Cavanagh Art

Pilgrim Blog 3 - Ready for Venice*

4/11/2025

*Originally posted 23 July 2023. ~ Re-posted on 4 November 2025 to bypass unresolved Weebly website editor glitch on the original post.

After a night in Padua, and 6:15 AM breakfast, this pilgrim is ready for the bus to get to Mestre.
Once there, we will board a private boat to enter Venice.

The flag behind Vincent is the St Mark's flag.
St Mark the Evangelist being the patron of Venice.

Vincent Cavanagh
23 July 2023, 7:30 AM Padua–Venice time | 3:30 PM Sydney time.

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Comic + some news

31/10/2025

A brief explainer on what is Holy Wins/Holywins can be found in this Catholic News Agency article here and, yes, the Bishop now has a live-in/pet(?) dinosaur called Hotspur.

Months, more months, and Saints! (Photo: by Author)

And in other news—after having the thought of it gnawing at the back of my brain for what felt like half the year—I finally began preparing Month–pages for a 2026 Calendar on Sunday, 26 October 2025. Hooray!

Photographs for each month are currently still in the selection phase. Yes, photographs.

This upcoming calendar will be a collection of images of the different places that I visited in 2025. And because of all the effort that I poured into trying to pull together Jubilee Year 2025 grassroots–young adult pilgrimages to the Shrines of Hope in my diocese left me both mentally, physically and emotionally drained, such that I have had no impetus to do anything artistic whatsoever for the majority of 2025.
Save for the painting of St Clare of Assisi back in July, of course. Which is why the comic at the top of this blog post, for me, is a significant win.

I will endeavour to keep you all informed about further 2026 Calendar developments when they are worthy of promulgation.

A happy and holy Hallowtide to you all folks!

Vincent Cavanagh
31 October 2025

RAAF Base Richmond 100 Years Airshow

30/9/2025

Here are a few of the many photographs that I took on Sunday, 28 September 2025, when my father and I journeyed out west to Richmond for the 100 Years Airshow at the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Base Richmond.

A C-17A Globemaster transport towering over the airshow attendees below. (Photo: by Author)

There was a variety of heritage aircraft on display elsewhere on the air base apron, alongside the more modern RAAF equipment on show. (Photo: by Author)

NSW Rural Fire Service Chinook helicopter after having given a display of its waterbombing capabilities. (Photo: by Author)

Catching the tail end of the F-35A Lightning II on display at the airshow as it makes a flypast. (Photo: by Author)

A display of a rapid, vertical ascent manoeuvre by the F-35A Lightning II. (Photo: by Author)

Photographers capturing shots of the F/A-18F Super Hornet on its flypast demonstrating the aircraft's tight turning radius. (Photo: by Author)

It was an good day out, apart from a lot of train connections to-and-fro from the Airshow and certain crowd management occurrences at the end of our visit. One can safely tick this item off the ol’ bucket list.

Vincent Cavanagh
30 September 2025

Marists' Farewell at Church Hill, Sydney

11/8/2025

On Sunday, 10 August 2025, my father and I attended the midday Mass by the Marist Fathers to St Patrick's Church Hill, Sydney, given in thanksgiving and farewell after being caretakers of the parish for the past 157 years due to the Order being unable to supply priests for the Ministry of the Sacraments (Confession, Eucharist, Matrimony, Baptisms, Confirmations, Adoration and more) at St Patrick's beyond the 31st of December, 2025.

The above is my recording of the speech given by Fr Michael Whelan, S.M., at the light refreshments held after the Mass inside the crypt (formerly Our Lady Chapel) of St Patrick's.

Vincent Cavanagh
11 Aug 2025

St John Paul II YA Walking Pilgrimage 26/07/2025

25/7/2025

* Event Page is Now Archived *

The grassroots Jubilee Walking Pilgrimage to St Patrick's Catholic Church, Gosford Parish - Shrine of JPII is on this Saturday, 26 July 2025.

Open to Young Adults as well as interested adults and retirees who wish to pray and ask the intercession of Pope St John Paul II for family, for their own families, for dear ones, children and grandchildren, and the defence of all families through out the world.

Further details can be found at the Facebook Event page here.

