News & Events

As the Season of Creation gets underway this year, we are each challenged to reflect on our lifestyle, especially during these moments of health, social and environmental crisis.

We are called to 'reflect on how the way we eat, consume, travel, or the way we use water, energy, plastics, and many other material goods, is often harmful to the earth.
Let us choose to change! 

Let us pray for the Church, that she may receive from the Holy Spirit the grace and strength to reform herself in the light of the Gospel.

The specific vocation of the Church is evangelization, which isn’t proselytism, no. Its vocation is evangelization; even more, the Church’s identity is evangelization.
We can only renew the Church by discerning God’s will in our daily life and embarking on a transformation guided by the Holy Spirit. Our own reform as persons is that transformation. Allowing the Holy Spirit, the gift of God in our hearts, remind us what Jesus taught and help us put it into practice.
Let us begin reforming the Church with a reform of ourselves, without prefabricated ideas, without ideological prejudices, without rigidity, but rather by moving forward based on spiritual experience —an experience of prayer, an experience of charity, an experience of service.
I dream of an even more missionary option: one that goes out to meet others without proselytism and that transforms all its structures for the evangelization of today’s world.
Let us remember that the Church always has difficulties, always is in crisis, because she’s alive. Living things go through crises. Only the dead don’t have crises.
Let us pray for the Church, that she may receive from the Holy Spirit the grace and strength to reform herself in the light of the Gospel.

—Pope Francis,  August 2021

'We will enjoy and celebrate Earth’s beauty and bounty and her many species. We will honour our duty to love and care for her and add to her well-being wherever possible.We will open our hearts to the cries of the poor using our energies, gifts and resources...' (Chapter Statement)

In the Social Justice Statement 2021-22, launched online on 5 August, Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, the bishops commit to a seven-year journey towards seven Laudato Si’ Goals.

'We are facing an ecological crisis and Pope Francis wants the whole Church globally to act with a greater sense of urgency,' said Bishop Vincent Long OFM Conv, chair of the Bishops Commission for Social Justice, Mission and Service. 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been caring for country from time immemorial. The rest of us need to listen, and to learn how we can walk together to care for the whole of creation – including one another.'

• Download and read the Statement here
• Download the Prayer Card here
• Download the Action Card here

The Sisters of Mercy, Parramatta Earthkin group are encouraging care and assistance for pollinators. In so doing we want to promote actions to assist those insects that help maintain the beauty and food production that we depend upon for relaxation and nourishment.

 Entitled Bees, Butterflies and Bugs for Balconies, Back Verandas and Window Sills, this activity involves growing pollinator friendly plants in pots or other containers and having them in the places mentioned.

For further information click every two months on Latest News - Sisters of Mercy Parramatta (parramattamercy.org.au)





This initiative supports the B & B Highway (Bed, Breakfast and Biodiversity of birds, Bees and Butterflies) founded by Dr Judy Friedlander and implemented by Nicole Lewis and Francisco Garcia Bulle Bueno.




 Check out the Planting Seeds website for more information about the B&B Highway.

To make a contribution, contact Valda.rsm@gmail.com or MarieB@parrasom.org.au