Foggy dawn in Warrnambool, VIC, Australia. - Photo: canva.com/Zoya_Avenirovna
In July 2022, I had the good fortune to spend a month serving as the third member of the local team of priests in Warrnambool, VIC, Australia. Frs John Fitzgerald and John Corrigan, both Ballarat Diocesan priests, had the responsibility of starting and establishing the new mass roster for the new Star of the Sea parish cluster. My help was needed for the month of July while the diocesan team waited for the arrival in early August of Deacon Bill Lowry who was to be ordained priest at the end of that same month. Previously, the new cluster parish had been five separate and diverse parishes: Saint Joseph’s in Central Warrnambool, Our Lady Help of Christians in East Warrnambool, St Pius X in West Warrnambool, the Church of the Infant Jesus in Koroit, and St Patrick’s Church in Port Fairy.
Traditionally, Warrnambool and the South-West Coastal Region of Victoria have always been recognized as one of the most Catholic areas of Victoria, having received large numbers of Irish immigrants in former centuries - one of whom was my great, great grandfather, Eugene Owen Flannery, who settled in Port Fairy in the 1840s. However, with the rise of secularism, both the numbers of Christians and the priests to serve them have diminished greatly. According to a July 2nd, 2022 article by Ben Silvester in the Standard newspaper of Warrnambool called “A South West Snapshot,” the number of people in the Warrnambool area who previously registered themselves as Christians in the past had dropped from 73% in the 2001 National Census to just 51% in the 2021 census. Moreover, those claiming to have no religion in particular had increased from 15% in 2001 to 43% in the recent census.
My main task was to celebrate Mass in a different community of the cluster most days of the week while celebrating some baptisms in St Joseph’s Church on Saturdays. This meant a lot of travelling and constant adaptation to the unique styles of each of the five communities. I realised that the changes that were being introduced were indeed a challenge for both the priests and the laity as they adapted to becoming a single parish, when previously they had been five individual parishes, each with its own priest.
For example, one Friday after the scheduled Mass in Koroit, a member of the community expressed his frustration with his fellow Catholics, saying how disappointed he felt when many of the Catholics in the town had recently chosen to go to the local football match instead of participating in an important community Mass on the same day. It was obvious to me that many of the faithful were struggling with what they saw as the diminishment of the Church’s influence and presence as much as the clergy were.
While I did my best to help launch the new Mass roster, I could see a day when even maintaining the present level of sacramental services might not be possible.
What then? I remembered my time in Huandoy Parish in Lima, which had 110,000 people, mostly Catholic. Even with three priests, we never managed to celebrate a fixed Sunday Mass in each of the sixteen chapels in the parish. Instead, we consulted with the communities, celebrating Sunday Masses in eight of the communities one Sunday, then in the other eight the following Sunday, and trained lay-leaders to lead the Sunday liturgies in our absence. I could see a day when community-led liturgies could become a more common feature of Church life in Australia.
In fact, in my short time in Warrnambool I saw many signs of hope. One very vital sign I evidenced came in the form of individual Christians who were willing to promote ministry both in and out of the Church. One man from the community of Our Lady Help of Christians was enthusiastically trying to form new and younger groups that prayed the Rosary together. Another lady was active in supporting an organization called “The Tasty Plate”, which helped train people with disabilities in culinary skills that would help them gain employment. Another female parishioner had pioneered the development of courses of Clinical Pastoral Education to help with the training of ministers, both lay and ordained, from all the Christian churches to accompany the sick and incarcerated in the hospitals and prisons of the South West of Victoria. Inviting mission-minded individuals to form mission teams could indeed be a way forward for the Church in these increasingly secular times.
One incident that filled me with hope occurred when I met a lady called Shaz in a country pub where we were celebrating the baptism of her nephew. Shaz was full of happy memories of former times when her community had a resident priest who was famous for visiting all the families in the local area for a pre-prandial drink after Mass on Sundays. I was impacted by Shaz’s deep nostalgia and positive love for the humanness of the Church. This happy experience brought home to me what I knew to be true from my experience in both Chile and Peru: that sacramental absence does not necessarily mean estrangement from the Church. Instead, it can mean a new beginning of our way of being with the Church if we but trust that God is with us on our journey.
Columban Fr George Hogarty lives and works in Australia.
Listen to "Hope for a new beginning"
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