Please note: the Event page will only be active until the end of the Pilgrimage and Jubilee Prayers within the church itself. Thank you.

Vincent Cavanagh
26 July 2025

St Clare of Assisi (2025)

3/7/2025

This portrait of St Clare of Assisi was painted on 5 June 2025, but as with most important artworks it took roughly a month of researching, thinking through, planning, and revising initial ideas before I finally started on the actual painting part—two days before the self-imposed deadline. I wanted it to be ready for to give as a birthday prayer card to a fellow pilgrim to WYD Lisbon, 2023.

St Clare is the first spiritual daughter of St Francis of Assisi, having seen him renounce himself of his father and his family’s wealth when she was twelve-years old. She later joined him and the minor friars at the age of eighteen, and co-founder of the Order of Poor Ladies, more commonly known today as the “Poor Clares”. The Rule incorporates much of the original vision of St Francis, as well as a little Benedictine wisdom.

In this painting she is seated with her lap open to all who are finding life difficult and seek her intercession. With one hand she is holding aloft a golden Monstrance containing the Eucharistic presence of Christ, representing when she held aloft the same Eucharistic presence when various marauding armies came to lay siege to Assisi during the 13th Century and from which shone so bright a light of heaven from the Monstrance that those same armies fled, leaving the city and convent of the Poor Clares safe from harm and destruction.

Outside the Church of San Damiano, Assisi, during the 2023 WYD Lisbon pilgrimage through Italy. (Photo: by Author)

On the top left of the painting is an image of the San Damiano cross from which St Francis received the vision of Christ speaking to him, ‘… go and rebuild my church …’

The original San Damiano cross was the altarpiece inside the Church of San Damiano (depicted on the top right of the painting), it was moved when the Poor Clares left the San Damiano monastery in 1257 AD to the Basilica of St Clare in Assisi and they have to this day continued to guard it with great solitude because it St Francis had gifted San Damiano to St Clare and her companions for use as a convent in 1212 AD.

In recent times there have been social media testimonies of women being visited by St Clare when in deep difficulty, and saying, ‘here are my soft hands, here is my soft lap’. These graces have resulted in significant conversions.

Vincent Cavanagh
3 July 2025

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RANDOM Things #003: Jubilee Rambling

9/6/2025

Okay, so, apart from posts to mark the death of Pope Francis and the election of Pope Leo XIV, I haven’t posted anything to this blog since the start of January 2025.

My first Broken Bay Pilgrim Stamp to be collected in the 'Jubilee Pilgrim Passport', featuring St John Vianney.

This is mostly down to the year, for me, starting with a “sort of” setback which left me in a disoriented state for the first quarter of the year, or so, and not well disposed to doing anything particularly creative in the direction of new artwork. Nor did I feel it worthwhile to post anything about my father and I visiting the Sydney Bus Museum in Leichhardt for one of their open days, or our second visit to Hunter Valley Steamfest in Maitland either, or attending the 2025 Hunter Valley Airshow.

Inspecting the Riley Brothers Bus at the Sydney Bus Museum, Leichhardt, NSW.

What has been occupying my attention, after a brainstorming session of possibilities with my mother, has been planning, mapping, testing, organizing, promoting, and leading Young Adult (18–35) Pilgrimages to the four Jubilee Shrines of Hope in the Diocese of Broken Bay for the 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope:

St Mary Immaculate Manly – Shrine of Hope for Priests and Vocations.
Our Lady of Dolours Chatswood – Shrine of Hope for Young People.
St Patrick’s and the Shrine of JPII East Gosford – Shrine of Hope for Families.
Our Lady of the Rosary Cathedral Hornsby (Waitara) – Cathedral of the Diocese of Broken Bay.

Viewing the relic of St John Vianney at St Mary Immaculate Church in Manly, NSW.

