​This is a story of a kind of 'sustainable development' by a refugee youngster. Former Mission Centre director, Fr Ron Nissen SM, remembers...   Francis Hsa Ku was a teenager when we first met in 2003. It was at MMC* Hostel, Maera Moo refugee camp, Thailand, deep in the jungles on the border of Myanmar.(*Marist Mission Centre Australia). He was one of the tens of thousands of refugees from Myanmar (then Burma) fleeing the brutality of the military regime. MMC had begun funding the Hostel in 1998. I first visited (on the back of an elephant!) in the rainy season of 1999. Since then the Hostel has continued to receive MMC support and is still known as 'MMC Hostel' despite attemp...

Kiwi Marist, Fr Patrick ('Paddy') O'Neil SM, writes about the Marist mission in Bahia, Brazil, inspired by the pioneer Marists' first missions in the remote and rugged Bugey mountains of France. ... The Mission of the Marist Fathers in Bahia, Brazil began in 1987 after much research in order to find a Diocese that was in a poor area of the country where we could offer support not only in Parish Ministry but also to the Diocese as a whole. The idea was to re-model our Marist origins in Bugey among the rural poor. Eventually the Diocese of Caetité in the southwestern area of Bahia State was chosen. At the time the Diocese, which is the same size as Holland, had 35 parishes but only twelve prie...

​Beginnings In 1998, Marist Mission Centre Australia began supporting a small hostel in the remote refugee camp of Maera Moo in the jungles of the Thai-Burma border. Since then, a generation of Burmese youngsters have had somewhere safe to live – and the beginnings of education. In 2011, several young men and women from Maera Moo, 'graduates' of MMC Hostel, sought help to bridge the gap between their rudimentary camp high-school education and the possibility of tertiary studies. In the meantime, in 2004, MMC had helped set up Australian Catholic University's ambitious initiative of an online diploma course on the Thai-Burma border. 'How can we get into the ACU course?', the Maera M...

Peter Healy sm, New Zealand Marist, names a "blessed unrest" and how a global perspective on Climate Change calls for 'ecological conversion' and the development of low carbon living…. The latest Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change Report (IPCC 2018) tells us we need to move to low-carbon lives immediately. In a prophetic appeal, this Panel of scientists is inviting humanity to transform. They are saying we need "rapid, far-reaching changes in all aspects of society". The IPCC is an international panel of scientists set up in 1988 by UN agencies to assess the science that helps us understand the risk of human-induced climate change. Since 2014 the reports have been saying we can see t...

A special project of the Marian Ecological Centre, Suva, involves the regeneration of mangroves on the shore fronts of Suva, Fiji. Director of the Centre, Fr Donato Kivi, recruited staff and students of the Marist College community for a working bee to plant mangrove cuttings on the low tide mud flats by the shore.

Fr Donato Kivi sm, the Superior of Formation House, Marist College, has embarked on a mission to create a Marian-Ecological Centre and opening a door for people to learn that through a Marian spirituality, one can grow in awareness that our Marist Charism can provide an answer to our ecological crisis today. Marist Spirituality Based on Constitution 228: The spirit of Mary is the Spirit of Humility: "Intimate union with God, and the most ardent love of neighbour." We can add a third dimension which is the care and love of all creation. The Approach: The approach begins with the Spirit of Mary, the spirit of humility. Mary the humus, the soil of God from which the WORD was made flesh and beca...