Harris Park: Our Lady Mercy Place aged care home opens with Maronite blessing
A $19.5m aged care centre with a focus on serving the Lebanese Maronite Catholic community in western Sydney has opened a decade after its vision began. Take a look inside.
NSW
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An aged care centre with a focus on serving the Lebanese Maronite Catholic community in western Sydney has opened 10 years after its vision was born.
The Our Lady Aged Care Centre at Harris Park, in the Our Lady of Lebanon precinct, was blessed by Patriarch for Antioch Bechara Boutros Cardinal Rai on Monday and is expected to welcome its first residents in late next month or early November.
There are 85-single rooms over four storeys, two group dining rooms, activity and leisure rooms, an outdoor rooftop area, along with health, physio, hair and beauty therapies at the Alfred St facility, which the previous state and federal Liberal governments funded.
Our Lady Aged Care Centre chairman Barry Barakat said the aim of the facility was to provide an aged care centre for the Lebanese community, just as Italians and Greeks had homes for their seniors.
“In our community it was brought to our attention that there are first and second generation Lebanese, particularly Maronites, who live around the corner from the church, which is their life,’’ he said.
“While their families were very willing to look after the elderly – particularly for those who required high care – it became impossible to do and they preferred to go to aged care centres that have a cultural focus.
“They say as you get older they go back to your youth.’’
That meant incorporating familiar food and architectural elements when designing the facility, which Mercy Health runs with the Maronite community.
Several stuff will also speak Arabic.
As soon as construction began in 2020, Mr Barakat said 65 names were signed on the waiting list ahead of the formal advertising process.
“We were getting badgered by the local community asking ‘When are you going to open’?
“So that tells me we were doing the right thing,’’ he said.
The rooms are all singles with ensuites, with some overlooking Elizabeth Farm and the conspicuous roof of Our Lady of Lebanon Co-Cathedral.
On Monday, in the scorching heat, Bechara Boutros joined other Maronite leaders including Bishop Antoine-Charbel Taraby, to bless the home.
As part of his historic visit from Lebanon, patriarch Boutros will also lead mass for up to 10,000 worshippers at the Ken Rosewall Arena at Sydney Olympic Park on Sunday.
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