Regalia with record of service to match

16 Nov 2012

By Robert Hiini

Archbishop Timothy Costelloe SDB received a mantle of different kind from former Perth Archbishop Barry Hickey on November 4.

In a two-hour-long ceremony at St Joseph’s Church in Subiaco, Archbishop Costelloe was instituted by Archbishop Emeritus Hickey as the new Grand Prior of the Western Australian Lieutenancy of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre.

Archbishop Costelloe was joined in investiture as an Ecclesiastical Knight by Parish Priest of Holy Cross, Hamilton Hill, Fr Nicholas Nweke and Assistant Parish Priest of Our Lady of the Mission, Whitford, Fr Bonaventure Echeta, both of whom are originally from Nigeria.

The number of lay Knights and Ladies, who commit to fund-raise for Christians and sacred sites in the Holy Land, also increased.

Paul Alexander, Raymond Tan and Vincent Tan were invested as Knights. Clare Alexander and Bridget Stone were invested as Ladies.

A fund-raising dinner followed the ceremony in which the Ladies of the order auctioned off a quilt made by one of the members and her daughter, valued at around $1,500 dollars.

The event followed a Knights and Ladies barbeque several weeks ago in which $1,400 was raised.

“We’re not just about the regalia. We are actually a group of people who fund raise and who help people in the Holy Land,” Ladies Helen Medina and Mary Haydock told The Record.

“We’re a service group that supports the Latin Patriarch [His Beatitude Fouad Twal] who has to look after the schools, the churches, the seminaries, the seminarians, the homes for the elderly.

“[He has] an awesome job and you can imagine how hard that is.” The Western Australian lieutenancy has supported Al Aliyah school in Ramallah for many years, which tutors students from different faiths and ethnic backgrounds.

At the beginning of their involvement the school was in desperate need of basic goods such as chairs, desks and pens. More recently, Knights and Ladies were given the option of donating the funds to pay for specific items, with microscopes for the school’s science lab, being the most popular item.

The Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre is one of two such organisations that fund-raise and contribute large sums of money to fund social services and apostolates throughout the world.

Last month, the Holy See’s Secretariat of State issued a statement clarifying that only two Equestrian Orders were officially recognised by the Holy See – the Knights and Ladies of the Holy Sepulchre and the other Order, the Knights of Malta.