Dreams realised on mission

“AS A missionary priest I had three fears at the start of my ministry. One was that I would be sent to India as I found the culture and the religion so complex and I thought that it might be too much of a challenge for me. Another was that I had a fear of flying so I wanted to keep that to a minimum. And the last fear I had was ever having to stand up and teach. As it turned out I had to do all three! The miracle, I suppose is that I came to love India, flying and teaching.”

It’s not unusual for a Connolly to be so adept at using humour to describe a situation, but few would realise that these are the words of Mill Hill Missionary, Fr Mark Connolly, not the famous Scottish comedian!

Special relative

During the course of our interview, Fr Mark went through the whole gamut of emotions as he reflected on his decision to take up his vocation and become a missionary priest. It was a journey that started back in Glasgow’s west end, with a strong, traditional Catholic upbringing in which a special relative served as a catalyst for his own faith journey.

“You're probably wondering how I ended up being a priest,” Fr Mark said. “I had an uncle whose name was Eamonn—they always called him Teddy. He was a missionary and he joined the SMA while still a young priest. He was sent to Nigeria and within six weeks of arriving, he was dead from yellow fever. This was back in 1936. I never knew him, but all his personal belongings were sent back as priestly artefacts and when they arrived back, they were always kept in a special kind of cabinet. And as a child I remember seeing them and being inspired by his story, how he kind of knew that it was a dangerous place for a missionary to go at that time because there were no vaccinations against the yellow fever. So he knew the risks and yet he still kind of said yes to God. So that was quite inspirational for my own vocation.”

Mill Hill magnetism

Initially, Fr Mark favoured serving on mission in the Philippines and having discovered that the Columban Missionaries had a presence there, initially pursued his vocation with them. However, an advert in the Scottish Catholic Observer explained that the Mill Hill Missionaries were also present in that part of Asia and with their house being a short distance away, Fr Mark decided to knock on the door and speak to the vocations director. The rest, as they say, is history.

“I think one of the reasons why I joined the Mill Hill Missionaries was that they handed me this beautiful brochure of the seminary in the Netherlands with a big windmill on the front and I thought it'd be great to study abroad,” Fr Mark recalled. “It seemed so exciting and that was part of the attraction.  God uses different lures to get people to join the ranks and that was definitely one of them for me.”

That excitement was no doubt compounded by Fr Mark having his eyes opened to a Church in the Netherlands that he described as ‘more progressive’ that the one he’d been used to, but also on his arrival in the country he and his fellow seminarians embarked upon a Dutch Army training course as a bonding exercise! Also built into their studies in Netherlands was the chance to go on mission for three months and so Fr Mark headed off to Cameroon.

“It was hugely educational in terms of actually seeing what missionaries on the ground are up to, the kind of work that they're engaged in and the kind of challenges that they face,” Fr Mark said. “Being in Africa for the first time was also, in a cultural sense, a real shock to the system.

“I learned more about the missions in those three months than I could have in the three years I was in the Netherlands. Strangely enough, when I left Cameroon, I decided that I was never going to come back here as a missionary and the reason for that was that I felt the Church was well established in Cameroon, very well developed. That’s not why I wanted to join the Mill Hill Missionaries. I wanted to engage in what we call primary evangelisation, basically introducing people for the very first time to Christ. So, I wanted to go to a place where there was no Christian presence or very little and begin work from scratch. That was my dream. That was my vision of being a missionary.”

Divine inspiration amid difficulties

That dream was realised when Fr Mark was sent to the Kohli mission in Pakistan where he spent time with people firstly ‘not talking about Jesus Christ or necessarily religion at all,’ in order to firstly establish relationships built on trust, which he duly did. The challenges facing the Mill Hill Missionary Fathers there was enormous. They were serving people living in mud villages right on the edge of the Thar Desert, with no electricity, no running water, practically illiterate and with no real education. So, the fathers set about raising the social and human dignity of the people there.

“We built two hostels in a nearby town and we eventually persuaded the parents to send their children to that hostel where they could access mainstream education,” Fr Mark said. “Later on, we built some village schools as well. There was nothing we could do about the electricity, so when we went to visit them at night, what we used to do was we would, we would bring along a portable generator and present stories from the Bible and Gospel stories through slides basically. Our Catechist, who knew the language, was able to explain to them what the slides were all about in a very simple way—the main elements of salvation history and the life of Christ as well.”

