The next priest in our Year for Priests series: Anthony Barich writes about a humble priest who cycles around town in his shorts, shirt and collar, asking people if they would llike to come to Mass.
By Anthony Barich
Dongara parish priest Father Brian Ahearn was terrified of the very priest who inspired him to his vocation. “You couldn’t really explain it in human terms,” Fr Brian said while speaking to The Record at the Bishop’s House in Geraldton, where he has been a diocesan priest since being ordained by Bishop Francis Xavier Thomas in 1967. “It had a lot to do with the majesty and mystery of the Mass… I was attracted to do what he was doing.”
Fr Brian was an altar boy for his Carnarvon parish priest, Fr John McKay, who was “six foot five in his socks” – a huge man who was very intimidating, and who ensured that everything was spot-on. Fr John, who also freelanced as a journalist, writing for the Daily News about goings-on in Carnarvon, was parish priest there for 39 years at a time when, as Fr Brian tells it, “serving on the altar was a great privilege back then”. Even today, “I often think of him and try to celebrate the Mass reverently, correctly and with devotion”, said Fr Brian, who also admitted he felt a call to the priesthood in primary school. Today, Fr Brian, 65, is based at Dongara’s Our Lady Star of the Sea Church, but also serves at Morawa and Perenjori, at churches that were designed by the legendary Monsignor John Hawes. He also celebrates Mass for three Pallottine Brothers and a lay missionary in Dongara. And just as Dean Hawes did, Fr Brian rides his bike around town (to save the parish money on petrol) visiting people and encouraging them to come to Mass, wearing his shorts and his priest collar or a shirt with crosses on the collars. “It’s only fair to the people that they know who you are and where you’re coming from,” he said. “Then they can either accept me or not.” He doesn’t wear the priest collar to draw attention to himself, he says, but to what he does. His job as he sees it is to be recognisable and available. “People see something in this collar. They recognise it and often believe they can confide in you as a priest,” he said.
His pride and joy as priest is the Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at St Lawrence’s Church, Bluff Point, opened by then-Bishop Barry Hickey of Geraldton on July 16, 1986. It was the first Perpetual Adoration Chapel set up in WA. In looking back on his own 50 years of priesthood, Archbishop Hickey said that opening that chapel at St Lawrence’s was the spiritual highlight of his vocation.
“Priests from other dioceses sometimes ask me, ‘why does WA get so many vocations?’ It must be connected with Perpetual Adoration – all those prayers offered up for priests and vocations,” Fr Brian said.