Very recent trip for the funeral in Brisbane and sight-seeing at Point Danger - Photo: Fr Warren Kinne SSC
John Momis is a very well-known figure in Papua New Guinea. More recently, for the ten years prior to 2020, he was President of Bougainville. But for Columbans of his age group, we studied together in St. Columbans, Turramurra in 1969. In 1970 John was ordained a priest in Bougainville and remained so until 1993 when he received a dispensation to leave the priesthood and he married Elizabeth.
The 1970s was the time that PNG was in transition to become an independent and sovereign country. This happened in 1975 but prior to this John was appointed to the committee that was given the task of writing the Constitution of Papua New Guinea. He effectively chaired this group and is very proud of the Constitution that they produced. He considers it a “well kept secret” and that few organizations or people in PNG have ready access to the vision.
I met John recently when he came to Australia for the funeral of an elderly woman who was the wife of someone who taught him in Primary School in Buin. We thus had the chance to meet up again and talk about old times.
A meal with John Kaputin who studied with John Momis in Rockhampton for High School. John Momis was at St Brendans and John Kaputin at the Rockhampton Boys Grammar School. John Kaputin was also on the Constitutional Committee and was very prominent as a seventh Secretary - General of the African, Caribbean and the Pacific group of States. - Photo: Fr Warren Kinne SSC
On his return to PNG John delivered an address to the Catholic Professionals Society of PNG. Here he stated how when they drafted the Constitution, they had a dream to create a just democratic society. But this society would have a worldview with an eschatological dimension emanating from the social teachings of Christianity. It was a vision based on the human being as the image of God with rights and responsibilities. They were committed to promote social justice, integral human development, equality and participation. Of course, to John’s dismay, the vision and the reality of politics in PNG have often been at odds.
It was a pleasure to meet up with John once again; to see his practical Catholic faith ever to the fore; and to observe that even as we age the task of participating in life-matters continues.
Columban Fr Warren Kinne lives and works on the Gold Coast.
Warren, Peter Doyle and Momis in 1969 in Bundaberg before John’s ordination (and mine too) and with Peter Doyle who later became a Columban missionary in Peru. - Photo: Fr Warren Kinne SSC