ACBC MediaBlog Podcast ACBC Media Office

In this episode, Paul Osborne talks to Bishop-Elect Joe Caddy on the eve of the Vatican announcement of Pope Francis' appointment of his Very Reverend Joe Caddy AM VG, a priest of the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, as the eighth Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Cairns.



Fr Joe, 64, was born and raised in Melbourne and ordained to the priesthood in the Archdiocese of Melbourne in 1990.



He holds a Bachelor of Theology from the Melbourne College of Divinity and degrees in Social Sciences from the Gregorian University in Rome, where he studied Catholic social teaching, social ethics and economics.



From 2002 to 2013 he served as part-time chaplain in the prison ministry team, providing the Sunday worship service and pastoral care to prisoners and their families in Melbourne’s men’s maximum-security prisons.



He served as CEO of CatholicCare (Greater Melbourne, Geelong and Gippsland) from 2004 to 2017, during which time he advised the Victorian and federal governments, Australian Council of Social Service, and other bodies on a range of issues including homelessness, juvenile justice and local government.



In June 2018, Fr Joe was recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list with an Order of Australia Medal in the General Division for “significant service to the community through a wide range of social welfare initiatives and policy reforms, the Catholic Church in Australia”.

‘Dignitas Infinita—On Human Dignity’ was released by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on April 8, 2024. The declaration presents a survey and summary of the Church’s teaching on the concept of human dignity as a way of correcting certain misunderstandings that the Dicastery claims have emerged about the concept in recent years. It includes a series of reflections on issues that it sees as ‘grave violations’ of human dignity. It is arguably the first ‘summary’ of Catholic moral teaching issued by the Dicastery since the Instruction ‘gnitas Personae—on Certain Bioethical Questions’ in 2008. (From David Kirchhoffer's Eureka Street article Vatican invites global discussion on human dignity (eurekastreet.com.au))

The Australian Catholic University's Sandie Cornish and David Kirchhoffer talk to Paul Osborne from the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference about the document.

Episode Guests

Dr Sandie Cornish is a Senior Lecturer in Theology at Australian Catholic University and a Member of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. She specialises in Catholic social teaching, thought and action.

Associate Professor David G. Kirchhoffer is Director, Queensland Bioethics Centre, Australian Catholic University

The Catholic Church has for decades made a submission on the national minimum wage. Why does the Church do that? How did it come to propose a 6.5 % increase this year? In this episode, Bishop Vincent Long and Dr Tom Barnes join the Media Blog podcast to answer those questions and more.

In this episode, we’re talking with Dr Virginia Miller, a research fellow with the Centre for Public and Contextual Theology at Charles Sturt University. Dr Miller's book, Child Sexual Abuse Inquiries and the Catholic Church: Reassessing the Evidence, has just been published. The book looks at inquiries in Ireland, the US and Australia, while the podcast focuses on the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Australians can download Child Sexual Abuse Inquiries and the Catholic Church: Reassessing the Evidence for free from Firenze University Press or purchase it from Italian bookseller IBS.