St Joseph’s Bassendean parish priest of five years Fr Jim Shelton celebrated his last Mass at the parish on 31 October before departing on the same day for an extended period working abroad.
Fr Jim, who grew up in Ohio in the United States, came to Perth in 2000.
He was ordained at St Mary’s Cathedral where he served as assistant priest for 12 months before his appointment as chaplain at All Saints Chapel in Allendale Square in July 2001.
In 2005, he was first appointed Priest-in-Charge of Bassendean parish and then parish priest from 1 April 2007.
Fr Jim was well travelled before he became a priest because he was ordained over 40 years after he finished school.
He likened this time in his life to the 40 years of the Israelites in the desert.
He said that the way he came to live in Perth was something he would never have planned. “It was providential,” he said.
As a young man on the cusp of his third decade, the future priest would visit Australia for two months on a round the world trip in 1963.
But he missed out on a visit to Perth because it was too far and said he left Australia thinking he had missed the best part.
Before the trip, he had studied at the local university, fulfilled his four-year military obligation in the US in the navy, visited Europe and the Holy Land and taught history, English and Spanish for three years. He learnt Spanish in Mexico, he said.
He said that after the trip, he worked with a community action programme for six years before it was curtailed under President Nixon’s administration.
He then went to Rome and later to Manila for studies.
He took Bachelor degrees in philosophy and theology at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas, known as the Angelicum, and a licence to teach at the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas in Manila.
After teaching English as a second language in Asia for several years he returned to Rome to do further study and took classes at the Gregorian University and at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.
While studying there, the future priest met Archbishop Hickey and that was how it came to pass, he said, that he came to be in Perth at All Saints Chapel.
In 2005, Fr Jim was appointed parish priest of St Joseph’s Bassendean where he supported the continuance of the Chapel of Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration, which was started the year before his arrival.
He set up the parish library, which holds over 1,000 books and is open from Tuesday to Friday.