On Friday 19 August, Moonee Valley Racecourse hosted the 22nd Knights of the Southern Cross Priests Support and Education Fund (KSC PSEF) Archbishop’s Dinner, a night of food, revelry and fundraising to support seminarians of Corpus Christi College Carlton, the major seminary of Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, and those studying for the Catholic Military Ordinariate of Australia to become chaplains in the Australian Defence Force.
The Archbishop’s Dinner has been held annually since 1999, and even when COVID suspended the dinners for two years, the Knights of the Southern Cross continued to raise funds for seminarians. Finally, this year, around 400 people were able to gather again in person for a major raffle, a silent auction and an open auction in support of the cause.
The Master of Ceremonies for the evening was Mr Bryan Martin OAM, recently retired as one of Australia’s most prominent race callers, having been in the thoroughbred industry for more than 40 years.
Archbishop Peter A Comensoli thanked everybody involved for organising the event, a work of tremendous effort and initiative, with so many people giving of their time, money and labour to bring such a successful evening together. He also asked the crowd not only to give generously with their money but to give generously with their prayers, too:
Can I also say, not only to get out the money, but get out the prayers. Pray for our vocations that we might continue to encourage some young fellas to put up their hand and say, ‘I want to give my life to the Church through the priesthood.’
While he spoke warmly about the need for strong marriages and families in the world today, he noted that there are always some called out of the many to become priests and religious, and those are the people they pray for and support at this event.
The night included a keynote address by Catholic academic and constitutional lawyer Professor Greg Craven AO, who spoke on the topic of the Aboriginal Voice to Parliament, inviting people to view this as ‘an opportunity for the Church to be involved in a real work of mercy’.
Among the other highlights of the evening was the generous presentation of travel scholarships to two seminarians, Peter Nguyen and Tien Tran, enabling them to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In the wake of COVID, these pilgrimages were temporarily suspended, but since they have proved so formative for seminarians over the years, the scholarships now continue.
The scholarships were presented by Dean of Corpus Christi, the Very Rev. Denis Stanley, and by Barbara Ralph DHS, a member of the original committee responsible for organising the Archbishop’s dinner, and someone the Australian Catholic University honoured recently, along with her husband John.
The seminarians also spoke briefly, sharing how moving it has been to receive such support since they came from overseas to begin their studies in Australia.
Another important and emotional moment was a tribute to Val Sumner, who passed away in July 2021, another of the founding members of the dinner’s organising committee and a driving force behind the event over many years. This was the first KSC PSEF Archbishop’s Dinner to be held without her, and two of her granddaughters were present to receive a gift in her honour from KSC Victorian Deputy State Chairman Carmine Miranda.
One of her granddaughters, Vanessa, spoke about her grandmother’s incredible legacy, describing her as a ‘pocket-rocket’, always giving generously of her time, presence and money to help those in need. She was a stalwart member of the Archbishop’s Dinner committee, along with many other communities, and she will be missed by many.
The night concluded with the presentation of a cheque to Archbishop Comensoli by KSCV State Chairman Paul Mitchell OAM, the result of the evening’s raffle, auctions, and generous sponsors preceding the dinner. It turned out this was the biggest cheque to have ever been presented to the Archbishop in the history of the KSCV’s cause, totalling a stunning $86,000. This took their overall fundraising through the years to more than $1.4 million.
