The Portal - Australia edition April 2014 | Page 9

THE P RTAL

April 2014

AU Page 2

Australia Wide
Eliza Frank meets the Editor of Australia Wide, Fr Neil Fryer
EF: Thank you for doing this interview with me. How
did the local news sheet start?
Editor: I was invited to take this project on by the
Ordinary. It certainly has been a bit of a challenge.
With your help and our various other writers, and of
course the clergy and office staff of St Francis Xavier
parish, we seem to get by as a voluntary team.

slotting-in the two Ordinariate publications as LINKS
on the Ordinariate website: www.ordinariate.org.au
I don’t know how many hits the website gets, but
it does provide another avenue for the world to view
OLSC Ordinariate of Australia.

EF: Have you thought of starting up a Blog-site
EF: How many copies of the news sheet go out at each or Twitter or Face-book for the local news sheet
publication?
publication?
Editor: This is an email publication and it’s sent to all Editor: No, I don’t do social media. It’s not my type
the Ordinariate clergy, as well as a large number of lay of communication. I know it goes world wide, but I’m
people.
happy to leave that for other people who like to be
As you know the office secretaries here print about involved with social media, and I wish them well.
50 hard copies for our local church, and I don’t know
how many the secretary of the Mentone Ordinariate EF: What do you see as the main purpose for the
parish print. In fact being an E-mail paper I don’t Ordinariate Publications?
know how many of the other Ordinariate parishes Editor: Australia is such a large and sparsely populated
print off copies or forward copies to their parishioners country. Communication between one region of
or other people. I have placed a Survey Notice in our Australia and another is necessary to help bind the few
Mid-March edition to help discover the circulation Ordinariate parishes and their people together.
numbers.
Our local news sheet: Australia Wide is also a means
The news sheet is now sent mostly to lay people here to get information around the traps. This is especially
in Australia. We send copies to NZ, Canada, USA so for the Ordinary.
and the UK. In Australia a number of Catholic and
We present extracts from the Ordinary’s reports so
Anglican clergy also receive e-mail copies, along with that the lay people are aware of matters that affect them
some Diocesan News Papers such as Kairos.
that may not be circulated by the clergy. For example
So our publication has a wide circulation. We the coming availability of the new Occasional Office
encourage people to forward the news sheet to friends Book, and the new bound Missal with the Ordinariate
and interested people so we really don’t know how Mass.
many other people receive copies. The survey may
The local clergy seem reluctant to share with the
help us get a better understanding of how far and wide world the good things that are happening in their
our news sheet circulates.
parish so we don’t know how much they tell their lay
people.
EF: You have become the Australian co-ordinator or
They seldom reply to our E-mails or send news for
editor of the recently developed Australian Section for us to publish. The lay people are far better in passing
the UK monthly e-mail publication: The Portal.
information along the line. Again, this is why we are
Editor: Yes. This is where we need to have a number doing a survey.
of good writers to produce articles regularly. The series
The Portal, as an international publication, is most
on Ned Kelly has proved very good. The Portal’s Oz important as it puts the Ordinariate on a world wide
section must not be a duplicate of our local news sheet. scale.
We have one or two people who write more serious
It would be wonderful if the USA, Canada and even
articles with a bit of meat in them. A good cross section NZ could become part of that international edition.
of material provides everybody with something to We all have so much to share with each other. Time
read and discuss with others.
will tell.
The Portal of course has a world wide circulation
greater than our small news sheet so the Australian EF: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to do this
interview.
Ordinariate gets that same world wide publicity.
I must thank our Ordinariate Web-Master for Editor: Thank you Eliza, I’m very happy to oblige.