MY FAVORITE PRIEST

A parish priest
By John G. Nestor

Father John Ward, four years after his death, remains for me the best example of what it means to be a parish priest. His whole priestly life was spent quietly, but very actively, giving of himself for the people he was appointed to serve.

Characteristically, the first conversation I remember having with Father Ward was at a diocesan school athletics carnival. He had a starting pistol in his hand. Father Ward was a great promoter of sports, especially for kids; so much so that the Shire (local government) has named the public tennis courts at Ulladulla, a former parish of his, in his honor. That first conversation was a short one, as were most of our future conversations—Father Ward was a shy man, and he did not waste words.

Rather than a talker, Father Ward was a doer. When he arrived to take charge of Dapto, for what was to be almost a quarter century, until his dying year, the parish needed a lot of attention. Although a church and Catholic school had existed since 1837, the population was growing rapidly as the small town became a suburb of the booming steel city of Wollongong, 65 miles south of Sydney, Australia.

Father Ward’s priestly soul was nothing if not practical. He immediately realized the parish needed money for a new plant. Within weeks, he had organized weekly Bingo in the largest hall in Dapto. On one occasion, I saw Father Ward excuse himself from the visiting Bishop, to go check on the progress of the Bingo night.

In his time in Dapto, Father Ward built a beautiful new church. With the assistance of the Sisters of St. Joseph (of Blessed Mary MacKillop), he opened a Catholic high school in the parish. The parish grade school tripled in size. Land was bought for a future retirement and nursing home complex. About the only thing Father Ward never got around to building was a rectory for himself. He and his assistants lived in several of the poorest houses in town, next to the church.

In 1990, soon after I arrived at St. John’s, Dapto, as his assistant, I became aware of a plumbing problem in my house. I called Father Ward, expecting that he would know the appropriate plumber to contact. Ten minutes later, around came Father Ward, wearing large boots and carrying a long wrench. He quickly assessed and fixed the problem. “How did you know what to do?” I asked. As he walked away, he simply said in explanation “Parish priest.”

Although the most obvious characteristics of Father Ward were his practicality and his verbal brevity, the deepest was his simple—but not simplistic—piety and complete trust in God. He was a direct if unpolished preacher. Such was his faithfulness to the confessional, that the parish was always a great center for the Sacrament, even in years when in other parishes most deserted it. He knew the benefit of confession because he used it frequently himself. And in fact all his work as a priest was an extension of his own piety. In the words of St. Teresa of Avila, he was a reservoir, not just a conduit: When he spoke or acted, it was the overflow of his own interior life.

Father Ward sometimes reminded me of the television New York detective, Colombo. Not because of his appearance, but because his quiet and unassuming manner hid his intelligence. On occasion, Father Ward could come out with theological gems—without realizing what he had said. Late in his life, he started vacationing in Bali; this led him to learn Indonesian—so well that he taught it several years in the parish grade school. During one vacation, he decided to visit Dili, in East Timor. He dropped in at the Bishop’s house there. Such was the impression he made, that Nobel peace-prize winner Bishop Carlos Belo of Dili went out of his way to visit Father Ward at Dapto, when he next visited Australia. Of course, Father Ward told very few people about his famous guest.

Above all, Father Ward was a tribute to grace. In spite of his considerable talents, he was most of all an ordinary man who did extraordinary things. When, as a priest, I see the huge gulf between the needs of the Church and my own inadequacies, I think of Father Ward quietly going through life, praying and working: planting and watering, but letting God give the increase. God blessed Father Ward’s efforts in this world. May he give him eternal life, and accept his prayers for the needs of “his” parish and people.

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