David

The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) reported earlier this week that the number of volunteers in Australia has been steadily falling each year. Sadly, a sign of the times perhaps but people say they are too busy. However, not everyone is focussed on their own lot in life and are happy to give back to their local communities, as Suvi Mahonen reports.

A woman’s rights over her own body versus the rights of the unborn has been one of society’s most contentious issues. The line in the sand has long been drawn, and proponents on either side refuse to give an inch.

On a warm spring night in April 1968, in the Zeitoun district of Cairo, Egypt, two workers saw a woman on the top of Saint Mary’s Coptic Church. The workers, thinking that she was about to jump from the roof, called the police who claimed the two men were witnessing a reflection from the street lamps.

When I was 19 weeks pregnant, my husband Christian and I went to our ultrasound appointment excited for a gender reveal! Everyone in our family thought we were having a boy, and we wanted a boy too, a baby brother for our older daughter, Lara, who was almost four.

A morning radio presenter recently lamented the lack of good news. She sombrely described the current spate of news stories as a precursor to the “end times.”

On Monday we celebrate the feast of Saint Alphonsus Liguori, founder of the Redemptorists. A gifted writer, he penned the following prayer during his extraordinary life.