This week is Reconciliation Week, an invitation to be brave and tackle the unfinished business of reconciliation for the benefit of all Australians. In a show of support, religious leaders from around the country recently gathered to call for bipartisan action to hold a referendum on a First Nations voice. Melbourne Catholic Sherry Balcombe attended the event and shared why she believes Australia is ‘growing up’ and is hopeful that ‘the nation's tapestry is starting to change’.

Speaking of the nation's changing tapestry, this week we hear about how Cambodian and Lao Catholics have made Melbourne their home, including Maria Vong, who left Cambodia with her family in the mid-eighties and feels blessed by the hospitality they received. ‘We were the lucky ones,’ she reflects.

We also begin a new series looking at the ‘moments of grace’ that have broken through the ordinariness of life, small and often forgotten by the rest of the world. This week, we glimpse the story of Melburnian Killarney Kate, whose voice was so beautiful it literally stopped people in their tracks.

And here's a date for your diaries: the weekend of 25-26 June marks the 175th anniversary of the Diocese of Melbourne! Archbishop Peter A Comensoli will celebrate a special 11am Mass at St Patrick's Cathedral, with specially-commissioned music by local Indigenous artists and the various migrant communities that now call Melbourne home.

This week we also continue our look at Our Lady around the world. We focus on one story of particular interest, Africa's only Vatican-approved Marian apparition: Our Lady of Kibeho, Rwanda. Thirteen years before the Rwandan genocide, Our Lady appeared to three young schoolgirls with a surprising message.

And lastly, some long-lost spiritual exercises of Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) were recently discovered and this year published in English for the first time by the Theology of the Body Institute. They formed part of a retreat Wojtyla gave to artists in 1962 on ‘The Gospel and Art’, and are very relevant to our own time. Speaking of Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Peter A Comensoli recently approved the rental of a new formation house called the “JPII House of Communion, Formation and Mission” for students of the University of Melbourne and RMIT.