My name is Peter Doherty.

I am a third-year seminarian for the Diocese of Rockhampton. My journey to the seminary is best described as “an early sense of a vocation, but long delayed.”

I grew up in Bundaberg where my grandparents and family ran sugar cane farms for many years. My own parents were teachers, and they still reside in Bundaberg. When I was very young, we lived in Gladstone for two years. I attended St Mary’s Primary School, South Bundaberg and then attended Shalom College, the local Catholic high school.

After high school, I studied at The University of Queensland and resided at St Leo’s College. After graduation, I worked in a variety of executive and management roles in the finance and then later, construction, industries. During this time, I worked closely with many people from a broad cross-section of cultural and national backgrounds, including a period where I was given the opportunity to work in India.

I have been involved in many diverse aspects of Parish Life, including RCIA, Parish Pastoral Council, Hospitality Ministry and various other local ministries. Prior to entering the Seminary, I was on the Board of the St Leo’s College Foundation, which offered university scholarships for young people across Queensland, including the Diocese of Rockhampton.

I have been blessed to have had positive encounters with Diocesan, Jesuit, Franciscan and Carmelite spiritualities. An increasing awareness of the early lives of many saints, but especially St Augustine, has assisted me in appreciating the context and contours of my own narrative and life journey.

I greatly enjoyed my visits in 2018 to the communities of Longreach, Barcaldine, Blackall, Emerald, Tambo, Aramac, Clermont, Moranbah, Mackay, Sarina, Farleigh Walkerston, Finch Hatton, Mirani and Marian. My recent pastoral placements in Yeppoon and Bundaberg, as well as my visits to Rockhampton, Gladstone and Baffle Creek have further served to impress upon me the unique challenges and opportunities for mission in different parts of the Diocese. It has been for me wonderful to recognise the gifts, talents and faith which are generously shared across so many communities. It is for me a happy reminder that there are as many paths to God in our Diocese as there are people. It is the generous sharing of gifts, talents, time and faith that binds, knits and stitches our own journeys into the common Diocesan and wider Australian journey which is shaped and moved by the presence of the Holy Spirit among us.

I am humbled to have been considered and now appointed to be a Plenary Council Delegate for the Diocese of Rockhampton. My hope is that the Plenary Council serves not simply, or only, as a vehicle which looks at the exterior procedural architecture and structures of the Church in Australia. To listen to what the Spirit is saying to the Church in Australia must include that discernment as to what the Spirit is saying to us in the sanctuary of our own hearts. I therefore also hope that the Plenary Council becomes a catalyst for the renewal of our own interior, personal relationship with the God who companions us on our journey. It is this renewal, to be first ourselves evangelised, or, re-evangelised, which having in us begun, becomes that nourishment to fuel and propel the mission which all of us can share with all those others whom we encounter, going out to the spiritual, social, economic, relational and pedagogical peripheries of our communities.

I welcome your engagement with me and the broader Plenary Council process as we head towards the first session in October 2021.

May God bless you, your families and all those dear to you.