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.

First aspirant

Without telling any of us, my younger brother, William, wrote to the priest in charge at Wellington to enquire about the procedure for becoming a Columban Missionary. It so happened that our father’s name was also William, so when the reply to my brother’s enquiry arrived, our father quite naturally opened the letter. Now, as the saying goes, ‘the cat was out of the bag’ regarding my brother’s interest in being a missionary priest. However, his health was never robust and he failed the medical test. He changed his mind and went instead to the diocesan seminary, as he really felt called to be a priest.

Then it was me

I was two years older than William and my job was to help my father on the farm by milking cows. My brother’s departure for the seminary in early 1944 made me ask myself seriously if perhaps I too could be doing something different to help God and the Church, apart from milking cows. I went along and had a chat with our parish priest who encouraged me to pray about what missionary priesthood might mean for me as a lifetime commitment.

I did this and then phoned Fr James McGlynn, the Columban in charge at the house near Wellington. Years earlier I had done all my secondary schooling, also near this city. Now I wanted to know what I would need to do in order to enter the following year in 1945. His answer blew me away when he said: ‘But there is no need to wait until next year. Come on down now!’ It seems he knew about me from another Columban who used to live near us.

Sooner than expected

I explained that it wasn’t quite that easy; that I would need to speak with my father because of the cows. Making such an arrangement proved to be a minor problem. The big hurdle was my mother who said she would be very happy for me to be a priest, as long as it was in New Zealand! I convinced her that leaving to live abroad was a long way off and at the moment all I wanted was her blessing on my going down to Wellington.

I started the road

This I did in Holy Week in early March and found myself with two others who had arrived a couple of weeks earlier for the first year of training. This was mainly a lightly-structured time with an emphasis on spiritual formation that included, apart from chapel activities, studying the life of Christ, some classes in Latin and also a very useful daily period given to memory training. We also did a 30-day retreat. Our chances for sport were limited since there were only three of us, so we did a lot of walking together and also worked in the spacious grounds and gardens of the property.

Happy to go

As of 1945 the rest of my studies were done near Melbourne. World War II had just ended and as regular shipping was not yet back to normal it was impossible for us to travel to Ireland for our study of theology in the Columban seminary there, which had always been the pre-war practice. So we went to the nearby diocesan seminary and that was our home for the next four years until ordination in 1950. The three of us who had begun in 1944 were now just two, Father John Griffin and myself, and we were both delighted and excited to receive our missionary assignment in October 1950 – the Philippines!

We finished our studies, had a holiday with our families while awaiting our transport and then sailed off on a slow cargo boat to Manila, knowing that it would be 1958 before we would be due for home leave. We arrived in May 1951 and learned that the Columbans had just undertaken a new mission in Zambales so both of us were added to their number.

The most difficult price

Later that same year, 1951, my younger brother was ordained back in New Zealand but sadly I never saw him as a priest. A fatal illness had been with him for most of his seminary days and he died in 1954. I attended neither his ordination nor his funeral. Nor was I able to be there when my mother died in 1956. My absence from these family events was the most difficult price that God ever asked me to pay for my missionary priesthood. That was fifty years ago and of course things are much different nowadays, especially in regard to Columbans and home leave.

During 54 years of priesthood I’ve had various assignments in Zambales, in Australia and back to Zambales. Finally in 2000 I returned to New Zealand to live out my days  –  back on the same property where I began my life as a Columban sixty years ago.

I have an endless supply of happy memories to occupy me and so many reasons for offering thanks to God. Chief among these is the good supply of local Filipino priests and the fact that our Diocese of Iba, Zambales, no longer needs the help of the Columbans. This is the goal we were always working towards and when the time came for me and others to return to our homelands, it was with a sense of ‘mission accomplished.’ Earlier missionaries before us, notably Augustinians and SVDs, had tilled and watered and we, under Columban Bishop Henry Byrne, planted. Today God gives a good harvest of vocations. Praise him!

Father John Walsh briefly mentions his pain in not being able to attend the ordination of his brother and the funerals of the same brother and of their mother. His experience echoes that of St Paul as he left Ephesus. After this discourse, Paul knelt down with them and prayed. Then they all began to weep and threw their arms around him and kissed him. They were deeply distressed because he had said they would never see him again. And they went with him even to the ship.

(Acts 20: 36-38 Christian Community Bible translation)