More than 200 participants from across Australia attended the 2018 Catholic social services national conference, Hearing Healing Hope, from Wednesday 21 February to Friday 23 February, at the Catholic Leadership Centre, in East Melbourne. The conference brought together Catholic social service agencies from all over Australia, including some representatives from the health, education and business sector. It focussed on the Church’s delivery of social services, looking at the implications for us as individuals, for our Church organisations and for our Catholic sector, parishes in particular.
Conference updates, photographs and highlights were posted on Twitter and Facebook using the hashtag: #HearHealHope
Conference Presentations
- Joe Zabar on economics for a flourishing society
- Geraldine Doogue’s Mary Mackillop Oration
- Robert Fitzgerald on responding to child sexual abuse
Articles Related to the Conference
- The role of parishes in service to the community, by Bob Dixon
- The call of Laudato Si by Jacqui Remond
- The changing landscape of Catholic social services, by Denis Fitzgerald
Publication of Hearing, Healing, Hope: The Ministry of Service in Challenging Times
Hearing, Healing, Hope: The Ministry of Service in Challenging Times builds on the reflections and challenges of keynote speakers, workshop leaders and engaged participants at the Catholic Social Services national conference held in Melbourne in February 2018.
“Hearing, Healing, Hope brings work together as a basis for further reflection and makes it available to people gathered around a board table, for example, or to an executive team, or a group of staff new to an organisation,” stated Archbishop Mark Coleridge, President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference.
Click here to order a copy.
It includes an array of inspiring, practical and useful resources for all involved in Catholic social services, nationally.
Book contributor Elizabeth Proust says: “So, with more accountability, more onerous responsibility, and often less funds, this space requires dedicated people who not only understand their own organisations and the sector but also understand the community and the global factors at work, which will change and disrupt what we are doing”.
In her chapter, Darlene Dreise sets a challenge: “Each of us is therefore called to work towards the unknown possibilities to be revealed through the true flourishing of the original peoples of this land”.