By Bridget Spinks
ARCHBISHOP Barry Hickey celebrated 10am Mass for the 50th Anniversary of the Salvatorian parish of St Anthony’s in Greenmount on 26 June.
Several Salvatorian priests concelebrated Mass including Superior of the Australian province, Fr Karol Kulczycki; St Anthony’s parish priest, Fr Adam Babinski; Salvatorian Provincial of England, Fr Alex McAllister and Fr Bronislaw Jakubiec from the Salvatorian Generalate in Rome.
Several more Salvatorian priests from Poland, the Philippines, Taiwan, Canada and the Australian region concelebrated Mass.
Archbishop Hickey consecrated the new parish altar, blessed the new lectern and the new baptismal font during the Mass.
He said he could remember clearly the parish opening 50 years ago; he had been ordained a priest two years earlier and the Salvatorians had built the church ‘down the road’ in Belleview.
The 50th anniversary was a time of joy, he said, because it meant the celebration of the sacraments have continued all that time.
The reason for the parish is to provide that unity and continuity, he said, and that in 50 years time, while people pass through, the Church would remain constant.
On the feast of Corpus Christi, the Archbishop preached on the centrality and importance of the Eucharist to our faith.
“We ought to reflect long and hard on the mystery of this feast,” he said.
“We become sharers in Christ by sharing His Body and Blood.”
The Archbishop also acknowledged and thanked the Salvatorians for their long presence in the parish and encouraged people to pray for more vocations to the priesthood and Religious life.
The Society of Our Divine Saviour came to Australia because Perth Archbishop Redmond Prendiville wrote to Fr Bonaventure Schwiezer in Rome to invite him to establish the Order in Perth and offering pastoral charge of a new parish on the outskirts of Perth.
Fr Bonaventure sent Fr Paul Keyte SDS of the British Province who arrived as the first Salvatorian in Perth in 1961.
He was asked to take pastoral care of the new parish of Belleview, in the foothills of Perth. But there was no church, no presbytery nor any office facilities.
The parish school, built in 1957, was the centre of parish activities and was still in the parish of Midland under the Franciscans.
Fr Paul raised funds with the help of parishioners – who came from Midvale, Belleview, Koongamia, Boya, Helena Valley, Swan View, Greenmount and Darlington – to build a church, which was blessed and opened by Auxiliary Bishop Myles McKeon on 8 December 1966.
Fr Laurence Murphy SDS joined the parish on 11 October 1966 to serve as assistant parish priest. After nine years he became the parish priest of St Anthony’s in November 1975 and served the parish for another nine years.
Long time St Anthony’s parishioner, Geraldine Rees, 70, has watched the parish grow around her.
When the Roe Highway was proposed and expected to cut the parish boundaries in half, Geraldine said, Fr Laurence Murphy had the “huge job of moving the church up to Greenmount”.
St Anthony’s Greenmount was built on Blackboy Hill, which had been used as a training ground for soldiers that went to the First and Second World Wars.
Fr Laurence blessed the site before building started in 1981 and built the church and presbytery.
The new church was blessed and opened by Perth Archbishop Sir Launcelot Goody on 5 February 1983.
During his 18 years in the parish of Belleview/Greenmount, Fr Laurence was on the school board at La Salle College for nearly 10 years; had a youth group going for 15 years and started the parish netball and basketball teams.
The first Polish Salvatorians started to arrive in the parish of Greenmount in 1979. They worked in tandem with the British Province until the Polish Province formally took responsibility for the Greenmount parish and the Australian region in 1987.
Fr Adam Babinski SDS has been the parish priest of St Anthony’s Greenmount for the last two years and part of the Salvatorian community since his profession of First Vows 18 years ago.
He said the Salvatorian community is like “one family”.
“So for us it is natural to have people from every corner of the world here,” he said.
The parish was like family too, he said.
“You see this in the parish as well, we have everyone from everywhere and different ways of life as well.”