A brightly-coloured stained glass windows with Aboriginal designs.

It's the Mother Mary and Jesus Christ, but not as you might have seen them before.

Our Lady of the Sacred Heart (OLSH) Catholic church in Alice Springs has commissioned an Aboriginal artist from its congregation to design a new sanctuary window celebrating the blending of Catholic and Indigenous beliefs, to pay homage to its many Aboriginal parishioners.

"I thought about how my ancestors taught me, their beliefs, and I remembered how they celebrated God in their own way," said the artist, Kathleen Kemarre Wallace, an eastern Arrernte woman.

Pope Francis has appointed Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese of Sydney, Anthony Randazzo as the fourth Bishop of the Diocese of Broken Bay.

The 53-year-old bishop has been an Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese of Sydney since 2016. He succeeds Peter Comensoli who was appointed Archbishop of Melbourne in 2018.

Happy are they who hunger and thirst for what is right for they shall be satisfied.

Eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God,
and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. (John 17:3)

Praise the Beloved! Sing a joy-filled song praising the Lord among the people.
Praise the Holy One with dancing, with melodies and voice!
The humble are adorned with honour; the faithful exult in glory,
singing for joy with thankful hearts! (Psalm 149 adapted from Psalms for Praying : Nan C. Merrill)

The Lord brought out his people with joy,
his chosen ones with shouts of rejoicing, alleluia. Ps 104:43

Well done, good and faithful servant; 
you have shown you have been faithful in small things,
I trust you with greater; come and join in your master’s happiness. 
(Mt 25:21)

May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be everywhere loved!

Good afternoon to each of you – family and friends of our Jubilarians, Bishop Brady, our MSC brothers, our Sisters and, in a special way our Jubilarians.

Love is always patient and kind: it is never jealous:
love is never boastful or conceited;
it is never rude or selfish … Love delights in the truth:
it is always ready to excuse,
to trust, to hope and to endure whatever comes. (1 Cor. 13:4-7)

Come to me, all you who labour and are over burdened and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. (Mt 11:28)

All I want is to know Christ and the power of his resurrection
and to share his sufferings by reproducing the pattern of his death.  
That is the way I can hope to take my place in the resurrection of the dead. (Phil.3:10-11)
There are three things that last: faith, hope, and love;
and the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor.13:13)

Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his Spirit
for your hidden self to grow strong,
so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith,
and then, planted in love and built on love ... until, knowing the love of Christ,
which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God. (Eph 3,16-19)

It’s a rare thing to dedicate an entire life to a singular cause, but Sister Anne Gardiner has done exactly that – to the people of Bathurst Island.

Well before mainstream Australia acknowledged Sister Anne Gardiner as the 2017 Senior Australian of the Year, the Tiwi Aboriginal people of Bathurst Island had bestowed upon her the august title of “Puwanikimawu: a person who provides light to the people”.

Sister Anne’s good deeds among the Tiwi have been steady and unswerving for more than 63 years. The diminutive 86-year-old is typical of the group of remarkable women from the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart who have worked tirelessly at Bathurst island, 70km north of Darwin, for over a century.

Australia's senior citizen of the year in 2017, Sr Anne Gardiner, is on the move using her national profile to benefit the Tiwi indigenous community on Bathurst Island.

As a result of this award and through the generosity of Richard Rolfe OAM, the dealer principal at the Audi Centre Canberra, Sister Anne has been gifted a 4WD scooter which will allow her to activate a new project where she will meet and talk with every Tiwi person between the ages of 18 and 35 about self-esteem, motivation, and mutual respect.

"I will sit down and talk to the people to see if I can help them to understand the world that they are living in," Sister Anne said.

I’ve seen a few things in my time but if I was asked to give one piece of advice it would be this: our identity as humans is in who we are, not what we are. Who we are is only possible through our spoken languages and our lived cultures.

It is a message that is relevant today, as it was when I was born in Gundagai, NSW, the youngest of four children of Mollie and William Gardiner. We were a happy farming family.