As Sydney prepares to welcome the world for the International Eucharistic Congress (Eucharist28) in 2028, I have had the privilege of meeting with chaplains serving many of the Archdiocese of Sydney’s migrant Catholic communities, as well as priests and lay leaders from several of the Eastern Catholic Churches. Our conversations were, on one level, intensely practical, discussing catechesis, pilgrim hospitality, communications, leadership and the many logistical challenges involved in welcoming the universal church to Sydney.
Yet I found myself leaving each meeting with something far more valuable than a planning document. Each encounter became, in its own way, a lesson in the mystery of the church.
I have long known that Sydney is home to Catholics from every corner of the world. However, knowing that as a demographic reality is quite different from contemplating it as a theological one.
It is easy to speak of our archdiocese as a collection of culturally or ethnically distinct communities worshipping alongside one another. It is much harder, and much more revealing, to recognise that what we are witnessing is something profoundly theological.
These communities are not simply preserving customs from the countries they left behind. They are manifestations of the church’s catholicity.
St John captured this mystery in the Book of Revelation:
“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Revelation 7:9).
Here, he is not describing diversity for its own sake but revealing the fulfilment of God’s plan for humanity. The multitude remains wonderfully diverse, every nation, tribe, people and language, yet all are gathered before the one Lamb. This unity of the faithful is not achieved through the disappearance of difference. Instead, human diversity finds its fulfilment in the worship of God.
The Eucharist makes the church
Joseph Ratzinger understood this with remarkable clarity. Long before he became Pope Benedict XVI, he argued that the church is not a federation of local communities held together by administrative structures.
Rather, the church is born from the Eucharist. Every celebration of the Eucharist makes present the whole church because Christ himself is wholly present. As Ratzinger writes in Called to Communion, “Communion with Christ is by its very nature communion with all who belong to him”.
That sentence has echoed in my mind throughout these recent discussions. The migrant chaplaincies of Sydney in particular are not parallel churches existing beside the local church, nor are they cultural enclaves preserving memories of another homeland. They reveal something essential about what the Eucharist itself brings about. Communion with Christ inevitably becomes communion with one another.
Indeed, this is what St Paul teaches the Corinthians: “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10:17).
We note the apostle’s language here carefully. St Paul does not say that the many cease to be many. Diversity remains. What changes is our relationship – through the one Bread, the many become one Body.
This distinction remains significant for our understanding of the church today, especially in a city such as Sydney. There is a perennial temptation to imagine that genuine unity requires increasing sameness, that a people can only become one by becoming more alike. The Christian vision is altogether different.
Unity without conformity
The mystery of Pentecost reveals a communion that does not erase difference but redeems it. The Spirit-filled miracle described in Acts 2 is not that everyone suddenly speaks the same language. Rather, each person hears “the mighty works of God” proclaimed in his own tongue (Acts 2:11). In another age Babel had scattered humanity because pride turned difference into division. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit does not abolish difference but transforms it into communion.
Ratzinger returned to this insight repeatedly. Pentecost is not the cancellation of cultures but their redemption. Grace does not erase what is authentically human but purifies it, elevates it and gathers it into Christ. Every people retains its own history, language and gifts, yet each is drawn into a communion that transcends every human boundary.
As I listened to chaplains speak about their communities, I began to realise that this is precisely what has unfolded across Sydney.
Some communities arrived seeking new opportunities, while others came carrying the wounds of persecution, war or displacement. Some have worshipped here for more than half a century, while others are still establishing their life within the archdiocese. Yet each has brought gifts that now belong not simply to that community, but to the whole church.
Preparing for the International Eucharistic Congress has therefore become an exercise in contemplating the church herself. The Congress is not simply about welcoming pilgrims from overseas. It is first an invitation to recognise the extraordinary catholicity that God has already entrusted to Sydney.
Perhaps nowhere is this catholicity more visible than in the Eucharist itself. In Sacramentum Caritatis, Pope Benedict XVI wrote that “the union with Christ brought about by the Eucharist also brings a newness to our social relations”.
The Eucharist is never merely a private encounter with Christ. As his theological mentor Henri de Lubac famously observed, the Eucharist makes the church. Gathering many peoples into the one Body of Christ, it forms a new humanity capable of crossing the boundaries that history, language and culture so often leave intact. This insight profoundly changed the way I listened to these conversations.
The Eucharistic Congress will remind us what communion really means
It is true that when we speak about migrant communities, it is easy to focus on what makes them distinctive. Yet the more I listened, the more I also became aware of something deeper than difference.
I encountered one Eucharistic faith expressed through many cultures. That unity rarely appeared first in organisational structures or strategic plans. It revealed itself in habits of prayer.
The gifts of Sydney’s migrant Catholic communities
The Vietnamese community shared the remarkable witness of its Eucharistic Youth Movement, where hundreds of children and young leaders are formed around the mystery of the Mass. The Korean community reflected on how the witness of the Korean Martyrs continues to shape its Eucharistic spirituality.
It also recalled the profound impact of the 1989 International Eucharistic Congress in Seoul, a moment remembered not simply as a successful event, but as a catalyst for the continued growth of Catholicism in Korea.
The Chinese Catholic community likewise spoke of its deep devotion to Our Lady of Sheshan (Help of Christians), whose shrine near Shanghai is one of the most important Marian pilgrimage sites for Catholics in China. This enduring Marian devotion has long sustained Chinese Catholics through periods of both flourishing and persecution, offering a powerful witness of hope and fidelity.
