School honours Fr Glynn

By SHARLYNE ERI
JUBILEE Catholic Secondary School hosted an 80th birthday celebration last week for Fr John Glynn, a prominent figure who has contributed so much to addressing issues such as discrimination and poverty in the country.
Fr Glynn, born on Sept 13, 1936, is the founder of the Wecare Foundation, the Youth against Corruption Association, now under Transparency International, and he is currently a board member of the Digicel PNG Foundation.
He first came to Papua New Guinea in the 1960s as a teacher and later became a Catholic priest and a PNG citizen.
He first engaged himself with Jubilee Secondary School in 2002 when he became the school chaplain and the teacher in charge of religious education.
Jubilee Catholic Secondary School principal Bernadette Ove said she first knew of Fr Glynn in 2001 when learning that he was a teacher at the Port Moresby Grammar School.
She said she felt that Port Moresby Grammar was not a place for a catholic priest to be teaching in, so she wrote to the then Archbishop Sir Brian Barnes requesting for Fr Glynn to serve as school Chaplain for the Jubilee Catholic School.
“In the last 15 years that Fr Glynn has been here, he has seen the need in the catholic community particularly in the young people who were not able to be educated or vulnerable young women who were left to fend for themselves,” she said.
Ove said Fr Glynn has done so many things for the school and has helped in the development of the school from the early stages to the present.
The school honoured Fr Glynn’s contributions by naming an award after him, the Fr John Glynn Resilience Award.
Ove said it will be awarded to a Grade 12 student who displays resilience in their study despite all odds and will be presented for the first time this year during the Grade 12 graduation in October.