Hope for St Vincent’s?

For eight years the job definition for parish priest of St Vincent’s Redfern could well have included essentials such as:

• Drive away Ted Kennedy’s supporters;
• Drive away the Aborigines; deny that they come to this church;
• Don’t engage with non-Neocat parishioners; don’t listen to them; don’t talk to them if it can be avoided; Keep them in the dark regarding parish matters;
• Ignore and/or deny their reasonable requests;
• Tell them they aren’t Catholics; that they are not welcome in this church; attack them from the pulpit;
• Keep looking at the time when in their presence; rush out of church at the end of Sunday Mass;
• Make it hard for them to bury their dead;
• Help them understand what it means to be marginalised;
• Do these things with the unconditional support of your archbishop.

Did someone forget to tell Melvin Llabanes?

Since Fr Melvin celebrated his first Sunday Mass as pp at St Vincent’s a month ago (18 September), none of these things have happened.

He is shaping up to be the first of the post-Kennedy parish priests to bring some hope of sanity, humanity and Christianity back to the role.