The
Catholic Weekly
Online
Sydney
8 February 2004
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First day fun? It’s all smiles at All Hallows
Needy hit by Christmas credit card crisis
Rice to feed needy
Tick for Govt ‘report card’
Rome youth forum
‘Holy lawyers’
Young help elderly priests
Pregnant pause: Ready-made friends waiting for our baby
Orchestra performs at violinist funeral Mass
HSC at St Edmund’s
Stamps can help missions
Editorial: Suffer the children
Letters: HSC results
Conversation: Fr Arthur Bridge, patron of the arts - Parish priest who likes to face the music
Fathers and sandcastles
Tribute to ‘the Chief’
Parish Profile: A gifted beginning ...
Life in a seminary
Law challenged in many ways: bishop
Kicking goals with kids
Young help elderly priests
Cardinal Pell accepts a $12,000 cheque for the care of sick and elderly priests in the archdiocese from young members of the Vietnamese Catholic community. At right is the Chancellor of the archdiocese, Mons Brian Rayner.
Young people in Sydney’s Vietnamese Catholic community have raised $12,000 for the care of the archdiocese’s sick and elderly priests.
A group of young people from the community presented the cheque to the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, at Polding Centre.
The combined St Paul Le Bao Tinh Vietnamese choir, Eucharistic youth group and youth association raised the money through a singing competition and dinner function for 600 guests at Canley Vale.
“It’s part of our culture to respect our elderly and look after them as a way to show that we value them,” says Therese Pham, a parishioner of St Brendan’s Parish, Central Bankstown and a member of the Vietnamese choir.
“We do that very well.”
Fr Paul Van Chi Chu, the young people’s spiritual director, said that when it was suggested that they direct their fundraising effort to elderly priests “it touched their hearts”.
“They know these priests are sometimes forgotten,” he said.
“They were very willing and we all worked hard to raise the money.”
The $12,000 will support the archdiocese’s retired priests in hostel and nursing care at Randwick.
Last year Sydney’s Vietnamese community gave tens of thousands of dollars to charitable causes, including $23,127 for the victims of Canberra’s January bushfires and $21,000 for an orphanage for children with disabilities in Vietnam.
The community has also supported the social justice group at the Good Shepherd Seminary in Homebush in its efforts to fund a water purification system in Vietnam.