Kathleen Mercovich was once part of the Catholic Mission team, working as the Diocesan Director in Ballarat. Kathleen left Catholic Mission at the end of 2000 to go to Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. She now works at the Ministry School training pastoral workers from the local villages.
The pastoral workers are lay people from the villages who train at the Ministry School for three weeks. After the three weeks they are commissioned to giving homilies at their local village Sunday mass. There is a huge shortage of priests in the remote areas of Bougainville, which is why the lay people are being called upon to celebrate mass. Many people will walk up to eight kilometres to go to mass, so it is a great for the people in the villages to celebrate mass and listen to homilies by the pastoral workers.
“The liturgies are great at these masses,” said Kathleen. “They have fantastic choirs, a band, and they do their music training at the Ministry School too.” The average age group of the choir and band is 15-35 years, so the youth in the parish keep the liturgies alive and fresh. It is mainly older people who train as pastoral workers however, as they have some influence in the community. “The younger folks wouldn’t gain respect from the older people if they were to act as ministers,” added Kathleen. They generally are men also, as the women find it harder to leave their families, especially their children, for three weeks to go and train.
Kathleen and the other trainers do however conduct workshops for women at the Ministry School on peace, reconciliation and leadership in their communities. The women share their stories about their suffering in the Bougainville crisis in 1989, when Bougainville sought independence from Papua New Guinea. There was a lot of persecution by the soldiers and the locals suffered a great deal. “People needed their faith to get through the crisis,” said Kathleen. “My own faith was strengthened when I went to Bougainville, their faith is very strong”.
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