Whispers of the Beloved

Whispers of the Beloved

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Adelaide Hills green farmlands during winter season at sunset, South Australia

Nestled in the Adelaide Hills, Father John’s home is warm and inviting. Outside, the trees are dampened by the winter rains. The sky is dark although it is only midday. John sits in a blue armchair by the heater. Green plants surround us in the living room where we sit. Eloquent with words, John at first seems shy. However, I soon realise that he possesses a gentle confidence that is disarming.

As a refugee from Lithuania, John has spent time living in refugee camps. In fact, he was born in one in Germany in 1946. A few years later, when his family migrated to Australia in 1949, they spent a year living in a postwar refugee reception centre in the Adelaide Hills sleeping on straw mattresses. Six decades later in 2010, part of his ministry involved visiting the same facility to support asylum seekers and refugees in immigration detention; he held the weekly Mass and spent time listening to people’s stories. A look of pain sweeps across his face as he tells me that Australia has harsh policies towards refugees.

In 1944 – two years before John was born - his parents fled their homeland, Lithuania, ahead of the advancing Soviet Army. John’s five-year-old sister was left behind. “At the time when my family had to flee Lithuania it happened very quickly,” John says. There was no time for his parents to reach their daughter who was 100 kilometres away with a relative. Thousands of Lithuanians fled in the summer of 1944. In the chaos, his family lost track of their daughter. It was decades before telephones were a common household feature.

His parents, devout Catholics, fled to Germany where they lived in a displaced persons camp. His father spent his days working on the trams, returning to the camp long after the sun had set. “Our camp was managed by the Americans,” John says and was the place in which he was baptized. When the camps for displaced persons were closed, his family were accepted as refugees by Australia. Between 1947 and 1953, the Australian Government assisted over 170,000 displaced persons to migrate to Australia. In line with the White Australia Policy, the initial intakes of displaced persons were people from the Baltic, who were considered to be akin to the British in their appearance and manners.

John and his parents travelled by ship to the far away continent, eventually arriving in Australia in 1949 after spending months out at sea. John never knew his grandparents, aunts or uncles. His father, a university-educated clerk interested in history and politics, worked as a labourer his whole life in Australia. “All plans my father had for his future were overshadowed,” John says as rain crashes against the roof. I look outside at the drenched garden before turning back to John who continues to speak about his father with tenderness: “My dad died young. He was only 65. The stress of the foreign language, foreign culture, his only daughter not with him, having survived World War II, any hopes for his future gone. It must have been stressful.”

It makes me think of my own family who migrated to Australia after the war and the difficulties they faced adjusting to a foreign language, an unfamiliar culture, the relentless hard work to give their children a better life. And the racism.  I ask whether he experienced racism growing up. He didn't. “I suppose it was because we were the same colour as the Anglo Celts,” John says.

Right now, John is reading his father’s diary, penned in Lithuanian, in which he writes about the anguish of being separated from his daughter. His family spent years trying to find her through the Red Cross tracing service. In the early 1950s they finally discovered that she had remained in Lithuania, which at that stage, was firmly under the control of the Soviet Union. His family began writing to his sister, who now was almost a teenager. “It was Soviet times,” John says, “we had to be careful what we wrote.” I ask whether the letters were opened and read by officials during the Soviet era. “We suspected they were read, but we could not prove it,” John replies.

By the time John met his sister for the first time, he was in his thirties. It was the late 1970s. By this time, his father had passed away. John tells me that his sister was granted permission to travel to Australia only if her children stayed behind. “The games they played in those days,” he says referring to the Soviet regime. When they first met, he stared at her for a long time without speaking. His eyes searched her face, where he found traces of himself. “I did not know what it meant to have a sister. It was a special time,” John says smiling. John’s sister saw her mother for the first time after almost four decades. The moment, so anticipated by all, took place in an Australian kitchen, with the kettle boiling in the background and a plate of biscuits assorted in colour and shape sitting at the centre of the table. There was so much to say that it was hard to know what to say. Their father’s absence was palpably present.

Several years later, in the 1980s, John visited his sister in Lithuania where he met his brother-in-law and nieces for the first time. It was still a few years before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, which divided East Germany from West Germany. While the drive for Lithuanian independence was underway, the country was still under Soviet occupation. Excited about meeting his nieces, he bought them Abba records not knowing the trouble this would cause at customs. At the time, the Swedish band was topping the charts worldwide. “Security took the vinyl records away to listen to them,” John says, “there was so much paranoia in Lithuania.”  John travelled to the capital, Vilnius, where he stayed at a hotel. “There was someone sitting on a chair at the end of the hotel corridor keeping an eye on me,” John says. He was watched the entire time, something he says did not make him feel unsafe, only uncomfortable.