With regards to the language, that was a challenge that any missionaries throughout the world have to come to terms with. In Fr Mark’s case, despite having learned Urdu, he was then sent to an area of the country where they didn’t speak a word of it and not only that the language of the Kohli people was not a written one! Undeterred, he not only sought to learn their language but also—with the help of two Catechists—compose a basic dictionary with some grammar and vocabulary for future missionaries to the region to make use of.

People and Pentecost moments

Aside from the language and health issues, the climate and the diet proved difficult too. However, seeing  the faith of the people develop and the children receiving a proper education are two things that Fr Mark points to as trumping all the challenges and being very rewarding. Along with his relationship with God, he has drawn strength from being with the people wherever he has served and watching them grow in faith. In fact, he points to it as something that is a crucial part of a vocation.

“I think when you find some kind of peace of mind and fulfilment in what you're doing that is actually meaningful for you then maybe that's what you have been called to do. That's who you've been called to be,” he said. So, a vocation is about embracing something that gives you energy, something that you love talking to people about—as I do—and something you never really want to end. That's why so many of our guys find it so hard to come back and retire, because what they have been doing all their missionary life has given them life. It's given them energy to embrace all sorts of challenges and hardships, even with ease because of what they were getting back from it. The fulfilment it that it has given me is a great privilege.”

“We get to see the bigger picture of the Church,” Fr Mark continued. “And that’s the real positive thing about being a missionary for me. We as missionaries have the chance to see the growth of a young, vibrant, energetic Church taking off in so many countries where we work. That’s hugely life giving for us.

“I think another satisfying thing is to see a missionary church becoming a homegrown church. That’s quite rewarding even though you actually are working for your own extinction as a missionary because you're establishing the local church, you're creating local seminaries so that new priests of the culture of the same country can take over from you. You then move on to another mission perhaps. To see the fruits of evangelisation developing is also very rewarding.”

And how has that growth been facilitated? Well, in short, thanks to the Mill Hill Missionaries’ joint focus on meeting both the physical and spiritual needs of the people they serve. They have played a key part in interfaith projects held at the Christian Studies Centre in Rawalpindi, where Christian and Muslim scholars have learned from one another. They have founded and been involved heavily with a drug rehabilitation centre in Peshawar, which has been hugely effective in saving people’s lives—even those of Taliban members. And as previously mentioned, Fr Mark’s own work in translating the Word of God into the language spoken by the Kohli people delivered what he referred to as a ‘Pentecost moment.’

“I was celebrating Mass in a Kohli village and for the very first time I was able to read the Gospel to them in their own language,” he said. “To see the reaction on their faces when that happened was just a very special moment. Very few missionaries probably get to experience that, but I did. For them to hear the Gospel in their own tongue was a real Pentecost moment, that’s the only way to describe it.”

Good Samaritan

Whilst recalling many stories from his time on mission, Fr Mark remembered one of his own Pentecost moments in Pakistan, whereby his rush to judge someone was challenged when they came to his aid.

“I had an in-built bias against landowners in the area that I was working in, in Pakistan because they had a very bad reputation of being oppressive towards their workers who had no land themselves, but were just hired farm workers really,” he said. “There was also lot of corruption and a lot of injustice perpetrated against those people. So, in my mind, the landowners had a deserved bad reputation.

“One day I was in a Kohli village visiting the people and I stayed overnight, but in the morning my Suzuki Jeep wouldn't start. It just so happened that at that moment, one of these young landowners was passing in his big 4x4 and he stopped and he came up and introduced himself and said: ‘What's the problem?’ I replied: ‘I can't get the car to start.’ He immediately called his own mechanic and sent him off to the nearest town to find a spare pump. The mechanic had a look at my car first and then he said he needed a spare part. So, he went to the town, brought that spare part and while all that was going on, this young landowner took me home to his very nice villa, gave me breakfast and introduced me to his whole family. He was a young Muslim man. After breakfast, he brought me back and the mechanic had done the job. The car was fully repaired and we shook hands and that was it.

