Built on faith and community <\/p>\n
For its first 12 years, the new parish had no dedicated church at Corio, with Sunday Mass being celebrated in the classrooms of St Francis Xavier School.<\/p>\n
Parishioners had to make do with the facilities they had, which included a space for locals to play Bingo every weekend. Each Friday, volunteers would dismantle the classrooms and set up tables for Bingo, then on Saturday everything was rearranged again in preparation for Sunday Mass. Afterwards, parishioners returned the space to classrooms again, ready for school on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u2018That went on for about ten or eleven years,\u2019 said Frank, a longtime parishioner.<\/p>\n
The Bingo continued for more than 35 years, he explained, and provided a financial foundation that helped the parish to establish the presbytery, the St Francis Xavier church building and the Xavier Centre at Corio, as well as a new school and church at Lara.<\/p>\n
For Frank, what was achieved says much about the commitment of the community.<\/p>\n
\u2018There\u2019s a friendship, a sense of community, that the parish has,\u2019 he said. \u2018There\u2019s an innate sense of it here.\u2019<\/p>\n
In a letter to the community ahead of Sunday\u2019s anniversary celebration, current parish priest Fr Marcus Goulding reflected on those early, \u2018churchless\u2019 years, comparing them to the Israelites\u2019 long and winding journey through the wilderness towards the Promised Land.<\/p>\n
\u2018Before they had land and buildings, they had God and each other,\u2019 he wrote.<\/p>\n
\u2018The real history of this parish is written in each soul that has encountered, received and responded to the grace of Christ within the territory of Corio and Lara. Here, we walk with Jesus and each other towards the Promised Land.\u2019<\/p>\n
Fr Marcus paid tribute to the generations of parishioners whose faith, service and sacrifice built the parish, including those who set up the school for Sunday Mass, the bingo volunteers who raised much-needed funds, and the committee whose work helped establish St Anthony\u2019s Church at Lara.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Built on faith and community For its first 12 years, the new parish had no dedicated church at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6866,6864,6865,6310,6868,6869,260,6867,6870,68],"class_list":["post-84869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-melbourne","tag-archbishop","tag-archdiocese","tag-catholic","tag-child-safety","tag-community","tag-jesus","tag-melbourne","tag-parish","tag-sacraments","tag-victoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}