Ordination is always a sacred moment for a priest, but being ordained by a future pope might make it especially memorable. Just over 50 years ago, in 1973, Fr Wiesław ‘Tony’ Słowik SJ—chaplain to the Polish community here in Melbourne—was ordained at St Ignatius Church in Richmond by none other than Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, a man who, five years later, would become known worldwide as Pope John Paul II.
The occasion for Cardinal Wojtyla’s visit was the Eucharistic Congress, an event that brought the world to Melbourne. Even Mother Teresa came.
Fr Słowik still has an old tape-recording of the homily Cardinal Wojtyla preached. ‘It was so powerful,’ he says. ‘He was talking about the priesthood, connecting it with the Eucharistic Congress, about who priests are supposed to be: servants, in love with Christ, and sharing this love with people … It was marvellous, incredible.’
Originally, Cardinal Wojtyla wasn’t going to attend the Congress, but learning he had been invited to ordain two priests while here, he changed his mind and said quite simply, ‘Alright, I’m going.’ He spoke at the Mass for nearly 40 minutes.
Fr Słowik already knew the Cardinal from his time studying in Krakow. Cardinal Wojtyla had a heart for students, taking every opportunity he could to meet and talk with them. This was just part of his ministry to the underground Church in Poland, which suffered under a Communist regime for many years. Fr Slowik was from a small village near the border of Poland and Ukraine, known as a ‘shtetl’, but came to Krakow to study for the priesthood with the Society of Jesus, entering the Society at the age of 15 in 1959.
‘I felt that deep conviction that if I want to be happy in my life, I have to enter the Society of Jesus, and that it has to be done now,’ he says.
Although he never knew it at the time, joining the Jesuits came with a cost: his father lost his job.
A spiritual father
‘He didn’t tell me until later on,’ Fr Słowik says. ‘There was no freedom there, of course.’ Not only were exams done in front of government committees, but Fr Slowik and 24 of his fellow seminarians were forcibly taken for two years of military service midway through their studies.
Conscription was a source of ongoing tension between the government and the Church, he explains. The bishops of Poland were concerned about how Communist education might influence the seminarians and other faithful Catholics. ‘The Communist regime was really teaching us different stories, different things.’
Eventually, opportunities arose for seminarians to continue their studies around the world, and the young Wiesław elected to come to Melbourne. Here, he would be mentored by Fr Jozef Janus SJ, a man who spent many years in a Siberian labour camp and who came to be known as ‘the Shepherd of Richmond’. It was Fr Janus who gave him a bracing preparation for ordination.
‘Do you really want to be a priest?’ Fr Janus asked the young seminarian seriously. ‘Come on,’ he replied. ‘Of course I want to be a priest.’
‘But can you love these people? Can you love them as they are, not as you’d like them to be?’
‘That really was a great preparation,’ Fr Słowik says.
Not long before his ordination, Fr Słowik’s father died suddenly of a heart attack, but not before getting a special letter into the hands of Cardinal Wojtyla to pass on to his son. More than just a messenger, in coming to Melbourne Wojtyla became a real father figure to Fr Słowik.
He recounts a moving conversation he had with the Cardinal:
So Wojtyla, on the day of ordination, he gave me a big hug and said, ‘I know what you feel, because I lost my father just before ordination. If you don’t mind, I can replace your father today.’ So since then I had that relation with him, and whenever I was in Rome, or Poland, there was always a chance to have a chat with him.
Apparently Pope John Paul II remembered Melbourne vividly. He was always keen to chat about it. ‘Talk to me about Essendon!’ he would say. ‘Talk to me about Janus!’
The last time Fr Słowik saw Pope John Paul II was in 1999. ‘He was already in that wheelchair,’ he says. ‘He still had those smiling eyes.’
I pray to him often, asking for advice, for assistance. I feel his closeness.
Love for the people
Fr Słowik has a great love for people and feels that Australia has given him opportunities to serve them more fully. ‘The ability to be close, to feel the closeness of love, I think that’s the most joyful thing,’ he says. ‘If I was a priest in Poland, I would be limited in many ways … Here I was free to answer to people’s needs in different ways without any problems.’
After ordination, he put a lot of work into building the Polish community in Melbourne. Back then, in the 70s, electoral rolls were kept at the post office, so Fr Słowik rolled up his sleeves and went looking for every Polish name he could find. He saw his role as being ‘a bridge’, helping Polish migrants to integrate and ‘enrich’ the Catholic Church in Australia.
He also saw himself as a bridge between ‘old Polish migration’ during and after the Second World War and the ‘new one’, where people had become accustomed to Communist ideas. He recalls needing to plead with the authorities to have mercy on new Polish migrants who didn’t understand the concept of private property and who were sometimes charged with theft.
One aspect of his legacy Fr Słowik is particularly proud of is the Polish Festival held every year at Federation Square. For 15 years, this has been an opportunity to get young people involved in the community—highlighting their talents and inviting them to compete for prizes—all the while celebrating Polish culture and bringing a taste of it to the streets of Melbourne. The biggest festival they held drew 60,000 people to Federation Square to take part.
Sadly, Fr Słowik recognises that the Polish Catholic community is not as big as it once was. While there are over 50,000 people in Victoria claiming Polish ancestry, only about 15,000 of them were born in Poland. ‘We are shrinking,’ he says, ‘like many European groups. We are old.’
Even so, he is a man at peace with his work and with the Lord. At 78 years old, and having recently celebrated his Golden Jubilee—50 years of priesthood—Fr Słowik knows his time here may be coming to an end. Despite needing surgeries on his spine and wrists, he is looking forward to meeting Christ and experiencing ‘everlasting happiness’.
I’m free and I don’t worry too much about it. I’m in the hands of God and serving him, and he knows what to do with me. I’m telling him, ‘If you think that’s enough, then that’s enough.’ I’m ready for anything. I’m at peace.
