Video
“As we approach the feast day of St John the Baptist, the Patron Saint of our Order, it’s a special delight to bring you this greeting from regional Australia.”
We want to take this moment to thank St John people across the world for all their work over the past year.
Transcript
“It’s a special delight to bring you this greeting from regional Australia as we approach the feast day of St John the Baptist, the Patron Saint, of course, of our Order. A special day for all of us around the St John world and St John people will celebrate that and mark that occasion in many and varied ways reminding us of the work that we do in the name of St John.
Our work across the world continues apace: our ambulance work, first aid training, first aid services. Our amazing work done by the St John Eye Hospital Group in the Middle East, in Jerusalem and its satellite hospitals and clinics including Gaza, and the outreach program as we can in the Palestinian territories, is work that is done that has our great admiration and deep respect for those who deliver it.
We still, of course, have the amazing therapy dog programme in Canada, our Mother and Baby Programme in Sub-Saharan Africa last year touching something in the order of 300,000 lives, creating safer pregnancies, safer deliveries, safe and healthy babies and mums, and looking after those babies as they grow into children. It’s an amazing programme and much that we can be proud of.
The Dementia Care Programme in Singapore also continues apace and shows that St John’s care can diversify to other key areas. Our work on disaster in the Caribbean, our rescue corps in Malta and so on, the broad range of activities that St John people conduct in the name of the Order is extraordinary, and we have so much collectively to be proud of.
St John people number about 200,000 across the 44 countries in which we operate and touching the lives of something in the order of five million people a year. This is an amazing record for this international charitable healthcare organisation, and seeing ourselves as a global organisation having global impact, I think, is an inspiring thing for each of us as we do the day to day work in our own jurisdictions.
So from me to each and all of you, thank you, thank you so much for the devotion you give to the order, for the dedicated, skilled, and professional care that you give to our Lords, the Sick and the Poor, who we are here to serve. And also to those who support you—your loved ones who make sure that you’re in good form, good order, and give you the love and support you need to be able to do the work of St John—to them from me also a warm and heartfelt thanks.
Enjoy the feast of St John. Enjoy St John’s Day.
I know that it’s also a time where leadership roles, and to those leaders who are retiring at this occasion, thank you for the leadership and dedication you have given. And to those people who are taking up new roles, be inspired by what you have in front of you—an amazing group of people doing amazing work, and such a privileged position to lead those people into the next term and continuing our great work in serving those who need care.
Thank you so much indeed, and happy St John Day”.
Professor Mark Compton AM GCStJ
Lord Prior
June 2026
