ONE parish is more than a handful for any priest, but Fr Kevin O’Neill’s territory extends from Myanmar to Mexico, and many points in between.
As Superior General of St Columban’s Mission Society, Fr O’Neill is leader of missionaries working in 16 countries around the world.
Hailing from Geelong, Victoria, the 52-year-old joined the Columbans in 1984, was ordained in 1992 and hasn’t lived in Australia for 25 years.
He’s worked in Taiwan, Ireland and China, and is now based in Hong Kong.
Part of his role as Superior General is to visit Columban missionaries wherever they’re working.
This month he’s back home, visiting Columbans in Australia and taking time to catch up with relatives and friends.
During a visit to Brisbane, Fr O’Neill, only the second Australian to be Superior General of the Columbans, reflected on his first three years in the role.
He said he took great heart from the words and example of Pope Francis.
“Certainly what Pope Francis had to say in Evangelii Gaudium (Joy of the Gospel) resonates very closely with our experience as missionaries,” he said.
“It’s as though he’s put words to our own experience, and very beautiful words, insightful words, challenging words.
“Also with his recent encyclical, what Pope Francis has said recently, it’s a social and environmental encyclical.
“So what he’s written there in Laudato Si’ also speaks to the experience that Columban missionaries have had for quite a number of years.
“We first became aware of the concern for the Earth as an integral part of mission probably in the 1970s, and then in the late 1990s we became more aware of human contribution to climate change.
“So we’ve had missionaries who have been educating on the whole area of climate change since the late 1990s.”
When first elected in 2012, he said the Columbans had decided one of their aims was to strengthen their engagement in Christian-Muslim dialogue.
Fr O’Neill said that because of the volatile situation in parts of the world today, the Columbans had discerned over a number of years that as a missionary society they needed to help to foster good relations between Christians and Muslims.
“Our missionaries in Pakistan, although they work in a Muslim environment, the opportunity to have a lot of dialogue with the Muslim community is limited, but because of their experience of living among Muslims, when they return to their home countries they have the opportunity to dialogue with Muslims there,” he said.
“For example, here in Australia, we have a Christian-Muslim dialogue centre in Sydney.
“After September 11, our missionaries in Sydney were invited by a lot of the civic groups to run seminars on Islam so that Australians could come to a better understanding of Islam as a religion, and they also facilitated opportunities for Christians and Muslims to come together and get to know each other.
“So we’ve been doing that work now for quite a number of years – in Sydney, in Britain and in Ireland.
“We try in all the countries where we live among people of various religions to strive to develop bridges of mutual understanding and respect between people of other religions.”
Fr O’Neill said the Columbans’ mission included “accompanying those who are on the margins of society and working with them to change the unjust structures that cause them to remain on the margins”.
“So in the countries where we work advocacy for change in structures is a constant challenge,” he said.
“In Asia, human trafficking is a constant problem.”
They are also helping the local Church in Myanmar with the conflict happening in the Kachin state.
Fr O’Neill said Columban missionaries worked there in the past, and had recently sent a new team to Myanmar.
“For about the last four years when the conflict between the government, military forces and local Kachin Independence Army has increased, a lot of the people are now displaced from their villages and they’ve gone into the towns,” he said.
“The Catholic Church and the Protestant churches have set up camps for the people and we offer financial assistance for the education of the children in those camps.”
Fr O’Neill said the decline in the number of Columbans was another challenge.
“Young men in Asia and South America and the Pacific are continuing to want to join us on mission, and lay missionaries (are joining), mostly from those countries,” he said.
Vocations no longer came from western countries.
“So that’s a challenge for us – personnel is going down so we’re handing over some of the work that we have been doing for many years, to the local Church, and that’s good for us too,” Fr O’Neill said.
“It means that we’re called now to work more closely with the local Church.
“Even though it’s a challenge that the number of Columban missionaries is gradually going down, the invitation is to work more closely with other missionary congregations, like-minded organisations, and the local Church.”
Fr O’Neill said he “constantly prayed that young men in Australia might respond to God’s call for them to be Columban missionaries”.
“It’s wonderful that young people now have many options in life, and God will be giving people different choices so I’d encourage those young men who feel that God has presented the choice of being a Columban missionary that they would desire to seriously discern that, and it would be wonderful if more young men would be interested in taking up the call to be Columban missionaries,” he said.
“We have vocations programs to invite young men.
“There are some lay people from the West who are interested in becoming Columban lay missionaries.
“We also have lay missionaries working with us on mission.
“The interest now seems to be young people wanting to volunteer for shorter periods of time. So we also offer that now.
“In recent years we’ve started some programs in some of our countries whereby young people can come and be with us on mission for a shorter period of time – for maybe a few weeks to a year.
“From that experience, that might create a spark if someone feels that they have a calling from God to be a Columban missionary, but at this stage it hasn’t moved in that direction – to go from a short-term mission experience then to a young person discerning a call to be a Columban missionary.”
