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To mark 3 years since going to WYD 2023 Lisbon, I’ll be posting some previously unseen photographs from each day of the pilgrimage. It won’t be anything extensive, but I hope you’ll still join me for the journey. ■ Day 21Last sight of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary in Fátima, standing out against the early-morning mist / cloud / meteorological phenomenon (I'm not an expert, folks). (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023) Due to COVID-induced travel requirements, the whole of the diocesan pilgrimage was split over three separate departure routes from of Europe: Lisbon, Paris, and Madrid. Myself and the pilgrim small group I was in would soon be on our allotted coach to Madrid. The last ones to leave Fátima, if memory serves—we were definitely the last ones to land back in Sydney at the end of everything. A very brief refuelling stop for both coach and pilgrims at the CESPA (now Moeve, S.A.) Border Portugal service station on the Spanish-side of the Portugal/Spain border. (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023) Along the highway we passed the walled city of Ávila, home of St Teresa of Ávila, on our way to Madrid. (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023) View from the truly airport-adjacent hotel of the just visible lights of Madrid-Barajas International Airport. (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023) ■ Day 22This mural by the Ecuadorian artist Oswaldo Guayasamín titled "Hispanoamérica", is opposite the platform screen doors in Terminal T4 for the Madrid-Barajas Airport People Mover, which our group took to reach to Terminal T4S (satellite terminal) where our flight was scheduled to depart from that day. (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023) Finally arriving, our flight to take us from Madrid to Doha, Qatar, for our connection home to Australia. (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023)
■ Day 23Hardly warm, but familiar and comforting, and appreciated, refreshment in the car after getting through the International Arrivals gauntlet (as a first-timer) at Sydney Airport in the late evening. Vincent Cavanagh © 2023 Post scriptum Thank you to those who joined me on this—rather foolish—endeavour of marking and reliving three years on the pilgrimage to World Youth Day 2023 Lisbon. I think it safe (if not more so for my own sanity) to say that this is where I leave buried the memory of WYD Lisbon and let the grass of time take over the disturbed soil beneath. I leave the future memory-making to the younger ones in the Body of Christ. Pax, Vincent Cavanagh 10 August 2026 *ALL COMMENTS CLOSED DUE TO SPAM*
To mark 3 years since going to WYD 2023 Lisbon, I’ll be posting some previously unseen photographs from each day of the pilgrimage. It won’t be anything extensive, but I hope you’ll still join me for the journey. ■ Day 18All stop while the more sporting–inclined pilgrims (not me) watched the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup Round of 16 match between the Australian Women’s National Soccer Team, “the Matildas”, and Denmark on 7 August 2023. (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023) The coach to convey our cohort of pilgrims to Fátima finally arrived at the Iberostar Selection Lisboa a touch after 12 Noon. (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023) A quiet moment after the Mass that marked the beginning of the Retreat portion of the pilgrimage, inside the Chapel of (the former) Consolata Seminary, which is part of the Consolata Hotel complex in Fátima, Portugal. The diocesan pilgrim group as a whole was split between this and another hotel for the duration of the retreat. (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023) ■ Day 19Detail of some of the stained-glass windows depicting individual Saints inside the Chapel of St Stephen of Hungary at the end of the Via Sacra in Fátima. From Left to Right: St Martin of Tours, St Adalbert of Prague, and St Mór (Maurus of Pécs). (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023) Crowds gather around the Chapel of the Apparitions for the evening’s Rosary in the Sanctuary of Fátima, ahead of the Candlelight Procession. (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023) ■ Day 20The Eighth of the Fourteen bronze reliefs by the Portuguese sculptor Martinho de Brito depicting Mysteries of the Rosary inside the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, Fátima; this one showing Jesus being crowned with thorns by the Roman soldiers. (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023) One of a few murals in Fátima put up for World Youth Day 2023 Lisbon. The text in red on the left is the Portuguese for “World Youth Day” and the text on the right reads: “There is hurry in the air.” (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023) Vincent Cavanagh 7 August 2026 *ALL COMMENTS CLOSED DUE TO SPAM*
