Fr Prakash Menezes SVD says his return to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Parish in Alice Springs feels like “coming home”, as it was the first parish he was assigned to as a Divine Word Missionary more than five years ago.

Back then, Fr Prakash was in Alice Springs as assistant priest, but last month, he returned to be installed as Parish Priest.

While at Sydney University in the late sixties, I belonged to the Catholic Bushwalking Club. Groups of us would go for day walks and weekend camping in the Blue Mountains, this being a well-known mountain range west of Sydney. There were a number of Columban Missionary priests who were also present on these different walks and camping weekends.

When I finished my studies in Geology, I applied and was accepted to work for a mining company in Queensland. However at the same time that career seemed less and less appealing. One time when I was on a Bushwalking camping trip I experienced a calling to follow Jesus as a priest.

It’s a long way from Fr Prakash Menezes SVD’s home in India to his parish of Santa Teresa in the Central Australian desert country, but it is exactly the kind of Christ-led and people-centred life he hoped for when he signed up to be a missionary priest.

Fr Prakash joined the Divine Word Missionaries in India and undertook his theological studies and formation in Melbourne, where he made his final vows and was ordained to the priesthood in 2014.

A new SVD missionary has arrived in Australia from Ghana and is looking forward to doing God’s will among the people of the AUS Province.

Fr Gideon Awudi was ordained to the priesthood in August last year and this is his first assignment as a Divine Word Missionary.

When Fr Kazimierz Niezgoda SVD left Poland as a young man to be a missionary in Papua New Guinea he figured he would stay there his whole life, and now, 51 years after he arrived, he still has no plans to leave.

“I was committed,” he says. “I knew I would stay.”

Born in a small town in Madagascar, Marius Razafimandimby could not have imagined in his childhood that he would one day be living in Australia and completing his final studies towards becoming a Divine Word Missionaries (SVD) priest.

But, he says that coming across the world to complete his formation at the SVD formation house, Dorish Maru College in Melbourne has broadened his horizons.

What is a vocation? 

In this video to mark Vocations Awareness Week, Fr Bosco Son SVD and Fr Henry Adler SVD explore the different vocations of marriage, single life, and religious life.

Fr Erwin Schmutz SVD has worn a few different hats over the last 60 years – priest, missionary, medic and botanist to name just a few – but as he celebrates his Diamond Jubilee, he says it is the people he has lived amongst and ministered to that stand out for him.

Fr Erwin was born in Ingolstadt, on the River Donau in Bavaria, Germany, and spent 30 years as a missionary in Indonesia, then some years as a German Airforce chaplain, before arriving in the SVD AUS Province where he was chaplain to Adelaide’s German community for many years.

For the people of Nhulunbuy in isolated East Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, a regular Catholic priest has been hard to come by in recent times, but after providing priestly supply services there, and seeing the need of the people, Fr Jan Szweda SVD offered to move in as Parish Priest, and despite the challenges, he’s loving it.

Bishop Eugene Hurley appointed Fr Jan as Parish Priest of Nhulunbuy and Groote Eylandt earlier this year and since then, Fr Jan has been doing his best to build a parish community – not an easy task in a largely transient mining population.