The Catholic Weekly 31 May 2020

catholicweekly.com.au 6 NEWS 31, May, 2020 Stay safe and happy at home with holistic home care packages Discover our range of in-home services 1300 216 675 These papers are the fruits of communal discernment and provide a major focus ...” Archbishop Costelloe SDB THE TWO assemblies for the Fifth Plenary Council of Austral- ia will now take place in Octo- ber 2021 and April 2022, follow- ing the disruptionof the original schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The AustralianCatholic Bish- ops Conference last week de- cided to postpone the opening assembly by 12 months, with it now to be held inOctober 2021. Adelaide remains the venue for the first assembly. The sec- ond will be in Sydney in April 2022. “Mindful of the ongoing challenges of COVID-19, it was felt that delaying thefirst assem- bly by a full year would provide some certainty that travel and social distancing guidelines will have been lifted for the as- sembly,” said Plenary Council President Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB. Pandemic causes Plenary dates shift “Just as importantly, we be- lieve that period of time will allow for an adequate period of preparation for the delegates and the Catholic community. “The postponement was an unfortunate speed bump on theChurch’s path to thePlenary Council assemblies, but we are committed to using this extra timewisely.” Plenary Council facilitator Lana Turvey-Collins said the preparations for the Council will now include a program of webinars, podcasts and other multimedia projects and will be rolled out in the latter half of 2020. “The material will be both formative and dialogical to help parishes, families, workplaces and other Catholic communi- ties and organisations consider the unique contribution they make to the life and mission of the Church,” Ms Turvey-Collins said. Next week at Pentecost will see the release of the papers prepared by the Discernment andWritingGroups. Each group was tasked with writing a document on one of the six national themes for dis- cernment, which emerged from the input of more than 220,000 people who participated in the Council’s Listening and Dia- logue phase. The papers drawupon Scrip- ture, magisterial and papal teaching, Catholic tradition and relevant practices from beyond the Church, as well as respons- es received during the Listening andDiscernment phase. “These papers are the fruits of communal discernment and provide a major focus for our continued prayer and reflec- tion. They represent another significant step in our nation- al discernment process as we move towards the working doc- ument, or InstrumentumLabo- ris, for the Council assemblies and the Council agenda,” Arch- bishopCostelloe said. “We sincerely thank the chairs andmembers of the Dis- cernment and Writing Groups for their contribution and we ask all the faithful to continue to pray for the Church in Aus- tralia.” Massive grant for palliative research HEALTH AND welfare pro- fessionals around the country will benefit from the work of a Catholic university and hos- pital in Sydney to boost the mental health and wellbeing of people toward the end of their lives. Professor David Kissane, the chair of Palliative Medi- cine Research at the Univer- sity of Notre Dame Australia, was awarded the $1.06million grant for a new project. It is aimed at improving the assessment and care for pa- tients who have undiagnosed mental or emotional illness or distress, in recognition of the fact that such suffering accounts for as many hospi- tal admissions and extended lengths of stay as unmanaged physical symptoms. Professor Kissane will lead the three-year collaborative project in partnership with the Cunningham Palliative Care Research Centre at St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney. It includes an educational and training package based on role-play which will be rolled out to services across every state and territory. If it is a success, he hopes to see it become part of every palliative care service in the country to improve the quali- ty of that care and reduce the burden on hospitals. As debates continue in parliaments and the media about euthanasia and assist- ed suicide, Prof Kissane keeps his focus on helping to train palliative care clinicians to help their patients achieve a longer, healthier and overall better quality of life with less suffering towards its end. ¾ ¾ Marilyn Rodrigues “Patients with unrecog- nised depression, unad- dressed demoralisation and unabating anxiety account for the most vulnerable patients in palliative care, with limited access to skilled staff to offer support and evidence-based management,” said Professor Kissane. Such patients urgently need treatment to help them to prevent suicidal thinking, yet the effective medication and counselling options available remain underuti- lised in palliative services which have an emphasis on physical symptoms, he said. “When somebody is exis- tentially distressed they might say ‘I feel hopeless about my future’ or ‘I wonder about the point of the months ahead of me’, that’s not something that is able to be given a pill to fix and therefore services have tended to see those sorts of questions as a little too chal- lenging. “This will help to make pal- liative providers more com- fortable and competent in discussing these things and increase the quality of care as a result.” Notre Dame’s Prof David Kissane has been awarded a $1.06 million research grant which has implications for palliative care. Delay means Plenary should not be hampered by Covid-19 restric- tions, says Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB.