Sydney’s Chinese Catholic community has grown significantly in recent years, with increasing numbers attending Mass and joining parish life. The boom was marked this month when St Mary’s Cathedral hosted a dedicated Lunar New Year celebration.
People attended from parishes across the archdiocese’s Chinese communities including the parish priest of St Dominic’s, Flemington, Fr Joseph Yong Lu OFM who said his community is responding to the Biblical call to make disciples, supported by the Archdiocese of Sydney.
“The Holy Spirit is leading us, so the evangelisation is becoming deeper and more people are approaching our community,” he told The Catholic Weekly.
“Only disciples can make disciples. So first we must understand the Bible ourselves and learn how to serve.”
Fr Lu said the community has been strengthening its groups and ministries in recent times. As a result, the parish has seen an influx of younger parishioners.
St Dominic’s is currently undertaking renovations to accommodate the growing congregation, including enlarging its crying room for families with young children.
The parish is preparing to welcome 33 new people into the church this year, which accounts for 7.22 per cent of the 457 people going through RCIA in 2026.
“People can see themselves changing, see others changing, see the whole community changing, and they feel supported,” Fr Lu said.
Other Sydney parishes gaining new Chinese Australian Catholics this Easter include Our Lady of Fatima in Kingsgrove, with nine new converts, St Michael’s in Hurstville with seven, and Ashfield, Camperdown, and Eastwood churches welcoming four new people each.
This year Lunar New Year and Ash Wednesday fell on consecutive days, 17 and 18 February. Fr Liu said the proximity of the celebrations “enrich each other” for Chinese Catholics, noting that the original word for Lent referred to springtime – a season of new beginnings.
“We have even more reason to celebrate the New Year during Lent at a deeper spiritual level – to enrich our bodies and our spirits, and to better understand the meaning of the Lunar New Year,” he said.
Daniel Ang, Director for the Sydney Centre of Evangelisation affirmed that the celebrations were a “beautiful sign that the church really is at home in every culture.”
“As we celebrate the Lunar New Year, it is a witness to the fact that the Gospel doesn’t displace culture but enters into it, purifies it and brings it to fulfilment in Christ,” he said.
“Celebrating here at the Cathedral really brings home the fact that Christ is already at work in the histories, hopes and traditions of all our communities. I know how much the Archbishop’s hospitality, preaching and presence tonight will have meant for so many.
“It’s been a real encouragement to our Chinese Catholic communities, to proclaim Jesus Christ to every culture and every generation.
“Tonight is not about “showcasing multiculturalism” in some sort of shallow way, but rather revealing catholicity – communion across nations and cultures in the one Eucharistic Lord”
The celebrations on 21 February included Mass celebrated by Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP, lion dancing in the cathedral forecourt, and dinner for 500 guests in the cathedral hall.
In his opening address, Archbishop Fisher drew parallels between the Lunar New Year of the Fire Horse – which occurs every 60 years – and the Lenten journey. The Year of the Fire Horse symbolises “dynamism, fresh opportunities, and authentic movement toward what truly matters,” themes he said resonate strongly with Lent.
“As we make our Lenten journey from ashes to victory, we open ourselves to that change of heart, those fresh opportunities for divine grace, that authentic movement toward what truly matters: life in Christ,” the archbishop said.
In his homily, he addressed the challenge of religious freedom, particularly for Catholics in mainland China.
“Around the globe there are sporadic or more systematic campaigns to discourage Christian faith and practice, or to bring religion to heel with government ideology or majority culture,” he said.
“Christians may be left alone if they keep their heads down, worship in private, but live publicly as if they were non-Christians.”
He referenced the case of Catholic pro-democracy media figure Jimmy Lai, who has received a lengthy prison sentence on charges of sedition and conspiracy, and spoke of reports of church raids in China.
The archbishop noted that persecution has marked Christianity since biblical times, from the early church under the Roman Empire to believers facing oppression today.
“From the earliest martyrs of Rome to the underground faithful in China and other parts of the world today, persecution has not been a glitch in the Christian story so much as a feature – even a fertiliser,” he said, quoting Tertullian and St Augustine’s famous observation that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.”
“But Christ promises that no earthly power, no state, ideology or threat – not even death – can rob us of what matters most.”
