Three SVD deacons ordained

FAITH

CATHOLICISM in Momase and the Highlands today is in large part the fruit of seeds sown by pioneer Divine Word (SVD) missionaries and their co-labourers the Holy Spirit Sisters.
The SVD and Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit religious orders were founded in the Netherlands by Arnold Janssen in 1875 and 1889 respectively.
Soon after members of these organisations were sent out to evangelise parts of the world, with the first SVDs arriving in PNG in 1896.
It was quite fitting that three more young men from East Sepik, Enga and Madang respectively, made their final commitments to becoming SVD priests at the St Peter Channel Church (Erima) in Port Moresby last Saturday.
Witnessed by several hundred Catholic faithful and members of a number of Catholic religious orders, Jeremiah Kaumbal, Jerry Kurai and Herman Kunow were ordained as deacons by the Archbishop of Port Moresby Cardinal Sir John Ribat.
The trio will now work in parishes for the next six months before they are finally ordained as priests.
Kaumbal will be posted to the Pombapus Parish in Wabag Diocese, Kurai to Boikin Parish in Wewak and Kunow will be at the Jomba Parish in Madang.
The rector of the SVD College at the Bomana Catholic Theological Institute Fr Joseph Mesa said the three young men would be working under SVD priests in those parishes until they are ordained in August 2021.
The ordinations will follow the celebrations of the 125th anniversary of the arrival of the first SVD missionaries at Rempi on the north coast of Madang.
After their ordinations as priests, Kuambal will travel to Germany where he will be assigned to a local parish there. Kurai will go to the central African country of Chad while Kunow will serve in PNG initially.
The ordination at the weekend was a significant accomplishment for the three young men and their families.
For the Kurai family, it was another exciting chapter to their family history, started by their patriarch Kurai Tapus who was a forerunner in the faith. Through his initial contact with both the colonial administrators and pioneer missionaries he has carved a clear pathway for his posterity.
One of his sons, Councillor Paul Kiap Kurai is today a successful businessman who has helped the Catholic Church both in Enga and in Port Moresby.
Kurai, the influential Kamainwan leader became one of the most famous early converts to the Catholic faith in what is now the Wabag Diocese.
Canisius Kaut, an uncle of Herman Kunow, spoke on behalf of the three families who had given their sons to the service of God: “As parents we want to thank the most blessed Trinity for giving us these wonderful boys and for guiding and protecting them through a very difficult and lonely life of a Catholic SVD seminarian formation programme.”
Addressing the deacons directly, Kaut said: “We want to congratulate you for making it this far. We all can only support you but it is you who will really decide if you would liketo be a priest of God. Please always pray. Your success is our success, your failure is our failure.”

“We would want to give a special acknowledgment and thanks to the SVD missionaries and their provincial superior Fr Jose Orathinkal for accepting and allowing our sons to be trained for the honourable vocation.”
SVD legacy in Enga
All SVD priests and other dedicated missionaries have trodden on this same road during arduous training and in the actual field over the centuries. Many from abroad have come to PNG in the last century, some buried here among the people they came to serve and dedicated their whole lives to.
The SVD missionaries have been most active in the dioceses of Madang and Wewak, having first landed there in the 1880s and from Madang they traversed the interior of the New Guinea highlands.
One of the most famous of these SVD missionaries was American Fr William Ross who was the very first missionary to live among people in the populous Highlands region.
He established the very first mission station when the region opened up to the outside world in 1933 by Michael Leahy, Daniel Leahy and Jim Taylor.
They invited Fr Ross to join them in Mt Hagen in 1934. With encouragement from Bishop Francis Wolf, the German bishop at Alexishafen in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea, Fr Ross walked over the mountains from Madang and established himself at Rabiamul in Mt Hagen.
Soon after, a young missionary arrived at Rabiamul. He was Fr Jerry Bus SVD on his way to Enga. He needed help for he lacked experience. He had just arrived in by ship on April 30, 1947 as soon as he was ordained a priest in Holland. By late October of the same year, he was walking into the Pumakos area of Wapenamanda in Enga with Fr William Ross.
Government restrictions had been lifted paving way for the two missionaries to go there. They continued their walk up to Wabag where they met with Bob Macllwain, the kiap in residence at the new patrol post. They were allowed to proceed onto Kopen but not any further west. Government restrictions were still in place to those areas.
Kopen was an ideal spot overlooking the Lai river which flowed down a gully from Lake Ivae up on the Sirunki plateau in parallel to the central ridge on which the Tole massacres had occurred back in 1934.
The two SVD missionaries headed back to Mt Hagen via Baiyer River arriving at the mission station on Oct 31, 1947. The following year, Fr Bus loaded two planes from Banz with supplies to land in Wabag to set up his first station at Pompabus in February, 1948.
In his company were Fr Anton Cruysberg, Catechist Peter Bamatu and cook Robert Hamo. After landing at the newly built Wabag airstrip, a long line of carriers was engaged to carry all their belongings to Pompabus in Wapenamanda. Fr Jerry Bus immediately set to work to establish a church and school in the area.
Thaddeus Kaka Menge recalls meeting two missionaries come to Kopen. He and a man named Pupukaine gave them land to establish a mission station at the top end of present day Kopen Secondary School.
“Pupukaine, who has recently died, and myself gave land to the kone (whiteman) to settle on,” said Menge.
“They came up from Pompabus and told us they were looking for land so we gave our land to them. All that land belonged to us so we just gave it to them to settle on.”
One of the two missionaries Thadius mentions was Fr Jerry Bus who hadn’t forgotten Kopen when he went there with Fr William Ross in 1947.
The other missionary was either Fr Anton Cruysberg or most probably Fr Bernard Fisher who actually settled at Kopen. However, the new mission station soon took shape. The priest’s house and a church of bush materials was built, a small ‘pidgin skul’ that is a school where pidgin English was the medium of instruction was established and a small pond was dug where a couple of ducks swam freely.
“I liked to see these ducks. I had never seen before such birds with webbed feet,” says John Pake from Kaiap who was about 10 years of age at the time.”
Initially, Enga belonged to the diocese of Wewak and was developed from there under Bishop Leo Arkfeld, SVD. In 1959 it became part of SVD Bishop George Bernarding’s new vicariate of Mt Hagen.
In 1982 Fr Herman Raich, SVD became the first Bishop of Wabag diocese followed by Bishop Arnold Orowei, the first local priest to take over from the early expatriate missionaries. The church has grown so much so that almost all the mission stations are filled by local priests
In the period between 1958 and 1959 when Enga was developed from Wewak under Bishop Leo Arkfield six mission stations started operating – Par, Pina, Pompabus, Pumakos, Sari and Sikiro. The total christen converts was 1,193.
Under the tutelage of Bishop George Bernarding and when Bishop Herman Raich was installed in 1982 till Bishop Arnold Orowei took over, the work of the church has expanded contributing so much to the development of the province.
The total number of Catholic faithful of Enga now stands at nearly 80,000 from 18 parishes. The church runs 64 primary schools and three TVET centres. It also runs five health centres, one day clinic and two unregistered aid posts.
There are 21 local priests who man the parishes and the many outstations.This is the fruit of the work of pioneer missionaries like SVD missionaries Fr William Ross, Fr Jerry Bus, Fr Kelly, Fr Schubbe and others.
A large church is being built at Kopen, the site where the pioneer missionary erected his first church on Enga soil. Cardinal John Ribat has been invited to officiate the opening which will happen sometime in the coming months.
– With excerpts from Daniel Kumbon’s new book Victory Song of Pingeta’s Daughter.