Archdiocese of Melbourne Release: Wednesday 1 April 2015
Natasha Marsh, Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne
POLICE and fire crews are investigating a suspicious fire at St Mary’s Catholic Church on Foster Street in Dandenong.
It is thought two separate fires were lit in the church, one at the altar and the other in the storeroom where the vestments are kept. Emergency services were called at 2.30am.
It took the team of nearly 40 firefighters over an hour to control the blaze. The fire caused $250,000 worth of heat and smoke damage to the building.
Thankfully, the church was not destroyed. Parishioners of St Mary’s will attend Easter Masses and services in a makeshift hall at the nearby St Mary’s school.
This is the third fire of its kind to occur in three days.
The heritage-listed church of St James in Brighton was almost destroyed after a fire raged during the early hours of Monday 30 March. Although over 20 fire trucks and 80 firefighters battled the blaze, they were only able to save the façade of the 124 year-old building.
Just hours after the fire at St James, detectives were called to St Mary’s Church in St Kilda East, they were called to investigate a singed door. It is believed the fire that caused this was deliberately lit between Sunday night and Monday morning.
There has been speculation that the three fires are linked. Although, this has not been confirmed by authorities all three fires are being treated as ‘suspicious’ by the police.
Shane Healy, Director of Media and Communications for the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, said that until more is known it is ‘best not to speculate’.
‘We would like to do what we can to allow the police to get on with their jobs.’Shared from Archdiocese of Melbourne
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has appealed to the international community to take swift and decisive action to avoid more tragedies of migrants seeking a better life.
His heartfelt cry to the world came following news of the sinking of yet another boat carrying migrants in the Mediterranean Sea in which it is feared 700 people may be dead.The Pope was speaking on Sunday morning after the Regina Coeli prayer in St. Peter’s Square, where he told tens of thousands of people “They are men and women like us, our brothers seeking a better life, starving, persecuted, wounded, exploited, victims of war. They were looking for a better life".
Faced with such a tragedy – Pope Francis continued - I express my most heartfelt pain and promise to remember the victims and their families in prayer.
"I make a heartfelt appeal to the international community to react decisively and quickly to see to it that such tragedies are not repeated," he said, before asking the crowd to pray "for these brothers and sisters".
The latest disaster happened when a boat carrying migrants capsized off the Libyan coast overnight, in one of the worst disasters seen in the Mediterranean migrant crisis.
Just Saturday Pope Francis joined Italian authorities in pressing the European Union to do more to help the country cope with rapidly mounting numbers of desperate people rescued in the Mediterranean during journeys on smugglers' boats to flee war, persecution or poverty.
While hundreds of migrants took their first steps on land in Sicilian ports, dozens more were rescued at sea. Sicilian towns were running out of places to shelter the arrivals, including more than 10,000 in the week ending Saturday.
Since the start of 2014, nearly 200,000 people have been rescued at sea by Italy.
Italy says it will continue rescuing migrants but demands that the European Union increase assistance to shelter and rescue them. Since most of the migrants want to reach family or other members of their community in northern Europe, Italian governments have pushed for those countries to do more, particularly by taking in the migrants while their requests for asylum or refugee status are examined.