By Fr Jim Mulroney SSC
Father John Noel Connolly SSC, a member of the Plenary Council 2020 facilitation team, passed away on 6 June in Sydney aged 75 after five decades serving as a Columban Missionary.
The Queenslander was a theologian, writer, teacher, and administrator.
Writing on behalf of the Columbans in Australia, Fr Jim Mulroney SSC said Fr Connolly “loved the world and loved people”.
Born on 24 January 1945, the Queenslander developed an interest in stories of Church life through his father, who had a good relationship with their local parish priest.
Experiences as an altar boy, life at the parish school and education at the Christian Brothers’ St Patrick’s College were not only further grist for his storytelling, but also the foundation of the life that brought him to the Columban seminary at Sassafras in Victoria in 1963.
It was the beginning of a journey from gold-mining Gympie to coalmining Hambaek, deep in the mountainous regions of South Korea, and onwards towards a future not imagined.
As a seminarian at North Turramurra in Sydney’s northern suburbs, he delved deep into his lifelong studies of the mysteries that fascinated him. Although belying the pithy tenet that a tidy desk reflects a tidy mind, his room was a showcase of the breadth of his interests.
Ordained in Gympie by Bishop Henry Kennedy on 8 July 1969, he immersed himself in a life that he described as a vocation to inspire holiness and hope, through witness to the presence and activity of God in human affairs.
The following year he sailed to Seoul, South Korea. His own words describe his short years there as a struggle against his own ignorance, but also as a time of learning and developing a love of and appreciation for the rectitude of a people born into a cultural and religious environment not his own.
In 1974, he commenced studying Moral Theology at the Alphonsianum University in Rome, before returning to Australia to teach in the seminary from which he had graduated some six years previously.
His disciplined and enquiring mind saw him take further studies in economics, anthropology and business studies, while at the same time becoming a founding father of the Korean Catholic Community of Sydney.
In 1979, he became rector of the seminary and director of the Pacific Mission Institute (later Columban Mission Institute), and at the tender age of 34 was faced with the challenge of organising an institution that would accommodate seminarians, men and women religious, as well as lay people in an atmosphere of prayer, reflection, study, and recreational life.
In 1988, he was elected Vicar General of the society and during the following years travelled widely throughout areas of Columban commitment in the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Pacific region.
Commitments to mission education and as regional director of the Columban region of Australia and New Zealand followed, in what transpired to be a build up to what was arguably the biggest and most difficult challenge of his packed life – promoting a new paradigm for the Church in Australia.
Although he had been struggling against a cancer growing within his body for nearly two decades, he readily agreed to postpone retirement and take to the road as part of the preparation for Australia’s fifth Plenary Council.
He listened with patience during his many engagements in the spirit of the listening Church he believed in and encouraged people to listen to what the Spirit is saying. He spoke with enthusiasm of the sense of faith possessed by the community of souls that make up the Church, quietly explaining the difference between the well-known Church that teaches and the less known, but more desirable one that discerns.
It was a mission tailor made for the storytelling missionary. Although the elusive line between fact and fiction in his yarns could rival the best of parables, the poignant insight, salient lesson and gems of wisdom continued to emerge from even the most messy and diverse discussions.
Known as John to his family, he was Noel to the world, but remained the loving son of Noel John and Sarah May Connolly (both deceased), faithful brother to Anthony and late-sister Mary, devoted priest and Columban.