Australia and Our Lady Help of Christians

Australia is the only country in the world with Our Lady Help of Christians as the main patroness. Celebrating Mass was a crime in the colonial land in the early 19th century, and the first Catholics were prisoners and had to resort to the Rosary to keep their faith alive. Similarly, the present Australia is highly secularized and still maintains a deep anti-Catholic sentiment. We need to invoke Auxilium Christianorum to transform the Aussies' hearts.

Pius VII instituted the feast of Mary under the title of Help of Christians to give thanks to the mediatrix after his return to Rome in 1814. After the establishment of the hierarchy of Australia in 1842, the Australian bishops similarly recognized the role of the Mother of God and dedicated Australia under the patronage of Our Lady Help of Christians in 1844.

Statue of Our Lady Help of Christians, St. Mary Cathedral, Sydney

I have visited many countries all over the world, but this is only the first time I have made a trip to the land Down Under. I found many images of Mary Help of Christians in many churches in different form. I was also able to assist at a Mass there on May 24, the Solemnity of Our Lady Help of Christians.

In the last two weeks I was there, I visited many churches and cathedrals. Below are the cathedrals I visited:

On a side note, out of different places I visited in Australia, the liturgy in certain churches around Sydney surprised me with high quality. I believe that outside of Europe, there are few cathedrals that do liturgy as beautifully as the Sydney cathedral. A solemn Mass is held every Sunday at 10:30 a.m. in the Cathedral Basilica of St. Mary, and I was there on the Fifth Sunday of Easter. The Most Rev. Anthony Fisher, Archbishop of Sydney, was the celebrant, together with the Archbishop of Perth who happened to visit Sydney that week. The cathedral choir, mostly composed mainly of boys from the Cathedral Choir School who sing every day during school term, sings the Mass parts mostly in Latin. Everything in the liturgy was done reverently and gorgeously.

Here's a video of the recessional procession to give you a taste of the solemnity of the celebration:

When I was in Australia, I especially prayed for Cardinal George Pell every day, who had been unjustly sentenced to prison for things he could not have done from the evidence. Let us pray for consolation and strength for the beloved servant of God, for fruits from his sufferings, and for his successful appeal. Let us pray for Australia:

Almighty ever-living God,
who placed the love of Our Lady, Help of Christians
in the hearts of those who brought the Catholic faith to these shores,
grant, through her intercession,
wisdom to our leaders and integrity to our citizens,
so that, under her protection,
Australia may know harmony, justice and peace.
Through our Lord, Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
(Collect, Solemnity of Our Lady Help of Christians, patron of Australia)

On this 30th anniversary of the massacre of students in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, let us also pray to the almighty Father, through the powerful intercessions of Our Lady Help of Christians who is dearest to the Chinese people, that the Gospel can illuminate the land of China and the Catholics can be strengthened in their faith and witness in this difficult time.

Auxilium Christianorum, ora pro nobis.

Churches Visited in 2018

I started the GCatholic website about 20 years ago to collect information on the Catholic Church that interests me. The first data that went into the website was a list of churches in the Archdiocese of Toronto, as I had just started the habit of visiting churches close to where I was living. I believe this was due to a special experience I encountered when visiting a simple parish church around Christmas time.

Fast forward to the present, GCatholic is now the largest database of Catholic churches, with the information and precise locations of more than 63,000 churches around the world accessible in the website. Over the years I have travelled to many countries around the world just to admire churches. Cathedrals and basilicas are prioritized, as they are usually the most significant and most beautiful churches in each country. (My website is the first to feature a comprehensive list of Catholic cathedrals and basilicas in the world, through many years of my research.) Shrines are also my favourites, especially those where apparitions, miracles or strong devotions are involved. I also visit Orthodox and Anglican cathedrals.

When I visit a church, I pray and occasionally attend liturgy therein, as well as taking many photographs. When these pictures have been copied to my computer, I would then tag each picture with the name, city, country and diocese of the church in the IPTC metadata of each file. As each Catholic church I have visited is added into my database, the picture file is also tagged with the ID number of the church. This allows my software program I wrote to read all my picture files and generate lists customized to my use. For instance, I can easily generate a list of churches that I visited for a particular year and calculate their statistics. I can also easily find the filenames of the pictures for a particular church. The latter is important, as I have more than 80,000 picture files, placed in folders according to the diocese, which in turn are categorized in country subdivisions, countries and continents.

After the year 2017 with a record of 895 churches visited, I decided to take it easy this year. In 2018, I visited a total of 780 different churches, of which 739 are Catholic, 19 are Orthodox and 25 are Protestant. Out of the Catholic churches, 102 are cathedrals, 80 are basilicas, and 22 belong to the Eastern rites. It surprised me that this is the year that I visited the greatest number of cathedrals. I also visited 5 Orthodox cathedrals and 8 Episcopalian cathedrals this year.

Let me share with everyone a collage of 100 cathedrals that I visited this year. Enjoy!

May I wish everyone a blessed year of 2019!