Welcome to our official SVD Website. We are happy that you are visiting us and hope that you find this presentation both informative and interesting.

As the leader of the Divine Word Missionaries in the Australia Province , I am proud to present to you the missionary brothers, priests, seminarians and junior brothers who minister and study in Australia , Thailand and New Zealand . We are a mixed group of some 65 men from 19 different countries. We were initially attached to the Papua New Guinea Province and have a long history supporting missionary activities in PNG. For some years now we have been a separate Province and, while maintaining strong connections with our confreres in PNG, we are now forming our own identity.

We believe that we have something to offer the Australian Church and society in our ministries with ethnic minorities, with indigenous Australians and with communities in multi-cultural parishes. Our own variety of ethnic backgrounds lends itself to understand and respond to some of the life issues and spiritual needs of these groups. We minister with the Vietnamese, Polish, Korean, Slovak, Hungarian and Chinese Catholic communities  We have 3 confreres ministering in Central Australia with the Arrernte people - and we are in the process of assigning three more. We try to spend significant time and energy in learning language and culture. In the south western Sydney parish of Mary Mother of the Church in Macquarie Fields our confreres work with people of many nationalities while attending to their pastoral needs. We also do this in two parishes in the Wellington diocese in New Zealand .

In  Thailand we are present in schools, and with people living with and dying from HIV and Aids. Two SVD Brothers carry out this ministry and they have been joined by two young priests who after completing Thai language studies will assume pastoral care duties in the local church there.

As Divine Word Missionaries, the ministries that help to define us around the world are Communications, Mission Awareness, Biblical Apostolate and Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation. We refer to these ministries as our Characteristic Dimensions. We try to implement these Dimensions in our ministries as we reach out to four major groups in each society, our Dialogue Partners - those of different cultures, those of different religious traditions, those who are faith seekers and those who are poor and marginalised.

Read on and see how we minister as Divine Word Missionaries in the Australia Province
( Australia , Thailand and New Zealand ). Perhaps you would like to collaborate with us on the mission. We are always looking for partners in the mission of proclaiming God's Word in the World. We invite you to join us.

I remain yours in the Word -

Tim Norton SVD