From Farmhand To Parish Priest
By Father John Walsh SSC
Columban Father John Walsh tells us of his journey from milking cows on the family farm in New Zealand to being a parish priest in Zambales. He also gives us a glimpse of the pain for himself and his family in this.
The Columbans first came to Wellington, New Zealand, in 1943 and the following year opened a house of studies for first-year seminarians. The publicity given to this event was the first news our family received that this mission-sending group now had a house in our country. We always knew that they had a seminary over in Melbourne, Australia, because a cousin of ours had been the very first New Zealander ever to go there back in the 1920s.