A letter from
from Cardinal Pell

My Dear Friends,

2008 will be a great year to be a student at Sydney University. World Youth Day will be upon us and university students from all over Australia and the world will be in Sydney to celebrate their Catholicism; and you can be at the very centre of it all! I hope both you and your friends will decide to join us for this truly momentous event in the life of our Church.

This website and the Catholic Student Handbook, both outline what we offer to students to live out their Catholicism on campus. University life can be difficult for most students and a time when many are confronted with new academic, cultural, social, political and religious challenges. We may find ourselves realising that we need new answers. So I encourage students to become part of the Catholic
community and get involved in the Catholic societies such as the Catholic Society of St Peter,
the Catholic Asian Students Society, the St Thomas More Society, and Young Vinnies.

The John Paul II Student Resource Centre has been operating since 2002. It is a facility for
you – for all students who wish to live a Catholic life on campus. Discover Christ through
your brothers and sisters. Whenever possible, meet Jesus each day in the daily mass and
adoration in the Chapel of the Resurrection. Learn your faith more deeply in the Scripture
study groups run by the Chaplaincy, which I especially recommend to you, this year looking
at St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a most successful year in
your studies and encourage you to make the most of your time at university. Receive your
education as a gift. However, remember what St. Thomas More once said, “Put virtue in
the first place and learning in the second.” Every area of study and life requires generous
and faith-filled young people like you to re-Christianise our society. Seek the truth with an
honest and open mind and determine to live in the truth with every ounce of your being,
above all in charity. In this lies true freedom.

I anticipate seeing you on campus during this year and at World Youth Day.

Yours sincerely in Christ,

George Cardinal Pell,
Archbishop of Sydney