In an interview with Jordan Grantham in the Parramatta dioceses' newspaper, Catholic Outlook Fr Alatini Kolofo'ou said more and more people are coming to the Tongan chaplaincy.

Some Tongans are coming back to the faith and some are coming for the first time," Fr Alatini continued.

Fr Alatini is the main chaplain of the Tongan Catholic community in greater Sydney where he works with Ofa Tupola and Fr Emenisilito Tupou.

He is based at St Joseph's Parish, Belmore.

Fr Alatini said the population of Tonga and the Tongan diaspora are growing.

"There are more Tongans outside Tonga than inside Tonga."

He believes the Catholic Tongan community in Australia comprises approximately 5,000 people.

"The Diocese of Parramatta has the largest Tongan community."

The Mt Druitt community is the largest of the 31 communities in 11 dioceses around Australia.

The Tongan Catholic Community gathers nationally each year and has a number of cultural events with its chaplains.

Tongan Catholics do not eat meat on Fridays, as a way to fulfil the laws of abstinence, and they are especially fond of mullet which is cheaper in Australia than in Tonga.

There is a Tongan community day every three months at Holy Family Parish, Emerton, including a Mass accompanied by Tongan choir, a large Tongan lunch and katoanga'ofa.

The Kanga'ofa is a Tongan dance ritual known where a youths dance while wearing oil and members of the community stick currency notes to the dancer's oiled body.

Source

• catholicoutlook.org
• Image: Screenshot youtube.com

The Church's Truth, Justice and Healing Council told Australia's Royal Commission on Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that such a scheme should be run by the federal government.

The council's submission also recommended that victims who have already received compensation be able to access the new scheme, for an independent review of past settlements.

The scheme also recommends redress should be capped and the limit determined "in line with community standards".

But the Church wants to maintain the legally binding deeds of release already signed by many victims so they could access the Church's Towards Healing process.

"A deed of release in a legal sense is about releasing various parties from civil litigation and that's what they've signed," the council's chief executive, Francis Sullivan, told Guardian Australia.

"Most people signed deeds of release with legal advice and with knowledge of that," he said.

Under the scheme proposed by the Church, there would be no time limit for making a claim and redress should take into account medical and counselling expenses as well as past and future lost earnings.

Claimants should be allowed to access low-cost legal advice and those who are unsuccessful in the federal scheme should then have the option of instigating civil proceedings.

The proposal also extends the provision of compensation to the immediate family of victims.

Mr Sullivan said the scheme would offer fair and compassionate compensation.

"The days of the Catholic Church investigating itself are over," he said.

"For the sake of the survivors of clerical sexual abuse within the Church and all other institutions, the development of an independent national victims' redress scheme is a giant step forward in delivering justice for people suffering the devastating impacts of child sexual abuse."

The Uniting Church in Australia has backed a similar scheme which is mandatory for all relevant institutions, but the Salvation Army says it should be on an "opt-in" basis.

Care Leavers Australia Network executive officer Leonie Sheedy said many survivors had just received "breadcrumbs" to compensate them for the abuse they suffered.

She said a fair redress scheme was well overdue.

"It sounds encouraging but talk is cheap; it's what's in the fine print that matters," she said.

Sources

• Sydney Morning Herald
• Guardian Australia
• Image: The Australian

The coffin lowered, the mourners were about to disperse for the after-match chat at the school, Assumption College, Kilmore, where he had lived and taught. But first his second family — the men in black, the Marist Brothers - gathered close by the head of the grave and sang James Wright up to his God. Perhaps, too, they sang for the loss of one of their own. They were so apart from us, his flesh and blood. A separate family and a separate world.

If the Catholic Church had knights who represented its best and highest ideals, then Jim was one of them. In the last years of his life, he bore the motor neurone disease he was stricken with as a test of his faith that he was determined to pass. Like his younger brother, my father, Jim was convinced that death would bring him to the mother they had lost before they were three years old.

He had a chiselled face, blue eyes and a droll monotone of a voice. A friend who taught with him at a Catholic school in Melbourne's eastern suburbs described him as "a bit of a spunk". His sole vice was smoking; the cigarette rested on the second knuckle of his middle finger, held in place by the arch of the index finger. Somehow it rendered no nicotine stains.

He was as tough as flint; less so, possibly, as a dormitory master at boarding schools from Sale to Adelaide to Bunbury, but more in what he expected of himself and how that was transmitted to those around him. It was family lore that his footballing talent in the mid-1950s had been sufficient to bring him to the attention of Jim Cardwell, the secretary of the then all-conquering Melbourne club of the Victorian Football League. Decades later, a columnist for the-then Melbourne Sun filled in some of the blanks for me. He had played footy with Jim as a schoolboy in Sale. The boys were playing against men, but they always walked taller and played more confidently when Jim was there. Most successful teams at any level had a least one guy like this on their team — the enforcer. Continue reading

Sources

• The Global Mail
• Image: Sacred Heart College
  

Fr Brennan gave his personal reflections on Catholic education and social justice, Vatican II and Catholic education 50 years on, contemporary faith and "some guideposts for re-imagining the mission", among other things. He said that greater transparency in the Church will do nothing but good for the Church.

• Read Fr Frank Brennan SJ's article
• Image: Trends Updates