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Catholic Church

Conclave 

British Film Festival
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01 November 2024
Ralph Fiennes in Conclave (British Film Festival)
My favourite Ralph Fiennes performance is in Fernando Meirelles’s The Constant Gardener (2005). Fiennes plays a British diplomat stationed in Africa, forced to unravel the conspiracy that led to his wife’s murder. Investigating her death, he comes to know her better than he did when she was alive; it is a backwards love story about honouring legacies we might not fully comprehend. Fiennes’s role as Cardinal-Dean Thomas Lawrence in Edward Berger’s new Vatican thriller Conclave plays out in a similar key. ... (read more)

ABR RAFT Fellowship: 'God and Caesar in Australia' by Paul Collins

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March 2018, no. 399

Like it or lump it, Catholicism is enormously influential in Australia. This is true even just in terms of raw statistics. The Catholic Church is the largest religious body in the country, with 22.6% of the population self-reporting as Catholic in the 2016 Census. It is also Australia’s largest non-government employer ...

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Unholy Trinity: The Hunt for the Paedophile Priest Monsignor John Day by Denis Ryan and Peter Hoysted

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September 2013, no. 354
Ray Cassin reviews 'Unholy Trinity: The Hunt for the Paedophile Priest Monsignor John Day' by Denis Ryan and Peter Hoysted

Many people have heard of Gerald Ridsdale, defrocked Catholic priest of the diocese of Ballarat and a notorious convicted paedophile. But comparatively few people have heard of Ridsdale’s contemporary John Day. A priest in the same diocese, he too preyed upon many hundreds of children ...

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Crusade or Conspiracy?: Catholics and the anti-communist struggle in Australia by Bruce Duncan

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May 2001, no. 230
Ross Fitzgerald reviews 'Crusade or Conspiracy?: Catholics and the Anti-Communist Struggle in Australia' by Bruce Duncan

This lengthy analysis of Catholics and the anti-Communist struggle in Australia during the 1950s uncovers important and previously unreleased primary sources. In line with the author’s background as a Catholic Redemptorist priest, this particularly applies to material from Australian church archives and those of the Vatican, and from the files of B.A. Santamaria’s anti-Communist ‘Movement’. At the time, Santamaria’s ‘crusade’ against the atheistic and allegedly revolutionary Communist Party was strongly supported by the Redemptorist order, especially in Victoria.

... (read more)