To mark 3 years since going to WYD 2023 Lisbon, I’ll be posting some previously unseen photographs from each day of the pilgrimage on their respective days. It won’t be anything extensive, but I hope you’ll still join me for the journey. ■ Day 4Detail of the mosaic of the Procession of Virgins upon the left wall (facing the Altar) of the Basilica of Sant’Apollinaire Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy. From Left to Right: St Caecilia (partially out of frame), St Eulalia, St Agnes, St Agatha, St Pelagia, St Euphemia of Chalcedon. (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023) Interior of The Chapel of Peace and Victory within the Basilica of Sant’Apollinaire Nuovo built in remembrance of the fallen of Word War I from across over Italy—including those unknown—and the benefactors who contributed to its construction. The chapel was consecrated on 30 November 1919. (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023) An eclectic mix of science-fiction-themed ephemera and other paraphernalia on display in the right-hand window of the historic, former C. Bubani haberdashery store off the Piazza del Popolo in Ravenna. (Vincent Cavanagh © 2023) Vincent Cavanagh 24 July 2026 *ALL COMMENTS CLOSED DUE TO SPAM*
* Event Page is Now Archived *
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 Comments closed |
| | After having received them from the printers this morning, I can announce that my 2025 Calendar is now available for the coming year. The 2025 Calendar is a return both to sharing my artwork as well as the saints (and not yet declared saints) of the Catholic Church. — Cost for the 2025 Calendars is $30 AUD each, plus postage (within Australia), with a deal for three (3) calendars at $80 AUD. — Postage is as follows: +$3 AUD for 1 calendar +$4 AUD for 2* +$6 AUD for 3* * delivered in the same envelope. — 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 talk to me in person. Vincent Cavanagh 28 Nov 2024 |
Eileen could not stand or walk for much of her life due to a severe curvature of her spine from having fallen out of her perambulator (pram) at a young age. The extent of her height was 3 feet 9 inches (115 centimetres) from which was given the affectionate nickname of The Little Mother.
She lived most of her life at Coogee, a suburb of Sydney, except for when God healed her enough to go to Rome to obtain approval of her fledgling religious order. Such was her determination, that the rigours of travel did not deter her.
Despite being bedridden most of the time, Eileen was the hub of the order. She co-ordinated much through telephone calls. At the end of the day, she welcomed the Nurses home, and received their confidences. Having been so chronically ill herself, she knew just how much kindness and tenderness were needed in caring for the ill and the elderly, and how important it was to maintain the dignity of anyone they ministered to.
She died at the age of 28 from chronic spinal tuberculosis and exhaustion.
On Friday 16 August 2024, Archbishop of Sydney Anthony Fisher OP officially signed off on the collated Australian documentation of Eileen O’Connor’s life for the Cause of Sainthood. And on Monday 14 October 2024, Archbishop Fisher formally presented the documentation in Rome to Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.
For further information about the life and work of Eileen O’Connor and the story of the Sisters of Our Lady’s Nurse of the Poor, visit the website for the Cause of Eileen’s Canonization here.
And as a clarifier, this step of the Canonization process is seeking for her to be recognized and approved by the Vatican as a Blessed; the step before being named a Saint in the Catholic Church.
Vincent Cavanagh
16 October 2024
| | On this Feast Day of The Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary (22 August), I am relieved to finally reveal my attempt at portraying the apparition of Our Blessed Mother in 1798 to gathered Vietnamese Christians taking refuge from the persecution by the Nguyen Dynasty in the jungle forest in central Việt Nam, near the village of Quang Tri. The origins of this project go back to November last year (2023) with a visit to the seminary used by the Diocese, but research for this painting started in earnest on 5 July 2024. For more information about the apparition and Pope John Paul II’s later involvement read this detailed summary about Our Lady of La Vang at The Miracle Hunter website here. |
One evening, according to tradition, a lady of great beauty appeared to the refugees in the jungle, clad in white and surrounded by light, holding the infant Jesus in her arms, with two charming boys holding torches at her side. The lady walked back and forth several times in front of the Christians, her feet touching the ground.
Even the non-Christians who were there witnessed the vision.”
