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Sister Maureen as a novice |
Maureen Elliott was the youngest child in a Catholic family of three children. She grew up attending Catholic schools on Sydney’s North Shore.
In Form 1 at Our Lady of Dolours, Chatswood – where she had received a scholarship – she and three of her friends would meet after school calling themselves ‘Our Lady’s Helpers’. They would make sacrifices and say prayers.
As a teenager Maureen recalls walking into church one Sunday at Haymarket in Sydney when a strange thought popped into her head: she could become a nun. She laughed out loud. It seemed preposterous. But then she thought about it and concluded … why not? She realised she didn’t have an excuse.
Her mother was horrified and begged her not to enter the convent. Initially she told her mother that she wouldn’t enter, to keep the peace, but the calling continued to burn inside her.
In primary school she was taught by the Brigidine Sisters, and during high school with the Mercy Sisters, came into contact with the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. In the end it was the FMM sisters that appealed to her with their down-to-earth attitudes, missionary spirit, and Eucharistic adoration.
During school holidays, she initially worked in retail and after school in her father’s accountancy business, but at 18 she went to Mittagong, NSW, for her postulancy (six months) and novitiate (two years).
She then attended teacher training at the Catholic College of Education at North Sydney and was then a secondary school teacher in science, maths and religion in Sydney and Canberra for seven years.
In 1974 her dreams came true when she was asked to go to Papua New Guinea.
There she worked at Benedicts Teachers’ College, a Christian Brothers college, in Wewak. Here she trained primary-school teachers.
“I had wanted to go on the missions since I was a child,” she said. “I always used to worry about the starving children. I was expecting horrible insects and heat waves but it really wasn’t like that.”
After four years at the teachers’ college she made Catholic radio programs in Pidgin English for Radio East Sepik in Wewak for a year.
After this time of living in somewhat urbanised areas, Maureen headed to the bush, where she remained for five years.
Initially she went to Kafle, which was so remote there was only a vehicle track to it and none beyond. She coordinated the religious education in the district on foot, motorbike and then by small Suzuki, and had to make flying visits to outlying communities. She worked with teachers, prayer leaders and women’s and youth groups.
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Sister Maureen in PNG |
“I kept on being asked to do more than I knew in the accounting area, particularly for the Diocese,” Maureen said. So during this time she also started a Bachelor of Business by correspondence.
Maureen witnessed the burgeoning of a national youth movement in PNG. “Most kids could go to primary school but very few went to high school,” Maureen said. “They were caught in the middle, feeling alienated from simply working in their gardens, and yet without sufficient education for other initiatives.” Self-help groups were springing up to push for more education.
Maureen then moved to Nuku, where she worked in the deanery with Father Tim Elliott, OFM (no relation) and she was in a position, along with her other involvements, to help the school-leavers further their studies. At the request of young people and their parents, she began a temporary community secondary education centre, staffed by previously unemployed teachers, with the students studying their high-school subjects through correspondence courses.
Maureen took on the co-ordination of the national-youth movement program for West Sepik Province, while at the same time continuing pastoral and diocesan work.
In 1983 she came back to Australia for a break and completed her Bachelor of Business. She also spent a year ‘renewing’ at the Pacific Mission Institute in Turramurra in Sydney where she studied missiology, as well as increasing her work experience in accountancy.
She then spent six months in Rome doing an FMM Institute course, preceeded by a pilgrimage to India where the FMM Institute was founded. The course included a pilgrimage to France where the FMM foundress was born.
Following this Maureen was asked to go to East Africa, where there was a great need for missionaries.
She arrived in Kenya in 1989 where she joined three other FMM sisters in an international community at Karaba in Murang’a Diocese.
Again she worked with teachers, youth groups and assisted general community development within the Diocese.
“The women’s groups were just fantastic. I remember one day they were installing water tanks … cementing them in … and we had mass in the midst of this.
“The leadership training of these self-help groups was so life-giving. It gave confidence to women and young people to go out and do things for themselves.”
Maureen worked at Karaba for six years. “It was a privilege to be doing it. It was very holistic, very bottom up and deeply spiritual.”
In 1995 she took up her calling in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia where she spent three years as general co-ordinator of a vicariate and prefecture in the country’s south-west. It was an “incredible experience” that involved a lot of travelling.
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Six years in Kenya was 'deeply spiritual' |
Maureen co-ordinated all aspects of the work of the Vicariate and prefecture other than the strictly pastoral – health, education, finances, community development and infrastructure development.
In Addis Ababa she worked with young accountant Biruktawit Zekarrias, who even then expressed a strong desire to work in Australia.
Maureen said people who lived in the most remote areas were the more self-reliant.
One community she visited was accessible only on horseback – she remembers arriving on a mule and being greeted with flowers.
“I got so much more from them than I could ever share,” she said.
“It seemed that the poorer the people were, the more care they had for each other.
“In PNG we had a house built of bush materials but this was a palace compared to what these people had.
“Sometimes I would fly into places and people would bring you food and they would give you the best of what they had.”
In November 1997 Maureen visited Australia and realised she was needed at home. Her father, at 82, was ill and still running his own business.
She worked with him for a year, helping him to hand over the business to her sister and nephew, and move to a retirement village.
In October 1998 Maureen began working at Catholic Mission as an accountant in our national office in Sydney. Maureen had seen the ad for job in a parish bulletin and thought it would give her the opportunity to meld both her business and missionary experience.
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Sister Maureen (front, right) with her friends in Ethiopia | She remains in the job eight years later. “I still feel in touch with my roots and somehow it makes the whole experience more meaningful. It is still in touch with mission. It is helping something that is real to happen.”
Maureen was thrilled that during 2006 her Ethiopian friend and fellow accountant Biruktawit was finally able to join her. She now works as assistant accountant at Catholic Mission.
“Biruk might be my greatest contribution to Catholic Mission,” Maureen says with characteristic modesty.
Maureen’s motivation throughout her many roles in life has been to help others. “I’ve always wanted to be in a position to make things happen for others …for them to realise their dream. To help people to come to a fullness of life.
“I am very happy to be where I am and I am also open to what may happen. I have found all the way through my life that one thing always leads to another.” |
