“My priesthood has been a beautiful way of life and I wouldn’t change a moment,” Father Stephen Cooney OPraem reflects with a distinct but faded Irish lilt. It is an impressive statement considering his vocation has extended over five decades and half the globe.
Growing up in Ireland in a family of 13 children, Fr Stephen told The Record he had been encompassed by a community of faith that allowed for a seamless transition to his life as priest.
“I was surrounded by so many wonderful role models in my neighbourhood… my parents, teachers and priests, that I guess I took for granted the normality of it all,” he said.
“I also had an older brother who had entered the priesthood and there were probably 30 to 40 per cent of my classmates who desired to follow the same path.”
Despite the hardships inflicted on a large family by a depression and world war, Fr Stephen describes his childhood as “tough, but enjoyable”.
Such austerity, and time spent in the army, contributed to the smooth adjustment to the priesthood in 1955.
Fr Stephen enjoyed the Norbertine’s marriage of a contemplative and active ministry and embraced their call to “prepare for all good works”.
By 1959 he found himself in a far-flung corner of Australia, with the order invited by the Bishop of Perth to reside in the parish of York.
With the development of a Priory farm, the running of retreats, a 15-year stint in Queen’s Park and travelling throughout WA to relieve and assist priests, in what he describes as a “parish without boundaries”, Fr Stephen said there was “never a dull moment” over the next 54 years.
It is a life that continues to provide challenges, satisfaction and perpetual motion for this joy-filled octogenarian as he fulfils the daily demands of four separate centres in York, Brookton, Beverley and Pingelly.
“My life has been like a dream – it has passed by so fast,” he says with a chuckle. “But I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.”