The whole effort was started, for the most part, because I didn’t expect anyone else to try and do something Young Adult-focused at a Diocesan–wide level for the Year of Jubilee, and because the Diocese itself had a reshuffle of ministry appointments and parish placements such that the former monthly Young Adult gatherings of previous years were dropped from the calendar without ceremony. For all appearances curial priorities had changed and if anything was going to happen Young Adult-wise it would have to be a self-initiated, grassroots affair, which I threw myself into with far more effort and emotion than strictly necessary. These pilgrimages are meant to give my fellow peers an opportunity for pilgrimage during this Year of Jubilee who aren’t able due to financial or familial circumstances to go overseas on pilgrimage to Rome like many others are doing. The four pilgrimages are spaced out to be once every second month to aid in giving a sense of the Jubilee truly being a year-long event and not just a blink-and-you-miss-it four-weekend marathon done-and-dusted, don’t-need-to-think-about-it-again situation.

Pilgrims sitting before the Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in Our Lady of Dolours Chatswood.

Detail of the relic of Blessed Carlo Acutis, kept on the left of the Perpetual Adoration Chapel.

It is a moot point as to whether a four-weekend marathon mightn’t have been a better draw card for the intended audience, given that there have been only a handful of pilgrims turn up for both the first pilgrimage to Manly in March for the relic of St John Vianney and the second to Chatswood in May to visit the relic of Blessed Carlo Acutis. It’s depressing when spur-of-the-moment picnics and such get higher turnout from young adults than the thing that’s had so much blood, tears, and effort poured into it to give them an opportunity to gain the Year of Jubilee Indulgence and a reduction of a chunk of our time in Purgatory currently accrued to each of us individually — and that is worthwhile! ¹

I have to regularly remind myself that these pilgrimages aren’t a “me”–thing, they are from and for God — He’s the one who sparked the whole idea of organizing these walks — for purposes that only He knows the end result of, I’m just here to organise them. If even only one person shows up, that pilgrimage was successful.

If you or anyone you know would like to join along for next two pilgrimages, the dates are as follows:

26 July 2025 – St John Paul II Pilgrimage to St Patrick’s and the Shrine of JPII East Gosford.
13 September 2025 – Our Lady of the Rosary Pilgrimage to the Cathedral.

— Draft promotionals --

These walks are open to all pilgrims from surround Dioceses and not just the Diocese of Broken Bay, and starting with the St John Paul II Pilgrimage they will be opened up to all interested pilgrims from 18 years old to retirement. Keep on the lookout for further details and Facebook Event pages about each walk from myself on Facebook or here on the blog. I hope to see you there.

Vincent Cavanagh
9 June 2025

¹ The Jubilee Indulgence is explained in an accessible and down-to-earth way to all by Bishop of Wilcannia-Forbes Columba Macbeth-Green in the video linked below:

And in other news:
I have turned OFF comments on all my blog posts, apart from those made by verifiable human beings, due to an influx of spam e-mail / robot comments over the past year.
Moving forward I will be keeping the comments on this blog CLOSED until further notice. Thank you.

Yes, we have a new Pope!

10/5/2025

Pope Leo the Fourteenth waves to the crowd below from the balcony of St Peter's Basilica, Vatican City, Rome.

POPE LEO XIV

(Formerly Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost.)

He is the 267th successor of St. Peter, the Apostle.

Elected Pontifex on 8 May 2025, Vatican City, Rome.

The Americas Pope: North and South; both Peru and the United States.

Pope Leo XIV is the first Pope from the Order of St. Augustine (OSA), but the seventh from religious orders that follow the Rule of St. Augustine of Hippo.

Vatican News biography article linked here.

Requiescat in pace, Papa Franciscus

21/4/2025

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual shine upon him. May he rest in peace.

POPE FRANCIS (I)
Born into this world ~ 17 December 1936.
Born into Eternal Life ~ 21 April 2025 (Easter Monday).

RANDOM Things #002: Looking Back on 2024

3/1/2025

2 Comments

Well, given that my 12 Months Later review of my social media exodus was read as more of a 2023 Review (which it was, to be fair) I might as well do another re-view for 2024 😅

'Silver screen' rising into position. Note the storm clouds in the background.

2024 was kicked off by going out with some fellow World Youth Day pilgrims to the Westpac OpenAir Cinema on the Fleet Steps overlooking Farm Cove and the rest of Sydney Harbour. The film we’d arranged to see was One Life (2023), a biographical film about humanitarian Nicholas Winton and more broadly about the Kindertransport of Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia to Britain at the beginning of World War II. This is hardly a film for the faint of heart and as if to accentuate this point we sat, in provided ponchos, for about the last two-thirds of the film under wave after wave of rain pouring over Sydney Harbour.

