Knights of the Southern Cross Victoria

05/11/2026

Vale Fr Brendan Lane

We are saddened to hear the news of the passing of Fr Brendan Lane, who has played a huge part in the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, and has been a huge supporter of the Knights of the Southern Cross Victoria and The Knights of the Southern Cross Priests Support And Education Fund over the years.

Requiescat in Pace.

04/11/2026

This is one not to miss!

God and B**r November 2026- Archbishop Peter Comensoli
God and B**r Monday 9th November

To Know Christ Jesus with Archbishop Peter Comensoli

Join us for a special evening of God and B**r with Archbishop Peter A. Comensoli, Archbishop of Melbourne, speaking on the theme “To Know Christ Jesus.”

At the heart of the Christian faith is not simply a set of ideas, moral teachings or traditions, but a person: Jesus Christ. What does it really mean to know Him, rather than merely to know about Him? And how can a deeper friendship with Christ transform the way we pray, live, love and understand our place in the world?

Archbishop Comensoli will reflect on what it means to encounter Christ personally and to grow in relationship with Him in the midst of ordinary life.

Come along for a relaxed evening of good food, a drink, conversation and an opportunity to explore the heart of the Christian life.

This promises to be an evening of good conversation, fellowship, and faith. We hope you’ll join us!

Topic: To Know Christ Jesus

Speaker: Archbishop Peter Comensoli

Date: Monday 9th November

Time: 6.30pm (dinner, drinks and socialising), 7.30pm (talk begins).

Venue: Dunlop Pavilion (DW Lucas Oval) East Malvern Panthers Football Netball Club (2026 Premiers!), Dunlop St, East Malvern
Transport: Parking available, Train to Darling Station (venue is 100m from Darling Train Station - Glen Waverley Line)

Tickets: Free! (booking essential)

Dinner is $35 but must be pre-purchased

Drinks can be ordered on the night.

Dinner includes:

Choose from:

Smoked Beef Brisket 12 hour slow roast;

Roast chicken;

Vegetarian Zucchini and Fetta Fritata;

Vegan Roasted Red Capsicum with Pumpkin and Char-Grilled Vegetables.

Salad buffet included with all meals: Greek style garden salad, zesty coleslaw, tuscan pasta, Italian style roast potatos, sour dough dinner roll, condiments, gravy.

Tickets at Godandbeer.com.au

For videos of past God and B**r events visit this link.

God and B**r

An initiative of the Knights of the Southern Cross to bring together people of all ages from across the south-east suburbs of Melbourne each month. Our aim is to inspire and strengthen Christians by providing ideas and inspiration for renewing the Church by drawing on the truth, beauty and goodness of the Catholic tradition.

God and B**r is an initiative of the Knights of the Southern Cross Victoria

Supported by the Catholic Development Fund

Teachers

This event has been approved for 1 hour of professional development by the Catholic Education Commission of Victoria. It can contribute to gaining or maintaining Accreditation to Teach, and to maintaining Accreditation to Teach Religious Education or Lead in Catholic Schools.

02/11/2026

Keep our future deacons in your prayers.

01/11/2026

Today we celebrate All Saints, an ancient feast born in the earliest age of the Church–an age of persecution, of confessors and martyrs.

These martyrs and confessors were innumerable, more than could be remembered or named, so today the Church celebrates every one of them. We rejoice in all those who bore witness to Christ.

We rejoice also in the truth that the Church is a ‘communion of saints’. As the Body of Christ, its members include all who believe in Christ, whether living or dead, believers on earth and in heaven, even angels–‘a huge number, impossible to count, of people from every nation, race, tribe and language (Revelation 7:9). Every believer is a citizen in what St Augustine called ‘City of God’. Our true citizenship transcends our earthly citizenship; our true ‘citizenship is in heaven’ (Philippians 3:20).

This in turn points to the Beatitudes, which show us the universal way of the saints, God’s invitation to happiness. The clean of heart, the peacemakers, those persecuted for the sake of righteousness–these are what the saints look like. They know their homeland is in heaven and act accordingly, like those who’ve been changed by Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount.

Finally, All Saints points us to the seen and unseen nature of sanctity. As John writes, ‘we are already the children of God but what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed’ (1 John 3:2). What is truest about us is not immediately visible but must be revealed.

The saints believe so fully in Christ and his kingdom that they prioritise the law of that kingdom above earthly laws. Sometimes this leads to conflict, and in such conflict, they are revealed to be saints. By loving instead of hating, forgiving instead of cursing–in their sacrifices, which they unite to Christ’s sacrifice–the saints of God are revealed as the children of God. For on the cross, the son was revealed too. The deepest mystery of All Saints is how it invites us to discover ourselves in taking up our crosses.

That's how we become saints: in their path of sacrifice, we see the path of our own sanctity.

✍️Adpt from OSV News/Fr Joshua Whitfield

🎨Forerunners of Christ, Fra Angelico (1395-1455)

25/10/2026

Pray for our future priests and deacons, and please join us in their ordinations.

22/10/2026

‘Whatever you make of your life, let it be something that reflects the love of Christ.’—St Pope John Paul II

Today we celebrate the feast of Pope St John Paul II! He is, without a doubt, one of contemporary Catholicism’s most well-loved and well-known saints.

