Office For Justice, Ecology and Peace

1989: Tiananmen Square Massacre, Bejing
2020-06-04 00:00 - 23:59 (Australia/Sydney)
Today we remember the students who were killed in Tiananmen Square while protesting for democracy. For last year’s anniversary, Hong Kong Catholics organised an exhibition so that younger generations may gain insight into what happened. Find our more here.

Learn about the iconic image of a lone unarmed man confronting a row of tanks here.

The Tank Man

He will live forever in our memories.
His singular act of courage and hope
proclaimed the dignity of each person
in the face of powers and principalities.

God grant us his courage and his hope.

Sandie Cornish

International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression
2020-06-04 00:00 - 23:59

1992: High Court Decision in the Mabo Case
2020-06-03 00:00 - 23:59
Eddie Mabo – Marc Nemorin

This year marks the 29th anniversary of the Mabo Decision where six out of seven High Court judges agreed that the Meriam people held traditional ownership of the lands of Mer in the Torres Strait. Eddie Koiki Mabo successfully argued that his family’s ancestral land was not owned by the Crown. This landmark decision in the High Court of Australia overturned ‘terra nullius’, an understanding that Australia was empty land belonging to no one before British occupation. The decision paved the way for native title in the Native Title Act of 1993. Eddie died before the decision was handed down in 1992 but his life leaves a powerful legacy: the traditional connection and occupation of land by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is now recognised in law across Australia.

Going Deeper:

https://digital-classroom.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/mabo-decision

Prayer:

Prayer for Unity

Creator God, may the power of Your grace transform us.

Christ, give us courage and hope to manifest the unity we have in you, and to share our life with each other and the world.

Holy Spirit, empower us to work for justice for the people of the earth.

God, in your grace, transform the world.

Amen.

The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ecumenical Commission (NATSIEC) of the National Council of Churches in Australia (NCCA), 2007.

Artwork:

Eddie Mabo by Marc Nemorin

Music:

Koiki by Mau Power, featuring Radical Son

Koiki by Mau Power, featuring Radical Son

1886: Catholic and Anglican Martyrs of Uganda
2020-06-03 00:00 - 23:59

1992: Launch of the Torres Strait Islander Flag
2020-05-29 00:00 - 23:59

International Day of UN Peacekeepers
2020-05-29 00:00 - 23:59

2000: 250,000 people walk for reconciliation in Sydney
2020-05-28 00:00 - 23:59

1967: Referendum allows the Commonwealth to make laws for Aboriginal people and count them in the census
2020-05-27 00:00 - 23:59

1997: Bringing Them Home Report tabled in Parliament
2020-05-26 00:00 - 23:59

2015: Pope Francis' Encyclical Laudato Si' (On Care for our Common Home)
2020-05-24 00:00 - 23:59

International Day to End Obstetric Fistula
2020-05-23 00:00 - 23:59

International Day for Biological Diversity
2020-05-22 00:00 - 23:59

2002: Timor-Leste Constitution enters into force
2020-05-20 00:00 - 23:59

2005: Death of Fr Ted Kennedy
2020-05-17 00:00 - 23:59

World telecommunications and Information Society Day
2020-05-17 00:00 - 23:59

International Day of Living Together in Peace
2020-05-16 00:00 - 23:59

1961: John XXIII's encyclical Mater et Magistra (Christianity and Social Progress)
2020-05-15 00:00 - 23:59

1931: Pius XI's encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (Reconstruction and the Social Order)
2020-05-15 00:00 - 23:59

1891: Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum (On the Condition of the Working Classes)
2020-05-15 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

International Day of Families
2020-05-15 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.

1971: Paul VI's Apostolic Letter Octogesima Adveniens (A Call to Action)
2020-05-14 00:00 - 23:59

World Fair Trade Day
2020-05-09 00:00 - 23:59

1997: Wik 'Ten Point Plan' to extinguish native title announced
2020-05-08 00:00 - 23:59

1970: First anti-Vietnam War Moratorium march in Australia
2020-05-08 00:00 - 23:59

World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day
2020-05-08 00:00 - 23:59

World Password Day
2020-05-07 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
2020-05-06 00:00 - 23:59

2016: Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen appointed Bishop of Parramatta
2020-05-05 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.

1990: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission established
2020-05-03 00:00 - 23:59

World Press Freedom Day
2020-05-03 00:00 - 23:59
