This will be the last Easter Father Peter Kennedy will spend at St Mary's Parish in South Brisbane, where he has been working for nearly three decades.

His last service will be the week after Easter, on Sunday April 19.

When he hands over the keys and leaves the building, the vast bulk of the church community plans to move with their priest 200 metres down the road to a temporary home at the Trades and Labour Council (TLC) building.

Fr Kennedy jokingly refers to it as the new haven for "Totally Lapsed Catholics" - he calls his church community "St Mary's in exile".

But his smile fades when he talks about his last Easter at St Mary's.

"We don't want to become a cult," he said.

"We want to continue to say we are within the Catholic community.

"But it's ironic this should be happening to us at Easter, which is about Jesus who stood with the poor, the broken and the excluded, against the injustices perpetrated by the religious authorities of his day."

Fr Kennedy said the community would go into Easter with hope that something new would be resurrected and that light and life itself would overcome the darkness of the times they were going through.

But he said he had been warned by Archbishop John Bathersby that if the congregation followed him on April 19, they would be outside the communion of the Catholic Church.

Fr Kennedy said he did not know how it would all play out.

"But we will continue hopefully to be a strong community, which will speak out much more confidently now than we have done in the past."

Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Brisbane, Father Adrian Farrelly, said his hope for Easter was that Fr Kennedy would have a change of heart and mind.

"That's just what I would expect Adrian to say," Fr Kennedy laughed.

Fr Farrelly said if the congregation followed Fr Kennedy they would be walking away from a communion that was recognised by the archbishop and the Catholic Church would just have to wait and see what actually happened on the day.

The rebel priest said his hope for Easter was for his community to stay strong, gospel-centred and to stand up against injustice.

"Our mission statement is to act justly, love tenderly and to walk humbly with our God," said Fr Kennedy.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer

No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.

The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.

Sotto Voce

(Source: RGCN)