Deacon’s parish is a seafarer’s port

02 Aug 2012

By Robert Hiini

Deacon Patrick Moore received a strange phone call one Monday morning last month.

The Stella Maris Seafarers centre in Fremantle which he adminsters has no shortage of phone calls, with around 600 seafarers seeking solace through its doors, each and every month, but this call was a little different.

The Australian newspaper’s Chief of Staff was on the other end of the line, saying he had some money he wanted to give him.

Three days before, the newspaper had run full-colour photographs on the front page of its weekend edition showing a container ship’s harrowing rescue of 27 capsised assylum seekers.

The photographs had been taken by the JPO Vulpecula’s Captain, Eric Bilango.

“They offered Captain Bilango some money for the pics,” Deacon Patrick told The Record, “and [the Captain] said, “we don’t want it, give it as a donation to the Stella Maris Seafarers Association who made us feel so at home.”

Next time the ship was at port in Fremantle, Deacon Patrick, went down to the port to see if he could offer any solace to the ship’s crew, who had seen many of the 200 asylum seekers on board the leaking vessel perish in the waves before they could be rescued.

Deacon Patrick said he is busier now, as an ordained minister, than he ever was during his 36 years at the State Library of Western Australia.

The seafarers who come are typically on-leave from their ships for a few hours, looking for a place to rest and recuperate, and for help to reconnect with their families back home.

“They’re poorly paid fellers,” he said of his visiting seafarers, standing in a room with several computers set up for internet access and magazines for light reading.

“They love the women’s magazines. As soon as I put out the women’s magazines they just go. Same with the [donated] clothes,” he said.

He will often get a call from security guards down at the port to alert him to a ship’s arrival.

Throughout the week, he takes the Stella Maris van down to port to pick up sailors who hail from all over the world; Ukraine, Russia, the Phillipines and China, among many other countries.

“I really love it here. And it’s funny, isn’t it. I never expected to be here,” he said.

In early 2007, shortly after he was ordained to the permanent diaconate, he received a call from the then-Vicar General, Mgr Brian O’Loughlin asking if he would consider the post of Stella Maris Administrator.

The centre had been closed and left empty for two years. The whole place was a wreck when he saw it, Deacon Patrick said, with graffiti and rotting carpet throughout the building.

Getting it back to a functional state was tough but re-establishing connections with seafarers was no-less difficult.

He had expected to be working exclusively in a parish – visiting parishioners, doing baptisms and burials, and assisting the liturgy.

In addition to Stella Maris, Deacon Patrick serves at his home parish of St Francis Xavier in Armadale, living with Carol, his wife of 40 years, in the neighbouring town of Roleystone.

A father of six, he has had the pleasure of baptising one of his three grandchildren, with the hope of baptising more in the not-too-distant future.

Although happy in his ministry, he said he felt frustrated that he could not anoint people when they were near death, recounting the story of one man who he regularly visited throughout his sickness and whose family asked him to anoint the night before he died.

Down at Stella Maris, he said he was blessed to have two capable and generous part-time staff and several excellent volunteers.

Volunteers were hard to come by but he had a man starting on the Monday of the following week.

The man’s daughter was one of two Iona Presentation College students who had done work experience at Stella Maris recently.

“They were good as gold these girls. They worked so hard, beavering away, and were very cheerful,” Deacon Patrick said.

“The father thought, ‘I could help there’. He’s not a Catholic but it doesn’t matter, he’s got a good heart.

“So there you go, the Holy Spirit works in amazing ways.”