Vincent Cavanagh
22 August 2024
| | Apart from a small handful of photo-edited pictures that will never be seen outside of its intended audience in a group chat of my peers, I’ve been in a creative drought since about the end of March/start of April this year (2024). Being sick at home for the last three weeks of May with whatever strain of influenza is going around this winter didn’t help my creative juices either. Also, this drought overlapping with my general backwards slide into doom-scrolling and wasted hours poured away to YouTube videos. Let’s be honest, the act of “doom-scrolling” is not the sole purview of life-sucking social media applications. |
Speaking of substack pages, one that I’ve been gravitating back to of late—and isn’t as overly swimming in bar graphs or generally depressing as others—is the School of the Unconformed by Ruth Gaskovski. For about the past year(?) or so she has been doing shared essays with her husband Peco that they cross-post between each other’s substack page (Peco’s is Pilgrims in the Machine).
The general theme of their essays is regaining man’s [1] humanity from both the jaws and bowels of the inhuman Machine world we now find ourselves living in.
Of which this quote by Ruth from their recent article, ‘Building People with Three-Dimensional Memory’, is an example:
The incessant distraction of interfacing with devices leaves us feeling as if our brain and our body are forever in a different place. It almost seems as if we are in a race to upload our life into the virtual universe. Our desire to capture and share the present is numbing our ability to form natural memories of the moments we want to actually treasure. By excessively documenting our lives artificially Marshall McLuhan might say we are “autoamputating” our memory.
When we use our devices as memory keepers, we not only interfere with the formation of long-term memories, but we also flatten our experience and personal identity into a one-dimensional digitized version of ourselves.”
Some segments of the culture might experience a carefree insouciance as they become largely forgetful of what has come before—the wisdom, knowledge, and traditions of history—and more gripped by the here-and-now stimulation of their screens.
As real Alzheimer's progresses, there is not only memory loss, but disorientation, anxiety, depression, aggressive behavior (…) Reliance on a support system of machines to hold our collective memories is a formula for docility. When Steve Jobs brought us [the] Apple computer we were promised bicycles for the mind, but many of us feel we’re ending up with cognitive wheelchairs.”
I know the more palatable answer here is to speak of digital well-being and balance and how to successfully navigate the algorithm in a way that we can consume the good without the bad. But we can’t. Just like any mind-altering drug we might ingest, social media makes it so we are not in control of the experience we’ll have immediately after. And I can no longer see any potential reward in delivering our God-given brains to a [tattooed] group of tech bros in Silicon Valley.”
~ (emphasis my own)
Keepin’ Up wit’ Gen Z
LLAP
‘Live Long and Prosper’ 🖖
rekt
Internet form of ‘Wrecked’.
🗿 Moai (Easter Island Head) emoji.
Used to communicate a deadpan or shocked/embarrassed-into-speechlessness expression.
Or alternatively—if in Japan—used to arrange meeting up with people at the Moyai statue near Shibuya Station in Tokyo.
IYKYK
‘If You Know, You Know’
Vietnamese “teencodes”:
Hixx or Hixxxxx – written version of 😢 (crying face emoji).
Huhu – written version of 😭 (loudly crying face – or as I know it, ‘waterfall tears’).
TIL
‘Today I Learned.’
ily / ILY
‘I Love You.’
Not to be confused with illy, the Italian Espresso company.
bby / BBY
Internet alternative form of ‘Baby’. (ex. ‘Woohoo BBY!’)
More often used when using ‘baby’ as a term of endearment.
RTFM
‘Read The … Manual!’
Often used within the Linux user community forums.
Jubilee 2025
More information about the pilgrimage can be found here.
I do—and I ask that you reading this likewise—not expect this to in any way be a regular or (dear God save me) quarterly affair. It is my estimation that RANDOM Things be more of an ‘every now and then’ or just ‘I haven’t painted anything, but here’s what’s been kicking around in my head recently’ type of blog post.
So until the next one of these not-newsletters eventuates; Peace and Happy Feast of St Peter and St Paul.
Vincent Cavanagh
29 June 2024
[1] As in the genus man (mankind) of which both men and woman, male and female, make up the whole category (ex., “earth men” and “Men of Earth”) – for the peculiarly post-Age of Aquarius pedants out there.
News and Other Stuff
About recent artwork, inspirations and other things I find interesting.
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