Catholic Religious Australia will facilitate live-in workshops to welcome and to help enable and integrate Religious newly-arrived in Australia into a new way of life and of Church.
The workshops will be open to Religious who are new to Australia but are past the initial settling in phase and who have enough experience and language to benefit from the program. The Religious may be temporarily or finally professed, in formation or in ministry.
The June workshops -- in both Melbourne and Sydney -- will the coordinated by Fathers Tim Norton SVD and Noel Connolly SSC and Sister Geraldine Kearney SGS on behalf of the CRA Council.
Major topics which will be discussed are an introduction to culture and cultural transitions; cross cultural communication: skills and pitfalls; the place of women in Australian life and Church; boundaries; sharing experiences of settling into Australia; and family life in Australia. The presenters will include Religious and lay people.
Material will be presented in a variety of ways including formal presentations and there will be time for discussion. The program has been designed to encourage maximum involvement by the participants.
In inviting Religious congregations to send participants, CRA President Sister Clare Condon SGS said that consideration would be given to the participation of formators if places were available.
"Our hope is that if formators can attend they will be able to adapt the program for use in their own congregations or training centres," she said.
Sister Clare said that such a program was a recommendation from the 2008 CRA National Assembly which had the theme Our Australian Multi-Cultural Church: reality, gift and challenge (keynote address). It was also widely accepted as a need raised by a questionnaire of leaders last year.
It is an issue which individual congregations have been dealing with in isolation for many years as Religious come to Australia for study, formation and ministry in a variety of contexts and for differing lengths of time. Individuals, such as Fr Connolly and Fr Norton, having been undertaking education work around the country.
In a report to the November meeting of the CRA Council, the priests said the support for a weekend, live-in workshop in both Sydney and Melbourne was strong, with a viable number of candidates assured. In seeking to welcome, enable and help integrate these Religious, several major needs were isolated:
networking among the newly arrived Religious to counteract isolation and give them the sense that there are other people "like me"
help them to see differences as normal
how to use a new freedom and the material goods now available to them (what religious poverty means in Australia)
Australian students also need help to understand the new multicultural world they are entering, a world where they are the minority in their own country
Welcome to Australia: A process for enabling and integrating Religious who are new to Australia will be held in Melbourne over the June long weekend -- at the Janssen Spirituality Centre, Boronia (pictured below), from 5pm on Friday, June 11, until after lunch on Monday, June 14.
The Sydney gathering will be held at the St Joseph's Conference Centre, Bringelly, from 5pm Thursday, June 17, until after lunch on Sunday, June 20.
Applications should be returned to CRA Executive Director, Sister Veronica McCluskie SGS, by May 3.
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The workshops will be open to Religious who are new to Australia but are past the initial settling in phase and who have enough experience and language to benefit from the program. The Religious may be temporarily or finally professed, in formation or in ministry. 
