Catholic Religious Australia (CRA), the peak body representing Leaders of 150 Religious Institutes in Australia, today released a resource to assist Australians to consider critical issues that have bearing on Australia’s forthcoming Federal Election.
Titled “Artisans of Democracy”, the resource consists of a ten-page discussion in CRA’s Justice publication Just Now (Issue No.18, April 2025) which links to four Position Papers, each addressing a key justice issue, namely Climate Change and the Environment, First Australians, Cost of Living, and Refugees.
In commending the resource to voters, CRA President, Br Gerard Brady CFC, highlighted the importance of Catholics engaging conscientiously with the political process with informed, discerning minds and faithful hearts sensitised to the common good. “We hope this resource assists to unpack key principles from the perspective of Catholic Social Teaching and models their application to four areas of contentious public debate, with a clear eye to the plight of vulnerable people,” he said. “In the spirit of John Paul II’s encyclical Centesimus Annus which was written on the centenary of Leo XIII's historic Rerum Novarum, Pope Francis reminds us that ‘a community that knows how to give a voice to the voiceless is what we all need.’”
CRA National Executive Director, Anne Walker, concurs. “As Australian Catholics, we must be able to engage wholeheartedly as thinkers, believers and actors in the society in which we live. The CRA Position Papers present an example of such engagement and are offered as stimulus to the process of participation. How an individual discerns and ultimately votes, of course, is determined by the dictates of one’s conscience.”
The 2025 Federal Election comes at a time of obvious polarisation and volatility in the public square and in the global sphere. The title of the CRA Election resource is inspired by the words of Pope Francis who has called the faithful to be “artisans of democracy and contagious witnesses of participation” (Address On the Occasion of the 50 Social Week of Italian Catholics, July 2024). Democracy, he observed, is facing significant challenges in the world. All Christians bear a responsibility for social transformation and for creating the conditions that allow everyone to be active contributors to their society. “For at the heart of politics,” says Pope Francis, “is participation... taking care of the whole, not just charity, but taking care of the whole.”
Click here to download the CRA Federal Election 2025 Just Now
Click here to download the CRA Position Statement on Climate and the Environment.
Click here to download the CRA Position Statement on First Australians.
Click here to download the CRA Position Statement on the Cost of Living Crisis.
Click here to download the CRA Position Statement on Refugees and People Seeking Asylum.
Download the media statement here
MEDIA ENQUIRIES:
Corinne Fagueret | M: 0421 831 889 | E: cpc@catholicreligious.org.au