PM leads mourning for airliner victims

Australian Catholics have mourned their own losses and the deaths of other passengers on Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, that was brought down over Ukraine last week, killing all 298 people on board.

Memorial Masses and services across the country paid tribute to the victims, who included delegates to the twentieth International Aids Conference in Melbourne.

Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove and Prime Minister Tony Abbott attended a Mass of Remembrance and Call for Peace at Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral on 20 July, three days after the tragedy, at which the apostolic administrator of the Sydney Archdiocese, Bishop Peter Comensoli, said: “The downing of MH17 was not an innocent accident; it was the outcome of a trail of human evil.”

Students from one of Sydney’s leading Catholic girls’ schools, Kincoppal-Rose Bay, were among almost 2,000 people who attended the Mass. The director of boarding at the school, 77-year-old Sr Philomene Tiernan was one of 38 Australian residents killed. Hours after the news, students and staff had held a special liturgy to pray for Sr Philomene, her family and the Sisters of the Sacred Heart, of which she was a former Australian leader. Cardinal George Pell, the former Archbishop of Sydney, remembered the late sister as “a bright spirit and great inspiration throughout Sydney Archdiocese”. Sr Philomene, who worked at the school for over 30 years, had been attending a retreat in France.

In Melbourne, Archbishop Philip Wilson said the loss of HIV experts coming to Melbourne for the Aids conference had unleashed a “wave of sadness”.

Mgr Robert Vitillo, special adviser on Health and HIV/Aids and head of Caritas Internationalis’ delegation to the UN in Geneva, was a convenor of the pre-conference gathering, “Stepping up the Pace”. He paid tribute to “people who died who had committed their lives to improving the health of others”.