OUR TEAM
Our Parish Priest, Fr David Braithwaite SJ, and Assistant Parish Priest, Fr Dave Ryan SJ, lead our team of staff, parishioners and volunteers in serving the community.
Fr David Braithwaite SJ has been St Canice’s Parish Priest since November 2022. Prior to this, he spent time at Boston and Oxford researching and writing his doctorate in fundamental theology.
Before commencing his doctorate, Fr David was Founder and CEO of The Cardoner Project, the Jesuits’ ministry to university-aged young adults in the heart of the university precinct in Chippendale, in an old bank building at 202 Broadway. This involved a residence for 20 young men, missioning up to 50 volunteers to live and work in Asia, Central America and Africa for 12 months, as well as organising shorter immersions for another 120 young people each year. It also saw Fr David as the licensee of a 90-seat bar and restaurant called The Two Wolves Community Cantina which had up to 200 volunteers on the roster fortnightly, so he is very well-acquainted with volunteer-driven enterprises.
Apart from his degrees in theology and philosophy, Fr David has postgraduate degrees in public policy and international relations. He is also currently also the Chaplain to The Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network in Australia. He sits on several not-for-profit and charitable boards and committees.
Fr Dave Ryan SJ has been St Canice’s Assistant Parish Priest since November 2021. Prior to this, he spent many years in Melbourne after arriving there as a first-year Jesuit in 1976. Though born in Paddington, Sydney, Dave’s hometown is Wagga Wagga – halfway between Sydney and Melbourne.
Fr Dave’s interest in ‘the missions’ took Dave to Hazaribagh in India, where Australian Jesuits started schools in 1951 hoping to help the indigenous people secure their land.
But it was Townsville which opened Dave’s eyes. To nearby Palm Island, Aboriginal people had been sent for minor breaches of a state law about their movement out of their town. Similar experiences of pain and belief with Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory and Western Australia had an enduring effect on Dave.
Back in Melbourne, Dave found reasons to briefly return north, but his new work ‘down south’ connected him to people who had travelled up and down the Hume Highway. Wagga Wagga had a shelter for those travellers, an improvement on their ‘quarters’ under the Hampden Bridge, which spanned the mighty Murrumbidgee River.
Some of these people ventured from the kitchen meals offered under St Canice’s Church. Life’s funny how we connect with people.