* 2024 Calendars are now Out of Stock *Showcasing various photos from my 2023 WYD pilgrimage to Lisbon. Just a brief post to say that my 2024 Calendar containing a selection of my photographs from my WYD Lisbon 2023 pilgrimage are now available to order for the new year.
— Cost for the 2024 Calendars is $30 AUD, plus postage (within Australia). — For International postal orders we will arrange Air Mail costs appropriately, on an order by order basis. You can place your order through the form found under the Contact page or by messaging me via Facebook, or via LinkedIn (though I am hardly ever on that, at all). Vincent Cavanagh 29 Sept 2023
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Because that’s basically the only thing that I can control. Our 3rd World Youth Day Formation Session was held last Tuesday (20 June) in the same venue as Session #2. There wasn’t all that much new to talk about. We had confirmation of the multiplicity of different flight paths/times we would all be taking as pilgrim small groups going into Europe and coming out again due to post-COVID-related travel booking arrangements. I've illustrated my own flight path below. Small updates about diocesan-branded WYD merchandise and clothing. The diocese’s WYD app has been approved by Apple, but no mention of Google at all. We had a rough explanation/run-through of how the Rise Up Catechesis session are supposed to run; our diocese will be the Animating Host Team for the English-speaking sessions for a 3rd WYD. Think conversation ice-breakers and running around with wireless microphones to multiple other English-speaking pilgrims from across the world inside as-yet-to-be-determined venues. My rather lacklustre reporting of this is because I’ve only in the last 24hrs found out that I will be the only one from my small group flying out on the first of the 3 flights from Rome to Lisbon on 31 July. I will of course be travelling with other pilgrims from the same bus group; but before this oblique gut-punch, I was already processing that I was being flown into Lisbon by Ryanair. An airline that any aware passenger needs no introduction to. And I am still recovering from whatever laid my low after my cross-border travels from almost 3 weeks ago. Other than that, I am at least slightly closer to starting a picture that’s been waiting since before my afore-mentioned sojourn. Until next time. Vincent Cavanagh 28 Jun 2023 The reason that there hasn’t been much news from me as late is because I have been sick at home for the best part of a week after having done a crazy 5-and-a-half-day round journey with my father from Sydney to Melbourne, to Adelaide, and back to Sydney again, all by rail. I hope to be in a fit state to attend the 3rd WYD Formation Session this coming Tuesday (20 June), God willing. Until then, I have put together this collection of relevant YouTube Travel Videos for my fellow diocesan pilgrims and for anyone else planning on travelling to Italy or Portugal. I do admit that most of these videos are from Mark Wolters and his Wolters World YouTube channel. This is because he and his family are inveterate travellers with a wealth of lived experience and, in comparison to other travel advice channels, he aims to be helpful rather than fear-mongering (case in point: the Scam City tv series, widely available on YouTube).
I would highly recommend checking out Wolters World for further travel advice that I can't share due to how long this post is already getting 😉 Artwork created 26–29 May 2023. If there has been something that has intensified over the past year, it has been this gentle but firm pressure from above to represent particular saints. With St Agatha this pressure has been of unusual strength. Way back at the end of April I had collected a series of reference images, which I left on my drawing desk day in and day out, but strangely couldn’t get much further with. The impasse only changed after a deeper dive into the story of her life, and of how she has been represented in Rome and in Sicily. In doing so she went from being an important saint mentioned in Eucharistic Prayer 1 of the Church to being formidable and unforgettable. A brief re-cap of her life would be useful. St Agatha was a native of Sicily, and a beautiful and rich young woman of a noble family who had given her life to Jesus as a consecrated virgin. To signify this consecration she wore a veil.
When the early tortures failed to move her determination, he then ordered that her breasts be torn off with the special type of tongs you see depicted and then rolled in hot coals. Neither managed to kill her, and she was returned to her prison cell where St Peter visited her. Next Quintianus decided to burn her at the stake, but an earthquake happened to prevent that happening. So she was returned to her prison cell where she died of her injuries. The lictor sliced off my breasts with doubled blows, Due to the details of her martyrdom, St Agatha became the patron saint of breast cancer sufferers, of rape victims, of nurses, of bell-founders, of Sicily, and other patronages. One of the images that helped was the statue of St Agatha above the colonnade at St Peter’s basilica in Rome. It told the story of her life without being unchaste. The other image that helped was the reliquary of St Agatha’s head kept in the Cathedral of Catania in Sicily. This reliquary is a master-work of silver and enamel. An online article about the relics of St Agatha can be viewed here. If you are patient (depending on the device you are using), it is worth using the Google translate option if you (like me) are not fluent in Italian. On either side of the bust representing St Agatha are two angels. She is crowned, and in one hand holds a crucifix and in the other she holds an inscription. The whole thing is covered with votive offerings, pectoral crosses from bishops, episcopal rings, jewels etc. According to tradition, the crown upon her head was put there by King Richard the Lionheart. Also this reliquary is the origin of the decision for blonde hair rather than the black or brunette hair found more widely in popular culture imagery of St Agatha. Below is the inscription, and a translation of it, that found all over the Cathedral of Catania where her reliquary–bust is kept, and that I have included underneath my depiction of St Agatha: Mentem Sanctam Spontaneam Honorem Deo Et Patriae Liberationem These are no idle words. Her veil, kept in a separate reliquary, has been successfully used several times to invoke God’s help when natural disasters threatened Sicily. When invaders came to Sicily and rounded up the native inhabitants, the conqueror permitted them to have a last Mass at the shrine of St Agatha before being executed. When it came time for everyone to open up the hymn books, each and every page held the initials of a promise that St Agatha would always protect Sicily with her intercession. Needless to say, the inhabitants were saved, and the invaders exited in a hurry. St Agatha, this holy martyr, has been given mighty intercessory power by God. St Agatha, pray for us. Amen. Catherine Cavanagh, (based on notes and with minor edits by Vincent Cavanagh).
~31 May 2023 Artwork created 19–27 April 2023. A divinely-inspired, Roman mosaic–styled depiction of a few of the many different ways in which the early Christians were martyred in Rome, under the persecution of emperor Nero in AD 64. The top panel has much inspiration from the painting Nero’s Torches, by Henry Siemiradzki in 1876, showing both men and women being burnt alive after the Great Fire of Rome before the gaze of gathered the Roman elite.
The memorial of the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome is held on June 30th, the day after the celebration of the Feast of St Peter and St Paul.
Vincent Cavanagh ~ 27 Apr 2023 Oh, what a grisly pair these are. Thankfully the "art style" used in Roman mosaics allows some leeway when it comes to depictions of various beasts and predators.
Painted 21–22 Feb 2023. St Pius X was the 259th Pope and successor to St Peter. He was a vehement opponent of what he called "Modernism" inside the theological circles of the Roman Catholic Church.
Something that the church is still fighting with today, what may be bluntly explained as: trying to convert the church to appease the (fickle) world, rather than converting the world to appease (and please) God the Father. Artwork created 17–19 Feb 2023. The Servite Founders were seven rich men (possibly cloth merchants) of Florence, Italy, who all experienced the same vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the feast of the Assumption in 1233 and gave them this message:
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