By Anthony Barich
THE blessing and dedication of St Damien’s Catholic Church in Dawesville on 23 January is the Church boldly moving into new territory and attempting to bring lost sheep back to the fold.
Fr Leon Russell, Dawesville’s inaugural parish priest, told The Record that Dawesville is a “perfect example” of the urgent need for the Church’s missionary focus.
Bunbury Bishop Gerard Holohan also told The Record that he chose St Damien of Molokai as patron saint for Dawesville because “… there are many people in this area who have left the Faith, so it is appropriate that this church be dedicated to St Damien, who brought back to the Church lepers who had left the Faith.”
When Bishop Holohan presided over the Mass concelebrated by his Vicar General Fr Tony Chiera and Fr Leon, it seemed a far cry from six years ago when Fr Leon was appointed parish priest.
Back then, barely 70 people attended weekend Masses and, in 2005, Dawesville Catholic Primary School operated out of two transportable buildings on Mandurah Catholic College’s grounds with 68 students.
Today, up to 260 attend weekend Masses, with 520 children now enrolled in the adjacent Dawesville Catholic Primary School.
The original name of Blessed Damien of Molokai Dawesville Catholic Primary School proved too much of a mouthful, but the parish has left the option open for the school to rename itself after the saint again.
Unfortunately, Fr Leon suffered the inconvenience of not being able to attend St Damien’s canonisation in Rome on 11 October 2009 for medical reasons. Pope John Paul II beatified the Belgian-born saint on 4 June 1995.
Of their new official patron, Fr Leon said simply, “We’ve grown to love him.”
The parish has now acquired an icon of the saint by Finnish-born iconographer Marice Sariola from Dunsborough and a nail from the first church St Damien built on Molokai acquired by Bishop Myles McKeon.
The parish also had a collage located just inside the main entrance doors displaying the sites and history of St Damien’s ministry, including Molokai, other Hawaiian islands and the Pacific.
No longer a leper colony, Molokai has been transformed into a tourist area.
While Australian actor David Wenham popularised St Damien in the 1999 movie Molokai: the story of Fr Damien, Fr Leon said the missionary priest is a great model of heroism and self-sacrifice for children and men.
When canonising Fr Damien de Veuster, the 19th century Belgian missionary of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary Order who ministered to people with leprosy in Hawaii before dying of the disease, Pope Benedict XVI said he typified the Christian vocation of radical conversion and self-sacrifice made “with no thought of human calculation and advantage”.
Fr Leon said the parish is a perfect example of the Church’s missionary focus, without which it goes nowhere.
“It’s important that the Church keeps opening parishes,” said Fr Leon, who has previously overseen the building of churches in Hopetown, Dunsborough and Busselton. This is what ‘the New Evangelisation’ is all about, he said.
“If the Church isn’t constantly reaching out and opening up new territory but just worrying about maintenance, it’s going backwards,” Fr Leon said.
Dawesville was blessed to have the eight acres for the school and church donated by Mandurah real estate family company H & N Perry, with the $1.6 million cost of the church and presbytery helped by $162,000 in cash donations and another $70-80,000 in kind.
Over 100 parishioners and even some of their non-Catholic spouses also volunteered to paint, clean, lay carpet, clear land, weed and plant to prepare the new grounds.
But Fr Leon said that while this was a “great outpouring of generosity”, not every parish is so lucky. He stressed that communities “really need to financially support new churches”.
“If they saw the need to, say, lend money for 10 years, interest free, it would help a parish start. We were lucky to get the donation, but it’d be very daunting for a priest to open a church with just the parish collection,” he said.
The blessing and dedication of St Damien’s occurred six years to the day after Bishop Holohan established the parish in Dawesville in early 2006. Mass was celebrated at the Falcon Community Hall for about a year prior to that. Fr Leon said the 420 baptisms in six years at the parish reflect how fast the parish has grown, with people “feeling they belong now to a parish”.
Initially, the school set up its assembly area for the parish’s weekend Masses before Catholic Education WA director Ron Dullard suggested the area be enclosed with glass sectional doors and invited the parishes of Mandurah and Dawesville to assist in funding the sacred space.
The parish used the school’s facilities for five years until the church was completed, and today the reciprocal relationship between school and parish continues.
The school brings its children to Mass and teaches them to genuflect, bless themselves and treat the space with reverence, while the children are also taught about the Mass.
“This is bearing fruit in a wonderful, prayerful way as the children attend Masses in the church,” a parish statement said.
During the Mass, Paddi Creevey, Mayor of Mandurah and a parishioner of St Damien’s, acknowledged the traditional owners of the land.
Anglican Bishop Brian Kyme and his wife along with Anglican Minister Pam Halbert also attended, as the local Anglican community uses the church for its Sunday Masses.
The church was also set to host an interfaith gathering on 27 January with local Anglican, Pentecostal and Buddhist faiths.
Catholic priests from Bunbury and Perth also attended a special Mass on 24 January at St Damien’s to celebrate its consecration for those who could not attend the 23 January dedication Mass due to their own parish commitments.
At the 23 January opening, guests came from Perth, Morawa, Kukerin, Dunsborough, Busselton and Bunbury.
The Catholic Development Fund in Bunbury helped fund the church building, while the parish recognised the “invaluable contribution” of Fred Miltrup, after whom the meeting room was named, Don Allen and John Hennessy.
St Damien’s Catholic Church is on Nyabing Pass, Dawesville, accessed from the highway via Ocean Road. Times of weekend Masses are Saturday, 6pm and Sunday, 8.30am.