live in peace and freedom. We remember grieving families, cities in rubble, and fields turned to mud and ashes. We remember broken bodies, spirits, minds, and lives: the terrible cost of war. We remember children, women, and men killed or maimed in military operations. We remember all Australians who served, and who serve today. We continue to work wholeheartedly for justice and peace in our world so that war will be no more.

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”

From For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

Prayer

God of love and liberty,
we bring our thanks this day for the peace and security we enjoy, which was won for us through the courage and devotion of those who gave their lives in time of war.

We pray that their labour and sacrifice may not be in vain, but that their spirit may live on in us and in generations to come. That the liberty, truth and justice which they sought to preserve may be seen and known in all the nations upon earth.

This we pray in the name of the one who gave his life for the sake of the world,
Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.
from the ANZAC Day Commemoration Committee

Music

The Last Post (Composer unknown, 17th Century, Britain).

1945: First united Nations Conference opens
2022-04-25 00:00 - 23:59

1986: Nuclear accident in Chernobyl, Ukraine
2022-04-26 00:00 - 23:59

World Day for Health and Safety at Work
2022-04-28 00:00 - 23:59
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) began to celebrate this day in 2003 however the trade union movement internationally has marked this day as the International Commemoration Day for Dead and Injured Workers since 1996. This celebration is an integral part of the Global Strategy on Occupational Safety and Health of the ILO.

As part of the 2020 World Day for safety and health at work campaign, the ILO will produce a global report, highlighting how a comprehensive OSH [occupational safety and health] framework at both national and workplace level could address violence and harassment in the world of work. This includes for example incorporating provisions related to violence and harassment into OSH laws, regulations and collective agreements and developing specific standards, code of practices and guidelines to support the implementation of programmes and preventive measures in the workplaces. At the workplace level, sound OSH management systems can include the assessment and control of psychosocial risks including the interplay with violence and harassment. ILO, World Day for Safety and Health at Work 2020 – Violence and Harassment in the World of Work

1841: Death of St Peter Chanel in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
2022-04-28 00:00 - 23:59
St Peter Chanel was a Marist priest and the first martyr of the South Pacific. Read more about his life here.

Prayer to St Peter Chanel

You left your homelandto proclaim Jesus, Saviour of the world,to the peoples of Oceania. Guided by the Spirit of God,who is the strength of the gentle,you bore witness to love,even laying down your life.Grant that, like you,we may live our daily life in peace, in joy,and in fraternal love.May your prayer and examplecall forth from our midstmany workers for the Gospelso that God’s Kingdom may reachto the ends of the earth.Amen.

1998: Death of Shirley 'Mum Shirl' Smith, Aboriginal community leader
2022-04-28 00:00 - 23:59

St Joseph the Worker
2022-05-01 00:00 - 23:59
Resources including a video, the full text of Bishop Long’s Pastoral Message for the Feast of St Joseph the Worker 2020, and graphics are available here.

Did you know that for over twenty years now the Catholic Church in Australia has marked the Feast of St Joseph the Worker with a pastoral letter? These letters place Catholic Social Teaching in dialogue with current work issues in Australia, making a uniquely Australian contribution to the Church’s teachings on work. Initiated and created by laity and bishops together – they come from and belong to the whole church. Bishop Terry Brady, Pastoral Letter for the Feast of St Joseph the Worker, 2019.

On 1 May the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of St Joseph the Worker. The pastoral letters of the Australian Catholic Bishops for this occasion have addressed unemployment, underemployment, insecure and casualised work, the meaning of work, the quest for decent work and much more. Find out more here.

International Workers Day
2022-05-01 00:00 - 23:59

1991: Centesimus Annus (The Hundredth Year) Encyclical issued by Pope John Paul II
2022-05-01 00:00 - 23:59
The Red Vineyard – Vincent Van Gogh

In the 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus (The Hundredth Year), Pope John Paul II affirmed the groundbreaking encyclical Rerum Novarum from Pope Leo Xlll in 1891 where the fundamental rights and dignity of workers and work were clearly stated. It addressed any ongoing perceived conflict between the provision of capital and labour, acknowledging work as central to vocation, with a key social dimension that relates directly to the common good:

“Work thus belongs to the vocation of every person; indeed, man expresses and fulfils himself by working. At the same time, work has a “social” dimension through its intimate relationship not only to the family, but also to the common good, since “it may truly be said that it is only by the labour of working-men that States grow rich.” Centesimus Annus, #6

Employers were also challenged again to provide a living wage and humane conditions for their workers as foundational conditions of just employment:

“A workman’s wages should be sufficient to enable him to support himself, his wife and his children. “If through necessity or fear of a worse evil the workman accepts harder conditions because an employer or contractor will afford no better, he is made the victim of force and injustice.” (CA, #8).

