[11] In 1908, two students at St John's Theological College decided to form a religious community, the Association of the Divine Call, with three-year vows of celibacy.
The establishment of the Association received a lukewarm response from Archbishop Lowther Clarke, and, after ordination to the diaconate in 1910,[14] the members of the community went their own ways.
Tucker went on to found the Brotherhood of St Laurence in 1930 and the Food for Peace Campaign in 1953 (which eventually became Oxfam Australia).
In 1918, at the end of WWI, three army chaplains resolved to form a religious community; and in that year Radford offered them the ruins of Bishopthorpe.
[21] The sequence of names is a logical one in theological terms for Kelly: from the Divine Call whilst as an ordinand, through the experience of Crucifixion as an army chaplain in the trenches, on to the Resurrection when learning to live the religious life, and through to the Ascension when professed in his own community.
Kelly died in 1926, aged 42, at the St John the Evangelist home for boys in Canterbury, Victoria,[26] having been ill for a long time.
[31] The Community had a large and striking outdoor crucifix, cast in bronze by the Belgian sculptor, Aloïs de Beule, and located within a calvary garden.
The CHN ran a girls' home in Goulburn, and, on the closure of the House of Ascension, the Community gave de Beule's crucifix to them.