Throughout October 2024, Br Mark O’Connor FMS, Vicar for Communications for the Diocese of Parramatta and the Pope Francis Fellow at Newman College, University of Melbourne, will provide reports on the second session of the Synod on Synodality in Rome. This is his third letter for Tuesday, October 15th.  (Read More)

  Today we begin to think about the processes through which Church changes, the percorsi we must take. The following strange text may help us to see how this happens: “Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’ He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, […] (Read More)

For over three hundred years after the Roman demolition of the Temple, the Roman Emperors forbade the Jews to enter Jerusalem for all except one day of the year. They then gathered at the Western Wall, closest to the site of the destroyed Temple, to lament its loss. (Read More)