Both Rerum Novarum and Centesimo Annos continue to speak powerfully today in regard to human dignity, especially for workers and their families. Just work policies and practices are part of God’s work in and for our world.

To read more about Centesimus Annos: http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus.html

World Press Freedom Day
2022-05-03 00:00 - 23:59

2016: Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen appointed Bishop of Parramatta
2022-05-05 00:00 - 23:59
Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen OFM Conv is the first Vietnamese born bishop to lead a diocese outside of Vietnam and the first Vietnamese born bishop in Australia. He was born in 1961 in Dong Nai in Vietnam. Since the fall of Saigon in 1975, his family has been dispersed.

In 1984, Vincent Long became a professed Conventual Franciscan friar (OFM Conv) and studied for the priesthood in Melbourne. After his priestly ordination on 30 December in 1989, he was sent to Rome for further studies and was awarded a licentiate in Christology and Spirituality from the Pontifical Faculty of St Bonaventure.

He served as an assistant and then parish priest for seven years in Kellyville within the Diocese of Parramatta and for seven years in Springvale in Victoria before being elected Superior of the Order of Friars Minor Conventuals in Australia in 2005. He served as Assistant General in Rome from 2008 until 2011, responsible for the Asia-Oceania section of his Order.

In 2011, he was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne in which role he served for nearly five years. On 16 June 2016, Bishop Vincent Long OFM Conv was installed as the fourth Bishop of Parramatta at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Parramatta.

Find out more about Bishop Vincent here.

World Password Day
2022-05-05 00:00 - 23:59
In his 2005 book Perfect Passwords, security researcher Mark Burnett encourages people to have a ‘password day’ when thy would update important passwords. Intel Security took up the idea in May 2013 and promoted World Password Day. The day is intended to create awareness of the need for good password security and it is observed on the first Thursday of May.

Here are some activities for marking World Password Day:

change your passwords – tips for creating strong passwords can be found herelayer up and implement multi-factor authentication for your important accounts – learn about layered security herelearn about using password managersmake sure your family and friends understand what makes a strong password.

1992: Introduction of mandatory detention of asylum seekers in Australia
2022-05-06 00:00 - 23:59

World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day
2022-05-08 00:00 - 23:59

1970: First anti-Vietnam War Moratorium march in Australia
2022-05-08 00:00 - 23:59

1997: Wik 'Ten Point Plan' to extinguish native title announced
2022-05-08 00:00 - 23:59

World Fair Trade Day
2022-05-14 00:00 - 23:59
World Fair Trade Day is celebrated on the second Saturday of May every year around the world.

1971: Paul VI's Apostolic Letter Octogesima Adveniens (A Call to Action)
2022-05-14 00:00 - 23:59

International Day of Families
2022-05-15 00:00 - 23:59
The following reflection is from Andy Hamilton SJ. Andy is an Australian Jesuit, Consulting Editor of Eureka Street, Editorial Consultant to Australian Catholics, and a member of the communications team at Jesuit Social Services.

The coronavirus has put enormous pressures on all of us as persons, and on the groups and institutions to which we belong. It has been an affliction. The response to the measures taken to address it has been mixed. Sometimes it has been narrow and divisive, but more generally it has been extraordinarily good-willed, generous and patient. It has opened out to a far broader and balanced conversation about other areas of life that have been affected by the virus. One of these is the family. World Family Day invites us to reflect inclusively and with broad sympathy on the family.

Reflection on the family is often conducted along narrow lines in which we are tempted to focus on one set of relationships and so neglect other relationships that are equally important for healthy family life. The family, for example, may be seen as a stable relationship, recognised as a marriage by state and church, between mother and father and the children they have borne together. Many people will rightly celebrate this as the Catholic ideal of a good marriage.

Others will appeal to dysfunctional families in dismissing this as a primitive and coercive form of association that inhibits individual growth. They might emphasise the freedom of the individuals involved as central to the family. Discussions about the family will then turn to which forms of relationship justify the name of family, and which are better. These are important questions, but they are not the questions asked first by people living with the daily challenges and opportunities of family life.