John hired a car to travel to his sister’s home which came with a driver and a guide. “The guide, who was forced upon me, spent the entire trip telling me how great the Soviet Union was and all the great things they did. I knew most if it was crap,” John says. When they arrived at his sister’s place, she greeted them and said to the guide, “Okay, I will take care of it from now on.” The guide looked at the driver, the senior of the two, who nodded his head. After visiting his sister, the KGB summoned his brother-in-law to ask what they talked about. “You know what we talked about,” his brother-in-law responded before walking away. “My sister and husband knew how to manage the system, to work within the system of control,” John explains. “The watching, the corruption. They often had to bribe people to get things done, like at a hospital.” Despite the vast distance in geography and upbringing, John and his sister remain close. His face lights up with pride when he speaks about his sibling.

John’s phone rings. He is expected at the hospital later in the afternoon to visit patients, something he does often. He speaks to the caller with a gentle voice, moving from the interview to the call in one unbroken, harmonious move. I look out the window and watch the rain soak the grass. John ends the call and places his phone on a pile of books on the side table.  He returns seamlessly to our conversation.

John decided to enter the seminary at the age of 16 while still a high school student. It was 1964. “They would never allow someone that young to enter now,” he says. “When I arrived, there were some priests who had entered the seminary at 13.” Now, the preference is for seminarians to be older and to have had some life experience John explains. In the 1960s, the seminary attracted a lot of young men. For some, seminary life was a struggle: the discipline, the lack of freedom, the all-male environment.  “It was not healthy,” John says referring to the lack of contact they had with women. “You have to understand what you are choosing and what you are leaving behind.” About a quarter of the young men eventually left.

I ask why he decided to ordain. “Friendship really,” he says smiling. “My friend, Oliver, entered the seminary.” John and Oliver both completed their final year of high school at the seminary and then studied Latin, Greek, theology, scripture, and philosophy. The first seven years as a seminarian is the discernment period, John explains, the time when you listen carefully to whether you are being called by God to be a priest. “During those seven years, I was not absolutely certain, it was a matter of exploring, discerning as I went along,” John says.

While tending carefully to his inner world, externally, John was navigating the changes sweeping across the church as a result of the Second Vatican Council – which was already underway in Rome by the time John entered the seminary. It was an exciting time for a young priest in training. “We were the first generation to go through the Second Vatican Council,” John says. Growing up, John had only ever heard Mass in Latin. The Second Vatican Council would change all that: for the first time, Mass would be performed in English, a language parishioners understood. The priests removed their clerical collars which was “quite radical," John says, adding that he admired the “older priests who could adapt so quickly.” And while he felt there was more spaciousness especially for creativity, he could also feel the uncertainty as the older priests and hierarchy had to learn to let go. “The status of the priesthood and parish changed a lot,” John says. “There was a lot of clericalism before Vatican 2, meaning the priest was in charge, loved and respected, distant from the community. It was top down.”

John left the seminary in the 1970s, an era abundant with change. South Australia was being led by Don Dunstan, a progressive, charismatic premier who transformed the state and influenced the nation. Dunstan’s impact on social policy – in arguably Australia’s most conservative state at the time – was profound: his championing of the Racial Discrimination Act, equal opportunity and sex discrimination laws, the first land rights legislation recognising native title, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, all of them firsts in South Australia and subsequently followed nationally. Beginning in the 1970s, John spent the first two decades of his life as a priest working in the media.  He worked in radio where he wrote scripts and produced faith-based programs that reached thousands of people, set up the Archbishop Media Awards and later worked in Church communications. “It was exciting, I felt called to this work,” John says. However, all this changed as ordination numbers plummeted. “Unfortunately for me, the shortage of priests meant that I had to go back to working in parishes,” he says.

