Two schoolmates will shoulder the statue of St Joseph across Sydney next month. Their friendship is the reason they are walking. Cam McAuley was the new boy at Redfield College, Dural, when he met Michael Badaoui in Year 5.
Twenty years on, there’s not much they haven’t shared: a school, a workplace, a trip to Rome and more than a few seasons together. But, in August they’ll share something far greater, the weight of a statue, and respect for the man it depicts.
St Joseph carried a family, a trade and a mystery he was never asked to explain. Cam and Michael will carry his likeness from Church Hill in the CBD to the cathedral.
“I’ve seen the worst of him. I’ve seen the best of him, and likewise, he’s done the same for me,” Cam says. “We’ve carried each other through all those ups and downs.”
On Friday 21 August, both will take their place among the pilgrims of the Camino of St Joseph, organised by Maximus Men’s Ministry within the Life Marriage and Family Team in the Sydney Centre for Evangelisation.
The overnight walk begins with 9pm Mass at St Patrick’s Church Hill and ends with 6am Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral. Seven churches, most of a night on foot, and a crowd that keeps growing: 750 men in 2024, more than 1200 last year, and organisers are praying for 1500 people to join them this time around.
What began as a few dozen men walking through the night has now travelled a good deal further. Shalom World TV, in association with the Archdiocese of Sydney, produced a half-hour documentary on last year’s pilgrimage. Now men’s ministry leaders from across Australia and from Spain, Argentina, England and France are asking how they might run their own version.
As coordinator Michael Jaksic puts it, the camino’s themes of fraternity and formation are reaching further than anyone anticipated, resonating with men globally.
Cam put his hand up because another mate had already volunteered. “He can’t just carry this thing by himself,” Cam remembers thinking. “I’m going to have to help him.”
Then Cam rang Michael. Are you free or down for the Camino? “When you see one brother do something, you want to help that brother out,” he says. “It’s basically a domino effect.”
That is how their friendship has always worked. When Cam was living at Sumner House, a house of vocational discernment for young men in Sydney, he kept inviting Michael over, “because it was an experience I could share with him, it was that brotherhood and mateship.” Michael came to treat the place as a second home.
Michael, 26, a parishioner of Christ the Redeemer Maronite Parish, has never walked the Sydney camino, though he has watched it from the edges for years. His father did it with mates a few seasons back and came home with something Michael has not forgotten: “Just a good night of prayer with brothers, having that fraternity, you know, iron sharpens iron.”
The route sealed it. Michael works in the city and has gone to daily Mass at St Patrick’s before work for years. “That church holds a very special place in my heart. What a beautiful opportunity to start at that parish and then ending at the cathedral for another Mass in the morning.”
He is under no illusions about the shoulders. Earlier this year he carried a statue of Our Lady of Good Success through Lidcombe for an hour and found it brutal and beautiful at once. “It’s not to draw attention to myself. It’s a way of quietly, almost silently, pouring myself out for the group of guys we’re walking with, for my family, and for the church.”
Ask him why men should do this together and he does not hesitate. “It’s not good that we be alone. In this day and age, loneliness is at its peak.”
Cam knows the truth of that all too well, especially after a difficult period this year. “Michael has helped me the last couple of months. He’s put me back on my feet.”
So, his pitch to the blokes still on the fence is simple. “Try it out, you might meet new friends, new brothers, new family, communities you’ve never been exposed to.”
Michael agrees. “I think it’s important to have brothers with you, it’s not good that we be alone. And in this day and age, loneliness among men is at its peak. So, I am doing things with mates is so important, feeling that sense of brotherhood.”
And why St Joseph? “He’s the father figure of Jesus,” Cam says. “Someone we can look up to, someone who protects his children, his flock, his faith, and teaches them to become holier.”
Confession opens at 7pm at St Patrick’s Church Hill on 21 August; tickets are $35, or two for $50. Bring a mate.
More information: https://www.sydneycatholic.org/cas-event/camino2026/
