Skip to content
The Catholic Leader
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
The Catholic Leader
No Result
View All Result
Home People

Fr Willie Lee following Pope Francis’ call to go to peripheries of society

byMark Bowling
17 October 2017 - Updated on 1 April 2021
Reading Time: 4 mins read
AA

Youth mission: Columban Father Willie Lee at the Ignite Conference in 2017.

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
Youth mission: Columban Father Willie Lee at the Ignite Conference in 2017.

 

GROWING up in Fiji, Willie Lee admired the Irish Columban missionaries who travelled across the world to serve the people of his island home.

His great-great-grandfather had accepted the first Catholic priests to his remote rural province of Vanua Levu or “Big Land”.

Little did young Willie know that one day he would become a Columban missionary.

“I saw that the Columban missionaries were people oriented,” he said.

“They were always there with the ‘grassroots people’, crossing boundaries and cultures, and learning another language.

“The local people were very happy to see a foreigner speaking their own language.

“It gave them a feeling of belonging. And that’s what caught my attention.”

Willie was the fourth child among six boys and three girls.

His father expected that he would one day take over the family’s kava-growing business.

Related Stories

Missionary called to become Brisbane auxiliary bishop

Kidnapped missionary sister freed after four years blessed by Pope Francis

Young Catholics unleash prayers on first day at Ignite Conference 2021

He studied farming.

However, all the while, there was “a yearning within”.

“It was very difficult for my father. He was looking forward to me taking over,” Fr Lee said.

“But it didn’t happen the way he wanted. It was to be the way God wanted.

“I started communicating with the Columbans, reading their Far East magazine and listening to their past stories, and seeing what they were doing with the Fijian people.

“The sacrifices they made in their calling, in their missionary life, that amazed me a lot.

“If these people can leave their family, come this far, eat the food we eat and drink kava and being happy on their mission – why can’t I do this?

“That’s what I was thinking about looking at the Church, God and this missionary life.”

At 23, Willie Lee started nine years of formation as a Columban missionary – three years seminary training in Fiji, a spiritual year in the Philippines, pastoral work in Peru (where he learnt to speak Spanish), and theological studies at Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union.

Finally he was ordained on August 2, 2008, and almost immediately he was assigned to be the parish priest in San Matias, a sprawling parish of 90,000 people on the outskirts of Santiago, Chile.

Fr Lee entered the tough world of the barrio (slums), amongst the city’s poorest.

“There’s drugs, there’s prostitution, there’s murder, gangsters and shootings, suicide, young pregnancies – all those social challenges are there,” he said.

Fr Lee said the people of the barrio welcomed him.

As a missionary, his challenge, he said, was to “come down to the grassroots”, to listen and understand their daily lives.

“I leave my country, I go with my suitcase and I fill my suitcase with my own culture, food and other things,” he said.

“When I went over there I learnt how to go with an empty suitcase. I needed to feel and learn things new from the people there.

“I started filling my suitcase through listening.”

There were times when Fr Lee feared for his life.

Once he was conducting a wake for a drug dealer, in an apartment, protected outside by gun-wielding gangsters.

There were fears that a rival drug gang might launch an attack.

“Suddenly I heard shooting outside. They were only firing their weapons in the air, but it was frightening,” Fr Lee said.

“One thing that struck me is that in the barrio there is a lot of respect for the priest.

“And when they can see us (priests) attending to the people they protect us a lot.”

Fr Lee said he learnt a lot about being a priest and holding onto faith, during six years in the parish of San Matias.

“It is a challenge for us (priests), and what Pope Francis is asking the Church to do is to go to the peripheries,” he said.

“In the barrio, that is where I saw the periphery because I lived there.

“I can be preaching about love and reconciliation from the pulpit every Sunday, but if I am not practising it then I feel myself that it’s nothing.”

In 2016, Fr Lee was assigned back to Fiji as the vocation director to promote vocations throughout the Pacific islands.

“Vocations in Fiji come from Kiribati, Tonga and the Solomon Islands,” he said.

