Stories - Page 3 of 8 - CAPSA

Why We Walk for Justice for Refugees on Palm Sunday

By Fr Andy Hamilton SJAs we imagine the scene of Palm Sunday, we can’t miss the disconnection between what we see with our eyes and the high meaning it proclaims. We see a man seated precariously on a barrel-like ass, accompanied by a raggle-taggle group of bystanders waving…

A Reflection on Australia Day 2019

by Andy Hamilton SJ Australia Day is a good time to think of our beginning and current time as a nation. It all began with the relationship between the English colonists and the Indigenous people. It continues with the relationship between Australian citizens and people who come to Australia…

Christmas and People Seeking Protection from Persecution Go Together

by Andy Hamilton SJ Christmas and people seeking protection from persecution go together. In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus, with a price on his head, went to Egypt with his parents as a refugee. He found shelter there – there were no detention centres and children were not detained. If he…

We want a Christmas without detention

By Andrew Hamilton SJ.In Australia Christmas is all about children. We encourage them to feel special and to wonder at the world that for a day has become their present. The first Christmas was also a children’s day, when God loved the world so much as to enter…

The Thai Boys’ Rescue: a Lesson in Compassion

By Andrew Hamilton SJ. A version of this article was originally published by Eureka Street, 11 July 2018. Most of us were surely moved by the plight and rescue of the boys marooned in the North Thailand cave. Those of us who have been similarly touched by the lives of…

Palm Sunday – reflection by Andy Hamilton SJ

ANDY HAMILTON SJ writes that nationwide Palm Sunday rallies offer a much needed opportunity to demonstrate the compassion and humanity that is often absent in Australia’s treatment of refugees. In its original setting Palm Sunday was a day of transitory celebration at the beginning of a week that…

Stand Up for Human Rights

Sunday 10 December marked the 69th anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 1948. As the declaration enters its 70th year, the United Nations has started a year long campaign to remind the global community of the need to #StandUp4HumanRights. The…

With remembrance goes compassion: Manus

By Andrew Hamilton SJ. Article originally published on Eureka Street, 25 November 2017. In ‘Epic’, Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh mused on the relative importance of world and local contemporaneous events — Chamberlain’s meeting with Hitler in Munich and a bitter local dispute about a patch of land.‘I have lived…

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