Missionaries are well known for their willingness to live and serve in a variety of countries, and none more so than Fr Jun Perez SVD, who has arrived in Australia after missionary assignments which have taken him from Russia to Africa, South Korea and Thailand.
“You know the old saying,” he laughs. “Join the SVD and see the world!”
Fr Jun has recently arrived in Sydney to take up his new assignment as Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Coordinator for the SVD AUS Province.
He was born in the Philippines in 1967 and lived there, at different times with his parents and grandparents, until his first missionary assignment to Russia. In both households, he says the Catholic faith was central to life.
“From a young age, the faith was inculcated in me,” he says. “We went to church every Sunday and in the Philippines when I was growing up, a bell would ring in our community at 6pm every day and everyone would go home and pray the Rosary and the Angelus.
“We had an altar in our small home, as most families do in the Philippines, and we would gather as a family to pray.”
From Grade 4 onwards Jun became an altar server and many assumed that he would become a priest, but his Grade 6 teacher and mentor suggested he pursue university studies before seeking to enter the seminary.
Despite this advice, Jun did take the exam for entry to the local minor seminary when he was high-school aged, but he didn’t pass it, and assumed that God did not want him to be a priest.
After finishing high school, Jun studied a Bachelor of Science in Electronics and Communications Engineering and took up a career as a Systems Engineer in the communications field.
During this time he was active in his parish, and after working for about three years, he realised he was still feeling a call towards priesthood.
“I went to the Mother of Perpetual Help Shrine in Baclaren after work to pray about it,” he says. “And I asked the Lord to please send me a sign. But after I prayed, there was nothing, no sign from God and so I went back home.
“And on the way home, I saw a man in the street wearing a cap which said, ‘Divine Word Seminary Tagatay’.”
Thinking this might be a sign, he consulted the Yellow Pages and found that the Divine Word Seminary was actually two blocks from where he was living at that time and attached to the church where he went to Mass every Sunday.
“This was the sign!” he says. “I had never heard of the Divine Word Missionaries before, but after seeing it written on that man’s cap, I now find out the seminary is right in front of me.”
Jun took the exam and was admitted to the seminary but said the whole slow discernment process was difficult for him as he weighed up leaving behind his career and his family and venturing into an unknown new life.
“It was a long discernment, but I said Yes. And after this answer to my prayer and God giving me this sign, there was no turning back,” he says.
Jun joined the SVD in June 1994 and took his first vows in 1997 and his final vows in 2001, being ordained to the priesthood later that year.
His first missionary assignment was to Russia.
Arriving in 2002, he went to St Petersburg to learn the language and also worked in a parish providing ministry to migrants. This included celebrating an English-speaking Mass and also ministering with the Korean migrant community and celebrating Mass in Russian with readings in Korean. After a year in St Petersburg, Jun was transferred to a parish in Moscow, working with migrant communities from Asia, Africa, Europe and America.
“I learnt a lot during that time,” he says. “Especially adjusting from one culture to another.
“Coming from the Philippines, the winters were a real shock, at minus 35 degrees Celsius. That took some getting used to.”
If it was cold in St Petersburg and Moscow, it was about to get colder for Fr Jun, who was next assigned as assistant priest to a parish in Siberia, where the winters got down to minus 44 degrees.
“I had to travel there by train, alone, in winter,” he says. “It was a learning experience for me, to be more courageous and at the same time trusting in God’s providence.
“Everything was white there in winter. And across the frozen river was China. But I enjoyed it.”
While there, he read that the SVD were seeking confreres to work in Liberia, Africa, which was just emerging from 13 years of civil war.
“I prayed about it and decided to go,” he says.
This time, Fr Jun was heading to a tropical climate, to work as Program Director with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), helping with the distribution of food under the World Food Program.
He contracted Malaria seven times in a year and one of those cases, of cerebral malaria, was almost fatal, but after recovering, Jun continued his ministry in Liberia for some time.
From Liberia, Fr Jun spent 10 years, from 2007-2017, in South Korea, building on the ministry he had begun all those years ago in Russia with the Korean migrant community. In South Korea he worked in an SVD migrant chaplaincy centre, a ministry which involved advocacy as well as pastoral care, health and hospital visitation, all in coordination with the Philippines Embassy in South Korea. In 2013 he was recognised with the Philippines Ambassador’s Award of Excellence for his work with Filipino migrants.
In 2017, it was back to Africa, taking up a new assignment with JRS in Malawi as Pastoral Office Coordinator, which involved sacramental ministry as well as responsibility for Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation (JPIC).
One of the major JPIC works he undertook was initiating a program to clean up the refugee camp.
“Every Saturday for three months, we cleaned the camp,” he says. “I asked the community to help with the cleaning, zone by zone and had a wonderful response from the people, from children to senior citizens, they all helped to clean.
“I told them, ‘This is important, because even though it is a camp, it is your home for now and you deserve to live in clean surroundings’.”
In 2020, Fr Jun was preparing to take up a new assignment in Latin America when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and international borders closed, leaving him back home in the Philippines for 15 months.
“It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because when travel was allowed again I was asked to go to Bangkok, Thailand to again work with JRS in caring for refugees from Asia as a psycho-social counsellor because many of them were suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” he says.
“It was wonderful, because I was able to infuse spirituality into the psycho-social care, although I was always careful to respect different religions and beliefs.”
While working in Thailand, which is part of the SVD Australia Province, Fr Jun was asked by Provincial, Fr Asaeli Rass SVD, to move to Australia to take up the role of JPIC Coordinator for the Province.
Fr Jun says he is looking forward to his new assignment, which he sees as a ministry of hope, supporting all the confreres in the Province in the work they are already doing in these areas.
“The first thing I will be doing is meeting the confreres and listening and learning about their ministry and about the people they are serving, whether that be in Indigenous communities or multicultural parishes here in Australia, as well as the ministries in New Zealand, Thailand and Myanmar,” he says.
“And I will be focusing on the three main areas of concern raised at the SVD’s ASPAC JPIC Assembly in Bangkok in July – migration, human rights and environment.
“As well as supporting the confreres in the work they are doing and in mobilising their communities to be part of the JPIC mission, I’m looking forward to networking and working collaboratively with other Non-Government Organisations, and also working to promote awareness of the issues.
“I’m not new to this kind of ministry, but this is a different context and so I will take time to listen and to learn. I’m looking forward to it.”
PHOTOS
TOP RIGHT: Fr Jun Perez SVD has arrived in Sydney to take up his assignment as JPIC Coordinator for the SVD Australia Province.
MIDDLE LEFT: Fr Jun is pictured with Yawo Marcellin SVD, during his years working in Malawi for the Jesuit Refugee Service. (Photo: Witnessing to the Word)
BOTTOM RIGHT: Fr Jun celebrates Mass with the Philippine migrant community in South Korea. (Image: YouTube screenshot)