“I promote vocations in schools and parishes and I enjoy this role immensely.”

Fr Lee accompanies novices for the first few years of their training, before they attend the Columban seminary in Manila.

He said his own formation for missionary life was a great experience, and one he could pass on to others.

“(It was a) great experience in such a way that crossing boundaries and learning another culture was always the main charism of the Columbans in preaching the Good News in different languages,” he said.

“We reach out to those people in need within society, especially the marginalised.”

Fr Lee recently attended the Ignite Conference 2017 in Brisbane, sharing his experiences with visitors to the vocations and ministries exhibition foyer.

ShareTweet
Previous Post

Good Sams leadership to focus on people at the margins

Next Post

Wheels for Sara appeal rolls out in Brisbane and Toowoomba to help sick little girl

Mark Bowling

Mark is the joint winner of the Australian Variety Club 2000 Heart Award for his radio news reporting in East Timor, and has also won a Walkley award, Australia’s most-respected journalism award. Mark is the author of ‘Running Amok’ that chronicles his time as a foreign correspondent juggling news deadlines and the demands of being a husband and father. Mark is married with four children.

Related Posts

Ready to serve: Fr Tim Norton, a priest with the Divine Word Missionaries who is about to become an auxiliary bishop for Brisbane, serving up meals at Cana Community for the street people of inner-city Sydney. Photos: Courtesy of the Society of the Divine Word provincial office.
QLD

Missionary called to become Brisbane auxiliary bishop

7 February 2022 - Updated on 22 February 2022
Blessing: Pope Francis blesses Sister Gloria Cecilia Narváez Argot, a member of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary Immaculate, at the end of Mass on October 10.
Vatican

Kidnapped missionary sister freed after four years blessed by Pope Francis

11 October 2021
Unleashed: First day of Ignite Conference 2021 is here. Photo: Selina Venier
QLD

Young Catholics unleash prayers on first day at Ignite Conference 2021

23 September 2021 - Updated on 24 September 2021
Next Post

Wheels for Sara appeal rolls out in Brisbane and Toowoomba to help sick little girl

We’re called to a radical love which goes beyond differences

Pastoral letter says voluntary assisted suicide will never be safe

Popular News

  • Myanmar military burns houses, destroys a village

    US bishops applaud San Francisco prelates pastoral response to Pelosi’s decades of abortion advocacy

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Archbishop calls for prayers in “troubled times”

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • From a humble start Albanese is sworn in as new prime minister

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • 15 killed in Texas school shooting

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Here are the stories of 10 new saints being canonised this Sunday

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
Search our job finder
No Result
View All Result

Latest News

15 killed in Texas school shooting
News

15 killed in Texas school shooting

by Staff writers
25 May 2022
0

THE United States is again reeling after another school shooting – this time in Texas where 14...

Archbishop calls for prayers in “troubled times”

Archbishop calls for prayers in “troubled times”

24 May 2022
Myanmar military burns houses, destroys a village

US bishops applaud San Francisco prelates pastoral response to Pelosi’s decades of abortion advocacy

24 May 2022
Myanmar military burns houses, destroys a village

Myanmar military burns houses, destroys a village

24 May 2022
Life ‘is always sacred and inviolable’, Pope Francis says

Life ‘is always sacred and inviolable’, Pope Francis says

23 May 2022

Never miss a story. Sign up to the Weekly Round-Up
eNewsletter now to receive headlines directly in your email.

Sign up to eNews
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Jobs
  • Subscribe

The Catholic Leader is an Australian award-winning Catholic newspaper that has been published by the Archdiocese of Brisbane since 1929. Our journalism seeks to provide a full, accurate and balanced Catholic perspective of local, national and international news while upholding the dignity of the human person.

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader
Accessibility Information | Privacy Policy | Archdiocese of Brisbane

The Catholic Leader acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the First Peoples of this country and especially acknowledge the traditional owners on whose lands we live and work throughout the Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader

0
    0
    Your Cart
    Your cart is emptyChoose another Subscription
    Continue Shopping