“I thought of it sort of like a modern version of the parable of the Good Samaritan where the ‘bad guy’ turns out to be the good guy. So, that really changed my whole kind of thinking that you mustn't judge, whatever you may think about a particular group. You mustn't judge individuals ever. Jesus never did. There's not one instance in the Gospel of Jesus condemning an individual. He had harsh words for groups like the Pharisees and Scribes, but never does he speak against or in condemnation of an individual. So, that was a lesson I had to learn. It’s a very real story and it's stayed with me ever since.”

Mission matters

While this incident taught Fr Mark not to rush to judgement—something he would advise all missionaries to be careful not to do—he also explained that there are other qualities or characteristics that a missionary must possess to be able to successfully serve the people. Having a profound respect for another’s culture in one, but also not being afraid to challenge the less appealing parts of that culture is another. He also invited them to be open minded and realise that the Church exists outwith our own environments. He then went on to explain what mission means to him.

“Mission, for me, is hopefully the same as what it was for Jesus in that the Father sent Him into the world to reach out to those people who are at risk of believing themselves unloved by God or abandoned by God,” Fr Mark said. “And the reason they think like that is because there's so much poverty in their life, physical poverty and the hardships that brings, or because they have experienced rejection from their own community in some way, or because they've been sick and they feel that they're being punished by God. So those are the people who are most at risk of believing themselves unloved by God.

“These are exactly the people that Jesus targeted. It was a very focused missionary outreach by Jesus. That's what I have always believed my own mission is. I want to go to those people who are most at risk of believing themselves perhaps unloved by God and then try to reverse that message, by showing them that they are indeed God's beloved sons and daughters. That to me is the heart of mission, it’s the priority of mission.

“The whole idea of introducing people for the first time to the person of Jesus Christ and to His message and to His example is a great privilege. To talk about Jesus to someone who's really unfamiliar with the Gospel or with the life of Jesus and to be able to fill in that that information for them, to talk about your own experience, your own faith and your own experience of being a Christian to others is fantastic.”

“I think it's incumbent upon all Christians to realise that Jesus—who was sent by God the Father—passed on that responsibility and that mission to His disciples,” Fr Mark added. “How many ordinary Catholics think of themselves as being missionaries? It's almost like they think of missionary work as something that’s an added extra to the Christian vocation. It's not, it is the Christian vocation. It's at the heart of what it means to be a Baptised member of the Church. You have a responsibility to share your faith, it's not a private possession. It's meant to be handed on. How you do it of course differs from person to person, but the responsibility is universal.”

Having seen at first hand the support that is given to projects in the missions throughout the world by the Pontifical Mission Societies, Fr Mark concluded by imploring the lay faithful to support the work of Missio Scotland and ‘play their own part in the missionary outreach of the Church.’

“I always remind people that they are the first stage in the missionary journey because the generosity of prayers and spiritual support that they give are vital,” he said. “Without that and the material support that they give, sooner or later it would have a profound effect on our ability to recruit priests, to train them properly, to equip them when they're in the field and sustain them over a period of time. None of that would be possible without the help that we get from ordinary Catholics who reach out to and support Missio Scotland.

“Supporting Missio Scotland, is a wonderful way people for to play their own part in the missionary outreach of the Church. The great thing about Missio Scotland is it has resources for promoting a mission and it's done very professionally, which is great. We benefit from that indirectly, because as soon as you say that you're a missionary, people know what you're talking about. It’s complementary to the work that we are doing as Mill Hill Missionaries in Scotland.”

Why not like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/missioscotland, and follow us on Twitter: @Missio_Scotland, Instagram: MissioScotland and Bluesky: @missioscotland.bsky.social

To donate to Missio Scotland, visit: https://www.missioscotland.com/donate call us on: 01236 449774 or send donations to: Missio Scotland, St. Andrews, 4 Laird Street, Coatbridge ML5 3LJ

You can also now donate to us via text. Text MISSIOSCOT to 70085 to donate £3 or MISSIOSCOT with any number between 1-20 after it to donate your desired amount (For example MISSIOSCOT 10 will donate £10). Thank You