Watching a film outdoors on Sydney Harbour in rolling rain running off my poncho-covered head is an experience I won’t soon forget.

Speaking of World Youth Day Lisbon, much of 2024 was spent finishing off a 12-month voucher for photo printing by having a selection of my photos from 2023 physically printed and then arranged by me in a photo album.
To mark the 1-year anniversary of the WYD Pilgrimage in July, I organized two get-together lunches for the Over 18s Pilgrim (Italy and Portugal) cohort which many appreciated.

I cannot comment about my fellow pilgrims’ experiences. But for me, a year-and-a-half on from Lisbon I’m only just coming to grips with, and processing through, what we all went through over those 22 hectic days of pilgrimage across Mediterranean Europe. But I can say that, for having done it once, I at least have more of an idea of what to expect a second time around and how to manage things and myself better than I did the first time, please God.

HO-scale Beyer Garratt passing through a model replica of Goulburn Railway Station, Goulburn Model Rail Expo 2024.

Sydney Bus Museum AEC Regent III 2878, Sydney Transport Heritage Expo 2024 (Kodak M38, UltraMax 400)

Railmotor CPH No.7 idling at Maitland Railway Station. (Kodak M38, UltraMax 400)

In comparison to 2023: 2024 was an exponential increase of train trips, train festivals and rail heritage excursions with my father. Our travels took us north to the Hunter Region around Newcastle and as far south as Goulburn and the Southern Highlands. Indeed, there were many long days with very-early morning starts. But we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless, yet we were very tired by the end of those same days.

September saw me travelling by airplane up to Brisbane for the IGNITE Conference 2024 organized by Emmanuel Community and its Ignite Youth ministry team.
This was the real curveball of 2024 and it was my first ever experience of IGNITE.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge at the microphone.

All the talks by various speakers that I went to were good and informative on different parts of the Catholic faith life. A special stand out was the Archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge’s talk on Encountering the Scriptures where he discussed how the bible “goes to the heart of hopelessness to find a hope that cannot be destroyed.”
He truly enkindled in his audience a greater appreciation of “the black fire on white fire” as the Rabbis describe the Holy Scriptures.

Emmanuel Worship on stage, IGNITE Conference 2024 Brisbane.

The rallies at IGNITE were experiences. There was much good in them, but by the end of the three-and-a-bit days I was ready to run back to my bunk-hole at home and not have another thousand decibels going right through my body.

After attending IGNITE and commuting across Brisbane each morning and evening, it has confirmed to me that what’s needed is smaller and quieter events where good conversation can take place. There’s a place for the big events, as long as they are not the only option available.

Kodak M38 point-and-shoot camera arranged with Kodak UltraMax 400 speed film.

On a less frazzled note, that same month I also started shooting 35mm film with a re-loadable plastic point-and-shoot camera. It has been a nice change of pace from taking photos with my smartphone.

I don’t really know or have even an idea of what 2025 will bring, apart for the Jubilee Year of Hope that has just begun. Dear God, may this new year see an outpouring of Your love and of experiences of hopes and dreams fulfilled.

Let’s see if there’ll be a 2025 Review, eh?

Vincent Cavanagh
3 Jan 2025

Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an account
of the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.
~ 1 Peter 3:15-16, NRSV Catholic

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Pilgrim Blog 3 - Ready for Venice*

Comic + some news

RAAF Base Richmond 100 Years Airshow

Marists' Farewell at Church Hill, Sydney

St John Paul II YA Walking Pilgrimage 26/07/2025

* Event Page is Now Archived *

St Clare of Assisi (2025)

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RANDOM Things #003: Jubilee Rambling

Yes, we have a new Pope!

POPE LEO XIV

Requiescat in pace, Papa Franciscus

RANDOM Things #002: Looking Back on 2024

News and Other Stuff

Archives

Categories

Blog

* Event Page is Now Archived *

Comments closeddue to spam.

POPE LEO XIV

News and Other Stuff

Archives

Categories

Comments closed
due to spam.