For three pilgrims from a small town in Queensland, meeting Pope Leo XVI helped close the gap between their “geographically isolated” homeland and the heart of the Church. Source: Vatican News.
On May 20, a small group of pilgrims travelled the almost 16,000 kilometres from Australia to Vatican City to meet Pope Leo XIV at his General Audience.
Hailing from the small town of Childers, Fr Jack Ho and Joe and Jillian Russo had planned three separate pilgrimages to Rome but soon realised they could turn their individual journeys into a shared celebration.
The trio – all part of the Sacred Heart Catholic Parish – decided to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of their parish primary school, St Joseph’s. The school was founded in 1926 by the Sisters of St Joseph and today serves just under 200 students.
While Childers may be small, they saw this pilgrimage as their chance to bring something with them “to connect our little town with the wider Universal Church, and also to be able to bring something, even the Holy Father’s blessing, back to our little town,” Fr Ho told Vatican News after the audience.
For Fr Ho, who serves as the parish priest at Sacred Heart, it was an extraordinary experience and something he realised was bigger than himself.
It helps “the people I carry in my prayer on this pilgrimage – our parishioners, our school staff, students, and families to feel like we are not alone, even though we are geographically isolated, we’re not alone”.
The trio brought all the faculty, staff, students and families from Childers with them through the special gifts they presented to the Pope.
Recalling an old tradition, Fr Ho exchanged the Pope’s zucchetto for one he had bought the day prior – a simple but grand gesture to bring back to the students in Childers.
The second gift was a simple wooden cross made from the floorboards of the original school established by St Mary of the Cross MacKillop in Penola, South Australia.
They also presented the Pope with a commemorative centenary school shirt and a small candle, made by the young people in the parish. This, Fr Ho said, is a reminder that even if their community is small, “when the small light is lit in a dark place, it shines”.
FULL STORY
From Down Under to Vatican City: A ‘small but mighty’ Catholic community (By Kielce Gussie, Vatican News)
