As you read this edition of the Inside Out there are many students from St Patrick’s and St Gregory’s Colleges who will be preparing for their final rehearsals for the Musical this year ‘The Wizard of Oz’. I am very grateful to the staff from St Pat’s and St Greg’s who have invested many hours of their own time to provide our young people with this opportunity. I do hope you manage to see the show and be amazed and enthralled with the talent and the ability of our delightful students.
We are currently preparing for our celebration of Benedict Day which will be the last day of this term. We have a mass planned which precedes a student talent quest and then many stalls that will be raising funds for the ministries of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan. Each year group will be supporting one of the ministries which includes the Kinder School in the Philippines, Kiribati, The Inn in Melbourne, human trafficking, Timor Leste and Santa Teresa. I encourage you to ask your daughter about the ministry and what her year group have planned for the day.
It is hard to believe it is now June and we are fast approaching the time for the referendum where we have a chance to vote on the Voice to Parliament. There has never been a more significant opportunity for Australians to decide if First Nations people should have a say to parliament in the concerns and issues that face them. We are all aware that First Nations people have a shorter life expectancy, higher infant mortality rates, experience greater levels of poverty, higher health risks, lower levels of educational attainment and are disproportionately represented in detention and incarceration. These statistics have been well known and despite the efforts to close the gap in all these areas between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, the gap remains cavernous.
Our government is hoping that the Voice to Parliament is a strategy that will address in some way these issues. Many First Nations people have worked with the government in developing this approach in the belief it is a step in the right direction. Certainly nothing prior to this has managed to change the appalling statistics of our First Nations people. I encourage you to read as much as you can leading up to the referendum from reputable sources that do not politicise the issue. Be informed and invest in this life changing opportunity.
Sadly, the apology to the Stolen Generation led by Kevin Rudd in 2008 was politicised and the demonising which was threatened at the time of what the apology would cause never eventuated. Let’s hope and pray that all Australians enter this referendum well informed and with a generous heart to see progress for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people so they can have the same quality of life as non-Aboriginal people in this developed and affluent country.
I will leave you with this prayer written by Brooke Prentis and shared by Good Samaritan Education.

Blessings
Sue Lennox

An Aboriginal Prayer for Truth and Hope
by Brooke Prentis
May the God of all wonder who set the stars in the sky,
bless you with relentless unsettledness –
that drives you to seek truth.
May the God of all justice who gave motion to the rivers,
bless you with righteous anger –
that drives you to seek freedom for all.
May the God of all love who placed laughter in the kookaburra,
bless you with the friendship –
that looks like the love where one lays down their life for another.
May the God of all comfort who determined the height of the mountains,
bless you with tears from shared pain and mourning –
that shows you hope.
Now with wonder, righteous anger, sacrifice, and lament –
Go in truth, justice, love, and hope –
to Change The Heart of Australia.
Amen