QUEENSLAND’S longest-serving priest Fr Lino Valente died aged 93 on September 14.
Newly-retired Stanthorpe parish priest Fr Brian Connolly said Fr Valente was “an exceptional priest” who had left the world all the richer.
Fr Valente was ordained in St Mary’s Church, Warwick, on June 29, 1954.
The much-loved priest baptised hundreds of Granite Belt locals, officiated their marriages and baptised their children.
Ministering closely with Fr Connolly for more than a decade, the priestly brothers spent time together last Thursday, four days before Fr Valente’s death.
Fr Connolly told The Catholic Leader that “Lino lived with one foot on the earth and one in heaven” but he had “gone down-hill rapidly” in terms of his health.
Fr Valente was born in New South Wales.
In 2014, to mark his 60 years as a priest, the then 86-year-old recounted childhood experiences of “Mass in a shed once a month with about a dozen others”.
“We were as poor as church mice, but we were happy,” Fr Valente said at the time.
Artura (Tulia) and Giacomo (Tony) Valente, a tobacco farmer, led a family Rosary every evening, and faith expression was “a normal part of everything”.
First educated by the Sisters of St Joseph, Fr Valente completed junior studies with the Christian Brothers in Warwick and was eventually educated by the Marist Brothers (then at Mt Tamborine).
Senior and priestly studies were completed at Pius XII Provincial Seminary, Banyo (now Holy Spirit Provincial Seminary).
His first priestly five-year appointment was to Dalby, west of Toowoomba, arriving in Stanthorpe on January 23, 1960, although was later sent to Inglewood, Wallangarra, Annerley, Toowoomba and Crows Nest before returning to The Granite Belt “for good” in 1981.
Fr Connolly recounted why Fr Valente was so revered, saying, “There are no barriers between Lino and people”.
Stanthorpe locals Louisa Gasparin and John Harrison were married by Fr Valente on May 20, 2006.
Mrs Harrison described their former Italian pastor as “a beautiful man”.
“He was always kind with lots of charisma, and he always knew how to guide you through the good times and the bad,” she said.
A hospitality area in St Joseph’s School Stanthorpe is named after Fr Valente, with staff and parents this week taking to Facebook to express sympathies at his passing.
Fr Valente often spoke of “friends who are alive and friends in heaven”.
“I look out my unit window and see the cemetery,” he said when still living in Stanthorpe.
“I pray for all my friends.”
Fr Valente’s funeral will be in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Toowoomba, on September 21, at 11am with a bus organised for parishioners to attend from Stanthorpe.
A Vigil Mass will be offered in St Joseph’s Church, Stanthorpe, on September 20 at 6pm.