Elsewhere, I encountered traditions that many Latin Catholics may never have experienced. The Syro-Malankara community celebrates the Holy Qurbana with ancient prayers, rich symbolism, incense, chant and periods of profound silence, often extending beyond two hours.
The length of the liturgy is not the point. Rather, it reflects a conviction that worship is not something to be hurried but an immersion into the mystery of Christ.
Similarly, the Syriac and Armenian Catholic communities spoke of preserving liturgical languages whose roots reach back to the earliest centuries of Christianity. To hear the Lord’s Prayer sung in Syriac is not simply an expression of cultural heritage but reminds us that the language of some of our earliest Christian forebears still lives in the worship of the church today.
Communities that have endured persecution, displacement and exile continue to offer these treasures for the enrichment of the whole church.
Other encounters revealed how culture itself becomes a vehicle for Eucharistic faith. Within the Spanish-speaking chaplaincy, I was struck by the diversity that exists even within a single language. Catholics from Colombia, Bolivia, Mexico, Spain and across Latin America gather around the one altar, yet each community brings its own devotional rhythm to the liturgical year.
The feasts of Our Lord of Miracles, the Virgin of Copacabana, the Virgin of Urkupiña, Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Divine Child each become occasions where faith is expressed through distinctive musical traditions, processions and communal celebration. The Eucharist remains the same, yet each people offers its own cultural voice in praise of God.
The Pacific communities taught me something equally profound. Whenever our conversations turned to welcoming pilgrims, they rarely began with accommodation or transport. They spoke first about homes, shared meals, choirs, families and ensuring that no visitor would feel alone.
Hospitality was not presented as event management. It was understood as an extension of Eucharistic communion itself. If Christ gives himself completely to us in the Eucharist, then authentic Eucharistic spirituality must inevitably become a spirituality of generous self-gift.
As these conversations unfolded, I gradually realised that these communities are not simply preserving their own traditions. Each is preserving something that the whole church needs to remember.
Some remind us of the beauty of silence and contemplation. Others show us the power of passing the faith intentionally from one generation to the next. Some bear witness to the endurance of faith through persecution and exile.
Others demonstrate that hospitality is not merely a social virtue but a Eucharistic one. Each possesses a particular gift, yet each gift belongs to the whole Body of Christ.
Migration and the church’s mission
As I reflected on these gifts, I found myself thinking more deeply about the meaning of migration itself. For many of these communities, especially among the Eastern Catholic Churches, migration was not simply a search for opportunity but the consequence of war, persecution and displacement.
Listening to their stories, I was reminded that the church has always been a pilgrim people. Abraham left his homeland in faith, and Israel then journeyed through the wilderness towards the Promised Land. The Holy Family fled into Egypt, while the first Christians carried the Gospel across the roads of the Roman Empire. In one sense, the history of salvation is also a history of pilgrimage.
Pope Benedict XVI recognised this when he wrote that migration offers the church “a providential opportunity” to manifest her universality. He frequently described migrant families as “messengers of hope”, reminding us that those who cross borders often become instruments through whom the church rediscovers the richness of her own catholicity.
Pope Francis developed this insight throughout his pontificate, insisting that “it is not just about migrants” but about the kind of church and society we become in welcoming them. In welcoming the stranger, the church encounters Christ himself and is renewed by the gifts that migrants bring. The church does not simply minister to migrants. Time and again, migrants have renewed the church herself.
Perhaps that explains why I left these conversations with my attention drawn less to questions of organisation than to the spiritual depth they revealed. There will, of course, be much practical work ahead.
We will need translations, hospitality, formation, communications, leadership development and thousands of volunteers if Sydney is to welcome the universal church in 2028. Those tasks matter, and every community expressed a genuine desire to contribute through its own gifts and experience.
Beneath every practical conversation lay a deeper question: how can each community offer the gifts God has entrusted to it for the good of the whole church? It echoes St Paul’s words: “There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit… To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Cor 12:4,7).
Preparing for Eucharist28
If the International Eucharistic Congress is to bear lasting fruit, this must be our starting point. The task is not to fit every community into a common program but to receive the distinct gifts the Holy Spirit has cultivated within each people and allow them to enrich the worship, witness and mission of the church.
This is the genius of Catholicism. Unity has never depended upon uniformity. As Pope Benedict observed, the liturgy draws us into “the great process of God that is taking place in the world”. At every Mass, the local church is opened to the universal church.
That is why I have come to see the International Eucharistic Congress differently. It is not simply an event Sydney has been asked to host. It is an opportunity to reveal what God has already accomplished among us.
Every Sunday, the Eucharist is celebrated across our Archdiocese in dozens of languages and traditions. Ancient Eastern liturgies, Pacific harmonies, Marian processions, Eucharistic Adoration, vibrant youth movements and family traditions all converge at the one altar, where Christ gathers his people into one Body.
This is more than a demographic reality. It is a foretaste of the heavenly liturgy that St John saw: “a great multitude… from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (Rev 7:9).
As we prepare for 2028, my hope is not simply that we organise a successful international event. It is that we recognise more deeply the gift already entrusted to us. For in the Eucharist, Christ is already taking many peoples and making them one Body, not by making them less themselves, but by drawing each more fully into himself.
That mystery, renewed at every altar, is the promise of the Eucharist and the catholicity that Sydney now has the privilege of showing to the world.
