Like the writer’s pen and the sculptor’s chisel, experiences and stories fashion who we become.
At the entrance of Siena College stands a statue of St Catherine. The plaque reads that she “walked amid chaos and was a force to be reckoned with”.
At the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Elsternwick, to an audience of young female students, Sarah Saaroni, aged 93, spoke in a gentle voice but with the conviction of her beliefs, that one must not hate but rather seek to understand what can happen when we do not fight for what is right.
She spoke also of the importance of sharing our stories through the spoken and written word and through one’s art.
Catherine of Siena was a woman who walked boldly into situations knowing that she would be opposed, but she had a firm belief that she had to use her voice to bring justice to unjust situations.
At 15 she joined the Dominican sisters as a lay woman, she wrote letters, convinced the Pope to return to Rome from Avignon, and lived her life dedicated to the pursuit of truth.
As a 15-year-old, Sarah walked amid chaos, witnessed atrocities and used every inch of strength to survive on her own without any family members. She considers it her duty to speak of her life in Poland as a young Jewish woman at the start of World War II, so a younger generation can learn.
Read the article by Gemma Di Bari in The Sydney Morning Herald.