THE presence of a refugee camp on Nauru is a source of sorrow and bafflement to Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC) Father Adrian Meaney.
Fr Meaney, who is director of the MSC Mission Office Australia, met the refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru at the Vigil Mass for Christmas last month.
“The parish church was full to overflowing but places were reserved for approximately 60 visitors,” he said.
“There were about 1200 inside and outside the Church, and while it was hot and humid, the devotion of the people was very evident and the singing loud and harmonious.”
Fr Meaney said the majority of the refugees who came to the parish church from the camp were from Sri Lanka although there were a few from Iran and Iraq.
Next morning he was taken to the camp where the refugees stay and offered Mass in the dining area.
After Mass, he was shown four Christmas cribs made by the refugees and was asked to “bless the combined efforts of these faithful people”.
The MSC priest said he was deeply touched by the “sincere joy” he found among the camp staff and refugees.
“During the Mass I reminded everyone that many people found themselves in places akin to prison, even Jesus and John the Baptist, and that the search for God must be foremost in their lives,” he said.
“And I reminded them that the very tents they were living in are the same used by our Australian soldiers when they defend the sovereignty of our country.
“But having said that, all during the celebration of Mass, I had a most profound sense of my inability to understand how or why we have such a place as this camp in Nauru.
“In the silence after Communion I was almost reduced to tears.”
The detention centre on Nauru, part of the Howard Government’s “Pacific Solution” to the asylum-seeker issue, was reopened by the Julia Gillard-led Labor Government in August 2012.
The Society of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart has established a community centre on Nauru to support the welfare of asylum seekers held in detention on the island.
Together they have mobilised the local population to assist with acts of kindness to asylum seekers being held there.
Fr Meaney during the past 10 years has supported the mission in Nauru, especially the work of the three Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Sisters and the island’s parish priest MSC Father Tatieru Ewenteang.
Members of his congregation have been ministering on the island for the past 110 years.
It is estimated about 387 asylum seekers are being detained on Nauru with a further 1100 men, women and children expected to arrive in the future.
Asylum-seeker children will be welcome at Nauru’s Catholic primary school and high school.
Fr Meaney has described Nauru’s people as “warm, generous and caring”.
“I was on the island in 2002 when asylum seekers were first sent to Nauru,” he said.
“Some wore no shoes and I will never forget how the women of Nauru without any prompting, saw their bare feet and immediately took off the thongs they were wearing and gave them to the refugees.
“Acts of kindness can do far more than arguments over the right and wrongs and condemning governments and politicians.
“At the end of the day, it is kindness not who is right or wrong that matters.”
Catholics account for 32 per cent of Nauru’s population of 9000.
