Australia & New Zealand

Australian Catholic University (ACU) intends to offer the Diploma in Liberal Studies to a new cohort of refugee students on the Thai- Burma border in 2010-2011. Coordinator, Duncan MacLaren, visited Thailand in February 2010, partly to tutor on the Third World Politics unit offered online by Fairfield University, Connecticut, partly to set up interviews to select a new cohort of students starting in late September 2010. The refugee students may now be joined by another important group among ‘people on the move’ – migrants, both legal and illegal.

Fresh faces are filling up the novitiates across Asia Pacific.  Last February, Korea accepted five novices. In March, Indonesia welcomed 12 and Australia has three. Philippines has added five. And by the end of April, three more will be in the Myamar Novitiate.  Thank you God for these abundant gifts!

Lian, recently replaced lawyer Taya Hunt as JRS Australia's representative in Phnom Penh, where she will work with the increasing numbers of asylum seekers arriving in Cambodia.

UNESCO celebrated the 400th anniversary of Matteo Ricci's death with a symposium and the opening of an exhibition. More than 700 people convened for the celebration on February 16 at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris. 

Julie Edwards says the scandal of abuse perpetrated on innocent young lives has taken away our peace of mind, shocked us to the core.

On 11 January Jean-Yves Calvez died at the age of 82. He was a Jesuit priest, an influential social thinker whose engagements responded exactly to the large movements in the Catholic Church and the world over the last 50 years.

Fr Gerry O’Collins (ASL) writes: The story of my 54th book, Seek God Everywhere (New York: Doubleday) seems worth telling. In late 1975 at his Sadhana Institute (near Pune), Fr Tony de Mello SJ ran a course on the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius for seven Jesuit priests and seven religious sisters. Two or three times a week he gave hour-long talks that were taped. Several members of the group then typed out the talks and gave the others a carbon copy. Thirty years later one of the group made his copy available to me and two American Jesuits.

Four Jesuits were ordained as deacons in a joyful celebration at St Ignatius Church in Richmond, Australia on 3 December.

Korean Jesuits Shin-jae Youh, Jin-hyon Lee, and Jin-hyuk Park, were joined by East Timorese Jesuit Plínio Gusmão Martins at the ordination, with Bishop Greg O'Kelly presiding. Read more. . .

Australians today are living in a world where the choices they make have an enormous power to make a difference in the lives of people in developing countries, former Australian Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot told young business leaders at the Jesuit Social Services Just Leadership Breakfast last week. Read more. . .

Isabel Guterres, a former East Timorese refugee and later a Jesuit Refugee Service team member in Thailand, has paid tribute to the Jesuits while accepting the Australian Catholic University's highest honour, Doctor of the University, at a ceremony in Bacau, East Timor. Read more. . .