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St. Mary's Villa is a two level purpose built Aged Care Facility that offers accommodation for 77 residents. Our facility is staffed by trained and experienced personnel who are committed to providing the best quality service to our residents. Contact
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Admission the following are required Opening and Blessing of the New Building for St Mary's Villa20 June 2010Address by Fr Paul Crowley, Parish Priest Anyone who has been involved with a major building project will be aware of the complexity of the task we have undertaken. Catherine Stofka has acknowledged and thanked the many groups who have contributed to this project but I have asked her to allow me to thank one very important group. This project began more than five years ago when a Parish Project Committee was formed to consider the future needs of the parish and those of St Mary's Villa. The members of that committee have been meeting since March 2005 and have been the key parish team guiding this project. It is not possible this afternoon for me to name all those in the parish who have contributed in so many ways to this project, but I sincerely thank the members of the Parish Project Committee: Chris Reynolds, who welcomed us to this celebration, Trish Bevan, the Principal of St Mary's School, Albert Becerra, Peter Robinson, Tim Stevens, Monica Vaughan, our parish business manager, and Catherine Stofka, the General Manager of St Mary's Villa. Without your generous and very capable support, I can honestly say that this project would not have been possible. In particular, I take this opportunity to acknowledge the tremendous contribution Catherine Stofka has made since taking over the leadership of St Mary's Villa in May 2006. As the General Manager of the Villa, Catherine has also been the executive officer of the Project Committee where she has played a very significant role. It was therefore very appropriate that Catherine offered our thanks to the many groups who have contributed to this project. I also wish to thank all those who have gone before us because they have provided the resources we needed to undertake this project. Catherine mentioned that next month on 7 July we will celebrate the Silver Jubilee of the Villa's opening. Today we are not opening a new aged care facility; we are merely opening a new building. St Mary's Villa is moving but it is maintaining its vision and its commitment to excellence. Two groups have made this project possible: the Villa and the Parish. Firstly the Villa: this very significant project has only been possible because we already have a very well run aged care facility. That is due in no small part to the present and past staff of the Villa, and to the vision and commitment that led this parish community, under the leadership of Fr Bill Delaney, to build St Mary's Villa in 1985. Many people shared Fr Bill Delaney's vision and many others have maintained that vision over the past 25 years. This new building will allow the Villa to continue to provide low and high care accommodation. It will be provided in four houses over three levels. In choosing the names for the four houses we wish to recognize the contributions of those who have gone before us. It is therefore appropriate that the house for the hostel residents on the second level will be known as Delaney. It is also true that St Mary's Villa would not exist without St Mary's Parish. One of the great challenges facing the parish community some 30 years ago was finding a suitable site for the Villa. At that time there was no space available here on the parish site. It was fully occupied by the church, the school and other parish buildings. St Mary's Parish of course has a long history on this site and this land is the other important resource that has made this project possible. The land on which we stand is a very ancient land and long before European settlement, it was cared for by countless generations of the peoples of the Eora nation. To acknowledge their care for this land, the 18 room high care house on level 1 will be called Eora. European settlement in this area began in the 1790s less than ten years after the First Fleet arrived at Sydney Cove. In 1844 land on Parramatta Road was granted for a church and school to be built to meet the needs of a growing Catholic community. The foundation stone for the first church was blessed on 8 th June 1845 and so for the past 165 years a Catholic community has been gathering on this site. St Mary's became a parish in 1870 and Fr Callaghan McCarthy was appointed the first parish priest. The early community purchased more land and in 1874 Archbishop Polding blessed and opened the second Church that faced Broughton Street. In the 1950s it was demolished and a girl's intermediate school was built on its footprint. That school building has now been replaced by the Villa. There has been a school on this site since the early 1850s and in 1883 the Sisters of Charity travelled each day from Ashfield to teach in the school until a convent was built for them. When Fr McCarthy died on 1 st November 1894 from injuries he received in a train crash, the parish community was already well established. But why all this concern with events that happened more than 100 years ago? Well first and foremost because this new aged care facility stands on the site of the second church, the presbytery and the convent. St Mary's Villa therefore is firmly grounded in the history of this parish community. It represents change but also continuity. To recall the long association the Sisters of Charity have had with this community, the high care house on the ground floor will be called Caritas, reflecting the motto of the Sisters – Caritas Christi – the love of Christ. The 1 st floor will have two houses. As I mentioned earlier, the 18 bed house will be called Eora. The secure dementia unit of 13 beds will be called McCarthy after Callaghan McCarthy, the founding parish priest of St Mary's Concord. He and the pioneer generation of parishioners have left us a great heritage. But that heritage was much more than land and buildings. Buildings can be important markers of the different stages of our journey but they are only the tools we use to sustain our mission. This parish is a living faith community that has been growing and changing for the past 140 years and will continue to change in the years to come. St Mary's Villa is first and foremost a work of St Mary's Parish, a living faith community within the Archdiocese of Sydney. In a very real sense, it now has come home. It now stands alongside St Mary's Church, and with St Mary's School, it is an important part of our community. A parish is much more than buildings. Without people our churches, our schools, our hospitals, our nursing homes are only empty shells. And so we look forward to St Mary's Villa becoming an even more active part of our parish community because of its closer link with the church and with the school. We see new opportunities to extend our care for the frail aged and to forge new links between the residents, the children and their families, and all the parishioners who gather here each Sunday. Above all, as we gather in this church this afternoon to ask God's blessing on the residents and staff of St Mary's Villa, we are conscious of our shared Vision and Mission: to make Christ present in our parish, in our local community, and in the world. I have great pleasure now in asking our archbishop, Cardinal George Pell, to lead us in the Rite of Blessing.
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