Celebrating uni day, SVD arrival

Weekender
Former Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan, as Governor of New Ireland visiting the Madang campus on Aug 21,2006 to mark the 10th anniversary of DWU. His is accompanied by the then President of the University Fr Jan Czuba. Picture by KEVIN PAMBA
ANNIVERSARY

TODAY, Friday, Aug 21, 2020 marks the 24th Foundation Day of Divine Word University, Papua New Guinea’s privately-run Catholic university headquartered in Madang town.
The DWU Alumni Day also falls on this date and a commemoration ceremony is being held at the Madang campus today.
Part of the celebration will include the announcement of the annual Distinguished Alumnae of the Year Award, which the university inaugurated in 2015 to honour its alumni who do exceptionally well in their chosen professions, in community engagement in the communities and in support of the university.
It was on Aug 21, 1996 that Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan visited the then Divine Word Institute (DWI) campus in Madang and announced that the institute is to become a university.

A 1974 aerial image of the Divine Word Catholic High School, the predecessor the Divine Word Institute and Divine Word University. DWU archival photo.

Sir Julius told the Madang campus audience that it was fitting for him to announce the DWI’s transition to a university on the 100th year anniversary of the arrival of the Catholic missionaries from the Society of the Divine Word or in Latin is Societas Verbi Divini (SVD) in the mainland of New Guinea (which the German administrators named Kaiser-Wilhelmsland).
Sir Julius was referring to the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the pioneering six SVD missionaries who left Germany and sailed into the harbour of Friedrich-Wilhelmshafen (present day Madang town) on Aug 13, 1896.
According to the DWU History book written by the late James Sinclair, the founder of the SVD congregation Fr Arnold Janssen (now Saint Arnold), while responding to a request from the Vatican in Rome, picked 36-year-old Fr Eberhard Limbrock, who had missionary experience in China, to lead a team to Kaiser-Wilhelmsland (German New Guinea) to start Catholic missionary work.
Arriving in Friedrich-Wilhelmshafen with Fr Limbrock were Frs Franz Vormon and Joseph Erdweg, and Brs Canisius Hautkappe (a mechanic by trade), Eustochius Tigges (carpenter and cabinet-maker) and Theodulph Schmidt (cook/tailor). These six pioneer SVD missionaries laid the foundation of evangelisation work of the Catholic Church that opened up Madang, the two Sepik provinces and the Highlands region to the Christian faith and modern education and other socio-economic services.

Nothing now stands in the way for the Divine Word Institute to become a private Catholic university,” Prime Minister Sir Julius Chan, Aug 21, 1996.

Prime Minister Sir Julius paid homage to the vision of the subsequent SVD missionaries to start PNG’s first university as early as the late 1950s and early 1960s in Madang. The SVDs were convinced that the future of the fledgling colony to become a nation-state lay in university education. This was a view based on the number of students they were preparing in the primary and high schools they have started in the New Guinea mainland and by other Catholic congregations, namely the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC) established in the New Guinea Islands and Papua (Southern) region.
Sir Julius said: “Men of vision like Archbishop (Adolph) Noser, Fr (Paul) McVinney saw the need to cater the needs and aspirations of all those bright, young and educated Papua New Guineans our land was beginning to produce in numbers.
“Even though the complete vision was of a full university, even though this could not be translated into reality at that time (late 1950s and early 60s), the vision itself has never been forgotten.
“It is fitting then that on the occasion of your society’s (SVD’s) 100th anniversary in Papua New Guinea, I as Prime Minister am able to announce today that steps are well and truly underway to complete the vision that your Society developed way back in 1962, 34 years ago.
“You have already the enabling legislation to offer academic qualifications in the same way as the University of Papua New Guinea and the (PNG) University of Technology.
“Together with the Pacific Adventist College, you are already recognised as partners in the development of this nation’s human resources.
“Nothing now stands in the way for the Divine Word Institute to become a private Catholic university,” Sir Julius announced.
When the intention to the build territory’s first university in the late 1950s failed, the SVDs bought an old rubber plantation surrounded by marshland and built a Catholic High School in 1968. The Catholic High School then transitioned to Divine Word Institute in 1979 – four years after independence – and eventually gained legal recognition as a tertiary institution through an Act of Parliament in 1981.
The seed sowed by the SVD missionaries with the support of Holy Spirit Sisters (a congregation also founded by St Arnold Janssen) in the colonial era and nurtured by the decision of Prime Minister Sir Julius in August 1996 is now fulfilling the vision.
DWU is now a national Catholic university with campuses outside of Madang, in Port Moresby, Rabaul, Wewak and Tabubil, that graduates upwards of 1,500 professionals in different fields of study every year.
As the DWU community honours the founding of the university today, the SVDs also began their year-long commemoration of 125th anniversary of the arrival of their pioneers in 1896.
The SVDs gathered in Madang on Aug 13 for a two-week retreat/seminar at their pioneer mission station at Alexishafen, the site chosen by Fr Limbrock in 1896 as the base for Catholic mission work in Kaiser-Wilhelmsland.

  • Dr Kevin Pamba PhD is based in the Madang campus of DWU. Dr Pamba graduated with a PhD from DWU in March, 2018.

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