Paul Stenhouse MSC, posthumous award of Order of Australia medal
For more on the life and ministry of Paul Stenhouse, see the book of memories and tributes to him, A Distinctive and Distinguished Missionary of the Sacred Heart with contributions from Michael Fallon, Tricia Kavanagh, Karl Schmude, James Murray, Michael Wilding, John Madden, Wanda Skowronska, James Franklin, Christopher Dawson and friends who worked in the Annals Office, migrant friends around Sydney.
Copies from Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, phone (03) 9329 6963.
Priest-scholar one of more than 800 honoured in 2021
Catholic Weekly Report
The extraordinary contributions of Missionary of the Sacred Heart priest Fr Paul Stenhouse to the Church, scholarship, journalism and migrant families across Sydney and the country was recognised with an Australia Day award more than a year after his death.
Fr Stenhouse was one of 845 Australians whose decades of service were recognised in the Australia Day 2021 Honours List, in which posthumous awards are rare.
The founder of Annals Australasia magazine, former chairman of Aid to the Church in Need Australia and international expert on Semitic cultures and languages, was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for his service to the Catholic Church in Australia.
Fr Paul Stenhouse pictured in 2015 upon receiving an Australian Catholic University honorary doctorate.
Author of a new biography of Fr Stenhouse, Wanda Skowronska, said she was “delighted” to hear that he had made the list of honours.
“It is recognition so richly deserved by this pioneering scholar, journalist and compassionate priest,” Ms Skownronska said.
“He saw beneath the surface of things, and expressed his supple perceptiveness in all his writings, particularly the journal Annals, the longest lasting journal in Australian history. He was outstanding, kind and a humble Australian; a true ‘national treasure’.”
Current chair of ACN Australia Terry Tobin paid tribute to the many-faceted life of the quiet-natured yet extraordinarily gifted priest.
“Fr Paul Stenhouse was of course a scholar, at home in Arabic and semitic languages (including Samaritan), who had taught at Sydney University,” Mr Tobin said.
“He was a learned editor who produced Annals, the journal of Catholic Culture, for 50 years before signing off on its very last print edition just before he died in 2019. He was a Christian humanitarian who for more than 20 years was president of Aid To The Church In Need Australia in which time he oversaw, with the Collignon family, the raising of more than $60 million to assist priests and religious in building or maintaining hospitals, schools, seminaries and convents all around the world.
“Above all he was a priest, a true country man, an Australian whose vision reached far beyond our shores. It is good that we honour him and those like him who are such great examples for all of us.”
