CNS STORY: At Great Barrier Reef, an open-air chapel for World Youth Day cross

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WYD-REEF Sep-27-2007 (610 words) With photos posted Sept. 24. xxxi

At Great Barrier Reef, an open-air chapel for World Youth Day cross

By Dan McAloon
Catholic News Service

CAIRNS, Australia (CNS) -- The navy patrol boat HMAS Broome took a break from security operations along Australia's northern border to transport the World Youth Day cross, icon and aboriginal message stick to the aqua blue waters of the Great Barrier Reef.

The trip fulfilled another milestone in the epic journey that is taking the symbols around the Australian continent for a year before World Youth Day, July 15-20, in Sydney.

Anchored off Fitzroy Island, nearly 14 miles east of Cairns in the Coral Sea, the HMAS Broome became a rocking open-air chapel for a prayer service Sept. 22. Deacon Matt Ransom, officiating for the Cairns Diocese, began the service quoting the Book of Genesis about God creating the waters teeming with swarms of living creatures.

Deacon Ransom said the Book of Genesis could be describing the abundance of life forms on the Great Barrier Reef and in its surrounding waters.

"People who spend even a few hours exploring the reef become conservationists for life," he said, noting that warming sea temperatures and climate change posed the greatest threat to the reef's biodiversity.

Deacon Ransom told the gathered pilgrims that since the World Youth Day cross had been brought to Cairns, he had witnessed "the depths of God's forgiving love" and its effects on the local people.

"I have seen people touching the cross and afterward they are glowing, their pain is gone. As humans, if we do not turn to the cross to take our pain, then we take it out on our environment," he said.

He led the group in a prayer for "an ecological conversion which grows and spreads to every corner of the earth."

At the service, army Lt. Ivan Yau offered a prayer for God's blessing on men and women serving in the armed forces.

"By your powerful spirit shield them from all harm. Uphold them in good times and bad ... and hasten the day when the human family will rejoice in lasting peace," he said.

Representing Australia's indigenous people at the service was 16-year-old Kim Reys, a member of the Yidinji clan, whose members traditionally have lived in the area from the southern plateaus outside Cairns to the reefs of the Coral Sea.

Reys held in her hands the message stick made by Sydney's Aboriginal Catholic Ministry. A message stick is a traditional form of greeting used by one indigenous people when entering another people's country. The World Youth Day stick, decorated in totems of the whale, eagle and footprints, extends an invitation for all indigenous Catholics to come to World Youth Day in Sydney.

The tradition of the message stick was revived by the Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference in 2006 when it sent several message sticks journeying throughout the dioceses to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's 1986 address to the indigenous people at Alice Springs.

The message sticks were to remind the church of the unfinished justice work in reconciling white and black Australians with a brutal past in which the indigenous people were dispossessed of their traditional lands and removed to institutions under a policy of assimilation. The legacy continues for aboriginal people who are still largely marginalized by white society and whose life expectancy is 17 years less than the rest of the population.

Reys said she will be going to World Youth Day with other pilgrims from the Cairns Diocese because "as an indigenous young person I want to feel the spirit and meet up with other indigenous people. It's something I'm really looking forward to."

END

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