Tag: Walk with Christ

There was a time when mother of nine, Yvonne Muller's would bring her youngest, Tione, then aged one, to the Walk with Christ Procession to join a modest crowd of about 500 Catholics to walk to the cathedral.

It’s a powerful display of devotion in stark contrast to your typical image of today's tech-absorbed teenagers, but every year, as the city pauses, so do hundreds of Sydney students, taking solace from their digital lives, from selfies, likes and views to publicly affirm their faith.

If an army marches to a beat, then the 20,000 strong Walk with Christ brigade will march to the divine tempo set by the performers at the Corpus Christi festival event in Sydney’s Martin Place on 22 June.

As Sydney prepares for the annual Walk with Christ procession on 22 June, bishops, parish priests and deacons and seminarians across Sydney are preparing for more of those faith affirming moments in what has become one of Australia’s most powerful public demonstrations of Catholic faith.

To be a Christian is to "walk with Christ." As the great Australian poet, Catholic convert and brilliant hymnist James McAuley wrote, Christ is indeed "our star, our map, our road."

This year, when you walk the streets of Sydney surrounded by the voices of nearly 20,000 Catholics proclaiming their faith at the Walk with Christ procession, take note of the ‘invisible army’ forming the ‘human wall’ at the front of the procession or handing out booklets and directing traffic, working tirelessly behind the scenes.

The Catholic Church Down Under has caught the attention of the Catholic world as it experiences a powerful resurgence of faith.

This is the edited text of the Feverino given by Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP for benediction after "Walk with Christ" at St Mary's Cathedral forecourt, Sydney, Corpus Christi, 2 June 2024. 

Even though, statistically speaking, many in the crowd would be struggling with bills, are in mortgage stress, and some even ridiculed by secular society for their faith, they shrugged off the trouble of the time and proudly took to the streets and said “we believe in Jesus Christ.”

A chorus of unanimous rapture and joy arose from the 15 000 strong army of Catholics who marched through the city on 2 June for the Walk with Christ procession.

In prams and in wheelchairs, hand-in-hand and on foot, generations of Catholics from every Rite and religious order across Sydney converged together at the mother church as 15,000 witnesses this Corpus Christi.

For the Sarmientos, Sydney’s annual Corpus Christi procession is an opportunity to enrich and share faith.