The consequences of coronavirus have made us attentive to the complexity and breadth of the relationships involved in families which struggle under its burdens. The economic and social changes brought by the virus have shown, for example, the consequences for the family of relationships involved in losing casual work, in working from home, in the expectation that all adult members of a family will work, in schooling, in recreation, staying in touch with extended family and friends, and educational institutions, of relationships with sport, television and social media, and in a house design that offers both common and personal space.

After coronavirus the way in which these relationships have been shaped can no longer be taken for granted. We shall have experience of the disadvantages and advantages of other shapes we may not have considered. The merits of working from home and of home schooling will be considered as real possibilities of which we have experience and not simply as abstract ideas.

We shall see more clearly, too, how tightly the internal relationships within our families are connected to broader relationships with society. We shall have noticed how pressures of living together in a narrow space can be reflected in family violence and in mental illness. We shall find it difficult to reflect on the inner life of families without setting them against the social conditions in which they live. We shall know that if we wish to address antisocial behaviour we shall have to take account of the social problems that give birth to it.

At Jesuit Social Services we work with young people from families which have been disadvantaged. This has often reflected lacks in the way our society cares for families.

World family day is a time to celebrate the generosity and goodness displayed in families, and the resilience that finds life in the most unfavourable circumstances. It is also a day to ask how as a society we can best to accompany families as they prepare children for a full and generous life.

1891: Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum (On the Condition of the Working Classes)
2022-05-15 00:00 - 23:59
The Red Vineyard – Vincent Van Gogh

Rerum Novarum was a groundbreaking encyclical from Pope Leo Xlll in 1891 that laid the foundation for modern Catholic Social Teaching. It directly took up the issue of the dignity and rights of workers in a rapidly changing world where industrialisation had created an ever widening gap between the materially rich and the working poor. Rerum Novarum offered a just way forward for employers and workers, naming human rights in every workplace as foundational for a just society. The encyclical emphatically stated that moral virtue was central to authentic Christian life. This includes just work policies and practices:

“…..it is more easy to understand that the true worth and nobility of man lie in his moral qualities, that is, in virtue; that virtue is, moreover, the common inheritance of men, equally within the reach of high and low, rich and poor; and that virtue, and virtue alone, wherever found, will be followed by the rewards of everlasting happiness.” Rerum Novarum #24

To view the Encyclical:

http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html

To find out more about Catholic Social Teaching:

Catholic Social Teaching an Introduction

Prayer for Workers:

Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers

Lord God, Master of the Vineyard,How wonderful that you have invited uswho labor by the sweat of our browto be workers in the vineyardand assist your workto shape the world around us.

As we seek to respond to this call,make us attentive to those who seek workbut cannot find it.

Help us listen to the struggles of thosewho work hard to provide for their familiesbut still have trouble making ends meet.

Open our eyes to the struggles of those exploitedand help us speak for just wages and safe conditions,the freedom to organize, and time for renewal.For work was made for humankindand not humankind for work.Let it not be a vehicle for exploitationbut a radiant expression of our human dignity.

Give all who labor listening heartsthat we may pause from our workto receive your gift of rest.

Fill us with your Holy Spiritthat you might work through us to let your justice reign.

Amen.

Copyright © 2019, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. All rights reserved. This text may be reproduced in whole or in part without alteration for nonprofit educational use, provided such reprints are not sold and include this notice.

https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/prayers-and-devotions/prayers/dignity-of-work-and-the-rights-of-workers-prayer

Artwork:

The Red Vineyard by Vincent Van Gogh

Music:

God of Day and God of Darkness – Marty Haugen

1931: Pius XI's encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (Reconstruction and the Social Order)
2022-05-15 00:00 - 23:59

1961: John XXIII's encyclical Mater et Magistra (Christianity and Social Progress)
2022-05-15 00:00 - 23:59

International Day of Living Together in Peace
2022-05-16 00:00 - 23:59

World telecommunications and Information Society Day
2022-05-17 00:00 - 23:59

2002: Timor-Leste Constitution enters into force
2022-05-20 00:00 - 23:59

World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
2022-05-21 00:00 - 23:59

International Day for Biological Diversity
2022-05-22 00:00 - 23:59

International Day to End Obstetric Fistula
2022-05-23 00:00 - 23:59
