It’s not actually been a year, but it has certainly felt like it since I had made a new artwork. The drought broke on February 14th when I received a request from fellow creative and poet Alexandra Pierotti to draw my own version of a Christian meme that can often be found circulating on social media sites in one form or another for a personal project of her own. She has kindly given me permission to share this with you, for which I am truly grateful 🙏

​I had three false starts, which would begin okay and then, after a point, I’d go and add too much detail that pushed it beyond legibility. All before my brain had time to react to what I was doing. Recalling a previous (unpublished) “doodle”, something finally clicked for me. What I needed to do was cartoon, not illustrate like it was going to be a submission to a scientific journal or something.

You can find Alexandra Pierotti’s poetry on her blog at Poetry For Wellmindedness. Her latest works of poetry can be found on Facebook.


Vincent Cavanagh
18 February 2026

I’m not going to lie. 2025 is a year I’d rather not revisit.

• Yes, it was the Holy Year of Jubilee 2025 “Pilgrims of Hope”.
• Yes, we lost Pope Francis and gained Pope Leo XIV.
• Yes, Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati were canonised as Saints.
• Yes, there were heritage transport trips and watching movies with my father.
• And, yes, I got my (total) step count up an awful lot during the year.

​But, looking back, I cannot see any of the positives for the shear, personal weight of disappointments that have dogged me throughout 2025. (As well as bouts of F.O.M.O.)


At the start of the year, I thought I had a direction as to what I should do only for that smallest glimmer of something—anything—to be taken away. That seemed to be the running theme: think that you might finally get something, or somewhere, and then have it taken away from you. Again.

I expended an awful lot of my energy going basically nowhere, which resulted in my art being the most visible casualty of 2025. Not aided by personal events and the ‘Artificially Intelligent’ miasma afflicting all terminally-online-artists that is: why bother?
As well as treating any brief spark not as an invitation to creativity but as something that had to be put through the third degree of a capitalist cost-benefit analysis loop that buried both the spark, and myself, ever deeper into disembodiment. What point is there in creating if The World is just going to continue in its agenda to eradicate every last place on the face of the Earth that a creative might find to take shelter in and, maybe, even meaning.


2025 was, for me, exemplified by isolation and disconnection. Peer-to-peer faith gatherings that no longer pretend to be for anyone not already living within 10–15 kilometres of the events. Trying to gather interest for things by yourself to mark the Year of Jubilee only to be left by the end of it with a distinct impression that I was at the very bottom of everyone else’s social list or not even registering on their RADAR. Not to mention seemingly everyone else and their dog deciding to disconnect from all social media and not informing anyone whose only connection to those said same people is through social media of what they’re doing BEFORE they do it.

I hope everyone else enjoyed the 2025 Jubilee because my year was shit!


Vincent Cavanagh
8 January 2026

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.

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

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

   ​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.

   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

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.

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.

​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.

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.

​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:

(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.

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 😅

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.

​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.

​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.

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.

​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

Merry Christmas and a Happy Jubilee of Hope to you all for 2025!


Vincent  Cavanagh
25 Dec 2024