Outside the grounds of the seminary, with their peaceful gardens and communal living, life was radically different; and one thing John was not prepared for were the doubts. John experienced more doubts after leaving the seminary than when he was a priest in training. Part of it, he explains, was suddenly being around women after being surrounded by only men. “I emerged in the community in the 1970s: a time of sex, drugs and rock and roll,” John says laughing. At one stage, the desire to marry and have a family felt like a strong yearning; so much so that he decided to talk to a senior priest.  Much older than him in years, the priest hardly said a word while John spoke about his desires, his yearnings, his doubts about being a priest. “I think [the priest did that] so I could sort through it all without him giving me the answers,” John recalls. “I really got down to: where am I most happy, most at peace, most fulfilled?” The answer to that question, he discovered, was being a priest in ministry. “This doubt-filled period built up over a number of years and came to a head, and thank God, I was prompted to go and talk to someone about it rather than just leave the priesthood,” John says. “I think it takes so much courage to leave.” Part of what prompted the doubt was the unknown, John explains, as he had never been in a romantic relationship. "The unknown of the sexual person, and how that would be integrated into who I am and how I relate to other people. Along with the natural attractions that come with being human.” John speaks openly, unguarded, with no hint of shyness.

As a young priest, John remembers a much older priest telling him that sexual attractions do not get any easier with age. “He was right,” John smiles. I ask whether he thinks clergy are adequately trained to deal with these emotions such as sexual attractions and falling in love. “The training is probably better now,” John responds. “People ordain later now so they have a much wider experience of life, sex, relationships and work. We only have seven young priests in training at the moment so it’s hard to know whether the training has improved.”

Outside, the rain has temporarily abated. Two sulphur crested cockatoos fly high into a tree, before settling onto a branch and screeching into the skies. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, John spent a lot of time gardening; his roses have now all been pruned. I ask how his experience has been during the pandemic. He tells me it has been okay. He strikes me as someone who uses time wisely, someone who is fluent in the mastery of productivity. Perhaps a legacy of working in the media where each day was driven by inflexible deadlines.

For John, it is important the Church is authentic and in fact sees this as one of the biggest challenges for the institution. “We need to be authentic to the gospel, authentic to the person of Jesus and who He is about. We shouldn’t be afraid about speaking out on issues,” he explains. I ask about his views on the Church’s response to child sexual abuse – an issue where the Church has been guilty of silence. “The Church has not handled it well,” he responds. “We have been let down by the guilty priests but also the bishops who did not respond appropriately or well or in time.” John continues to speak, and I don't interrupt. “They were moving priests from one place to another. That was the way they did it on those days. They did not get it. It is hard to imagine how the abuse victims are coping with what happened.”

I ask about the community reactions and whether there has been any hostility towards priests. He pauses and looks toward the garden. “The Church has lost trust,” John begins. “What a few priests do is not what all priests do. It was hurtful to hear things that were said on talk back radio. There are however the faithful that really feel for the priests, the innocent ones. We are victims too as we are labelled as all being guilty. One priest was walking down West Terrace and got spat at.” The recruitment process of priests has changed, he tells me. “There is more psychological testing, [the process] is more rigorous,” something John thinks is very positive.

As half the population are currently excluded from applying to the priesthood, I ask about his views on the ordination of women. “I think priests would need to marry first,” John says, “to get people comfortable with that idea first, before women ordain.” He reminds me that up until the 12th century, Catholic priests were permitted to marry. “The Eastern church can marry. Anglicans can marry. For us it is more difficult. We are a worldwide church, with many cultures affecting how it operates,” John says.

Over the past six decades of his ministry, John has witnessed transformative change – in the Church, in the country in which his parents were forced to flee, in Australia.  Also constantly evolving is his relationship with God. John’s desire to be in step with God’s will – a desire which has remained constant since his teenage years – drives his way of being in the world. For John, his discernment of how he is being called by his Beloved is a journey unencumbered by the rigidities of a right or wrong path; rather, it is an ongoing, open-ended journey with no wrong turns. Perhaps this flexibility is inspired by his love of the mystics and his admiration for their fearless approach to delving into their own darkness where John explains there is seemingly no “touch of God.” Now approaching retirement, which for a Catholic priest is 75, I ask John what the happiest moments of his ministry has been. His happiness is woven into relationships with others: “When I go to bed at night, I am always happiest when I have been with somebody that day, even if it was a grieving family.”

*Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

About the Author

Toni Palombi

Toni Palombi’s published work has appeared in the Guardian, Roads and Kingdoms, Emrys Journal, Studies in Oral Histories Journal, The Write Launch among others. She holds a Master of Philosophy (Creative Writing + Oral History).