THE sound of banging awoke Irish Spiritan Father Pat McGeever early one morning in his Woorabinda presbytery in Queensland’s central west.
It was coming from the floor in the centre of his room. In the darkness, he crept across to the light switch and flicked it on in time to see a board in the centre of the room being pushed up.
“What a surprise,” Fr Pat said in his gentle brogue. “It was a young local lad, a drug addict, about 18 trying to break in.
“He must have got a terrible fright to see a face, a white one at that, staring at him; he took off like a rocket.”
What happened next illustrates the extraordinary work of evangelisation the Irish missionary priest carried out in the often-turbulent township.
It also explains the widespread grief felt in the township and beyond when the dedicated priest recently left after 14 years to retire in his beloved Ireland.
“Next morning I was in church praying for him,” Fr Pat said. “I heard a noise behind me and looked around. It was the youth.
“He asked whether he could talk to Jesus with me and say how sorry he was for breaking into God’s house – we had a quiet time of prayer together about 40 minutes before he left.”
Fr Pat told this and other stories in late October shortly before he was to celebrate his final Mass in Woorabinda.
There’s no space here to record details of his carrying home a drunken woman found lying at the town roundabout who later returned asking would he mind carrying her to the local grocer shop.
Or of the deathbed wedding when the dying woman came out of unconsciousness to complain the groom had put the ring on the wrong finger.
Rob Parer, who had known Fr Pat in Papua New Guinea, told The Catholic Leader of his impending departure.
“It would be a tragedy for this guy to sneak out without a fanfare but of course that is the way of this legend,” Rob’s email said.
“I knew him for all the years he was parish priest at Fatima Mission Station inland from Aitape West Sepik. Pretty lonely station as no airstrip.
“Sr Cecilia Prest and he were a wonderful team at Fatima and then at Woorabinda, 176km south-west from Rockhampton.
“He never seeks the limelight so if you want to do an article about this unique pastor/saint it may be difficult.”
Sr Cecilia, Fr Pat’s fellow missionary at Woorabinda since 2002, had then prepared the way for the interview with this most reluctant of interviewees. She explained he would not say much but occasionally “the flood gates would open”. Sr Cecilia convinced him it was important to share his experiences before he left Australia.
Fr Pat said his arrival in the ex-Government Aboriginal reserve town of Woorabinda in 1999 wasn’t too promising.
The first Sunday Mass he celebrated in St Martin de Porres Church was attended by “two, maybe three, of the locals”.
As the first priest to live in the town, the soft-spoken missionary faced many challenges. He had his house broken into and trashed several times in his early years at Woorabinda. One occasion Fr Pat vividly recalls was in November.
“My bishop Brian (Heenan) contacted me, very concerned and all,” he said.
“Then the police came around and asked whether I wanted to press charges.
“’No. Dear God, no,’ I told the police.
“‘Mine wasn’t the only one’.”
Fr Pat got a card not long after this from the ringleader. Inside the card “written in his best scrawl” was a message: “Dear God, please have a happy Christmas.”
A loving and low-key approach to his ministry typified Fr Pat’s approach.
“Gradually I got to know the people,” he said. “There was no evangelising from the soapbox though … I just walked along with them, visited them in hospital, whatever … did what they did, didn’t do what they did, so wasn’t seen as a threat.
“They gradually got to know my style.
“It was hard the first few years, what with all the vandalism and lawlessness from the many young people in the town.
“But I never pointed the finger at them – anyway basically the whole town was at the receiving end. Any time there was a meeting on the problem I wasn’t negative, so at least they could see I wasn’t their enemy and supported them.
“When they grew up into young manhood and young ladyhood, with all the problems this brought in that environment, most of them still didn’t come to church, but I was always there for a shoulder to cry on.”
Fr Pat developed a strong connection with the Aboriginal people in his time at Woorabinda.
But what could an Irishman with such a different environment, culture and climate have in common with Aboriginals?
“I saw it from the point of view of the pain and suffering my own Irish race had endured over many centuries,” he said. “When a people is dispossessed of everything, especially their culture, the only other thing they can do is turn to the grog just like the Irish did.”
Fr Pat’s thoughts on the eve of his retirement inevitably returned to his beloved Ireland, and his impending move to a Spiritan home just outside Cashel, County Tipperary.
“I love my Ireland, very much, and have kept my Irish culture alive over the years,” he said.
“As a young man I loved hurling and playing Gaelic Football and I speak Gaeilge (Irish).”
Fr Pat said it would be difficult to leave Woorabinda.
“There again I will miss many of the places where I worked for the rest of my 45 years as a missionary in Africa, Asia and PNG,” he said. “These were countries I fell in love with.”
In terms of his last posting, Fr Pat said he received as much as he gave.
“They taught me so much; I grew with them,” he said. “I’m the richer for the experience … now I can say my heart is black.”