Born Karol Wojtyla, he was a poet and a playwright, a philosopher and a priest. He was a son of Poland who, despite communist occupation, continued to minister to his people underground. He was a vocal opponent of the culture of death in all of its forms. His “Wednesday audiences” that eventually became the Theology of the Body are some of the most influential talks on the subject ever given. On 13 May 1981, he was shot four times by a Turkish assassin but survived, a miracle he always attributed to Our Lady of Fatima. John Paul II was a pope who spoke deeply to the hearts of young people and became the cause of a “youth revolution” in the Church around the world, and founded what we now know as World Youth Day.

St John Paul II was someone who wanted us to be captured by the beauty of Christ and by the beauty of love, and urged us constantly not to settle for mediocrity or lesser loves. He once wrote:

‘It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.’

St Pope John Paul II, pray for us! 🙏

🎨 Fr Lawrence Lew OP

20/10/2026

Australians were rightly horrified by the announced livestream ex*****on of a convicted mass murderer.

While US authorities have seen sense and cancelled the livestream, they still plan to execute the man.

This isn’t the only ex*****on to grab our attention recently.

The failed ex*****on of another prisoner in the US has shown there is no neat, “dignified” way to take someone’s life, despite the promises of advocates.

To many Australians, this culture of death seems foreign to us.

The truth, however, is that the taking of lives does occur here.

The termination of the unborn at one end of life and the terminally ill at the other end is just as brutal and should be just as shocking.

But, like capital punishment, the reality of these deaths is often hidden from us.

In the past week, the Labor Party proudly announced that, if re-elected, Victorian taxpayers would cover the full cost of abortions for expectant mothers in Victoria.

The Liberal/National Coalition swiftly confirmed they would follow suit.

Last year, Victoria made so-called “Voluntary Assisted Dying” easier to access.

Despite advocate promises about “dying with dignity”, it’s not hard to find accounts of patients whose attempts to end their life using VAD have not been quick or easy or painless.

Australian authorities don’t often publish this sort of data, so this reality is largely hidden from us.

But do we hold in our mind and heart the stark reality of what is occurring when human lives are deliberately ended?

Each person is unique and unrepeatable; made in the image and likeness of God, with inherent dignity and infinite worth that is never lost.

Sadly, this is too often ignored.

Australia rightly recognised decades ago that it could no longer justify capital punishment, if it ever could.

We have the means to safely incarcerate convicted criminals for the rest of their lives if necessary.

How then can we justify ending the lives of the unborn, whatever the reason given?

Do we not have the means to support the least among us and their mothers?

And with the sick and the terminally ill, don’t we have the means to support them fully with love, compassion and medical care, to the end?

Will politicians who advocate to fully fund one “choice” also advocate to fully fund the alternatives?

Sadly, no major political party – Labor, Liberal, National – or the Greens or One Nation is offering to really turn back the tide on this culture of death.

True, no candidate or political party can ever solve every issue or be a perfect representative. When casting our votes in November we will need to weigh up the full range of issues and policies before us to decide who would best serve the common good – or least harm it.

Let us pray that those we choose will govern wisely and prudently, upholding the good of all, especially the least among us.

17/10/2026

St Anthony the Great predicted a time would come ‘when people will rave and when they see somebody not raving, they'll attack him, saying: “You are not raving”; for he is not like them.’ The great monk might've been talking about us and our time. Our fights online and in real life – our culture wars and intractable political partisanship, even our Church infighting – become a kind of rage that loses its meaning.

The atmosphere in today’s gospel seems to be fuelled by a similar malice. The Pharisees and Herodians in this passage aren't acting in good faith, not looking for common ground or for truth at all, but plotting instead to ‘entrap Jesus in speech’ (Matthew 22:15).

They ask him if it's lawful for Jews to pay the census tax. If Jesus says no, he could be accused of zealotry and sedition. To renounce the tax and dishonour the emperor's image was as good as to admit to being an insurrectionist. Yet if Jesus says yes, the zealots among his followers might feel let down by his acquiescence to Roman tyranny and abandon him. The Pharisees and Herodians think they have him cornered.

But Jesus isn’t playing their zero-sum game. Asking for a coin, he asks whose image and inscription it bears. When they say it’s Caesar's, he replies, ‘Very well, give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar – and to God what belongs to God.’ (Matthew 22:21).

Jesus shows he's clearly not confined by the hatred and ravings that surround him, or by the Pharisees’ and Herodians’ narrow categories. Instead, Jesus belongs completely to the kingdom of God; worldly power struggles and Roman realpolitik simply do not count.

Jesus is not teaching us to escape the world, or to divide the world between two kingdoms—Church and state, sacred and secular—so that we at one moment obey one and then at other times obey the other. Rather, Jesus is saying the kingdom will come by another way, not by cooperating with evil or by way of zealotry, terrorism or violence. What matters to Jesus is love: love for the poor, for the outcast, for the sinner, for the Father. And, of course, love doesn't care who Caesar is.

✍️Adapted from OSV News/Fr Joshua J Whitfield

🎨The Murder of Caesar by Karl von Piloty

16/10/2026

14/10/2026

Let us continue to keep the Holy Father in our prayers.

Please join me in praying for the Holy Father’s recovery and healing. May the Lord’s tender and merciful love provide every peace, comfort and consolation. And may our Blessed Mother be ever close to him, carrying him in her gentle care.