Faith and mission can move mountains

“WHAT a lot of people might not know is that I’ve climbed 180 out of 283 Munros,” Fr Dominic Quinn said. “It’s a wee badge of pride, because I love the mountains and the outdoors. I’m no Chris Bonington, but I’ve done my best!”

That love of mountains and the outdoors would serve the Glasgow-born priest well during years spent on mission in Bolivia and Peru, but little did he know his Faith would hit new heights then too.

The young Dominic Quinn who grew up in East Kilbride—along with his four brothers and two sisters—originally had designs on being a singer and then latterly a lawyer until ‘the Lord intervened’ with a Plan C, which was no doubt bolstered by a family that was not only rooted in the Catholic Faith, but which also had a missionary history.

“We were very involved in in the life of the Church and we would say the family Rosary at home during the week and so on,” Fr Dominic said. “My Uncle John was also a missionary priest. He was a Salvatorian and he worked in Tanganyika as it was at that time. So, we did feel very much part of the Church and connected. Our faith was really important to our family and to me as well growing up. It was a faith that was so alive.”

Priestly examples—those within the family and an older brother in seminary—were no doubt important influences in discerning his vocation, but there were others.

“As a teenager, I got involved with charismatic renewal and going along to prayer groups,” he recalled. “I was probably about maybe 14 or 15 at the time and that really was a big turning point for me, I think, in terms of considering a vocation. I had lots of good influences with the priests in our parish—both St Brides, and Our Lady of Lourdes. They were outstanding examples and really joyous people.

“Also at that time, in the mid to late 1970s, there was a movement in schools known as Caring Church Weeks when various priests and religious would come to visit the school for a week and share about their own lives and so on and they were great salesman and saleswomen because they were clearly very happy about their own lives and wanted to share that. They encouraged reflection and young people to inquire of themselves whether it might be a way of life that would be for them.”

Family values

So, a strong faith at home and some excellent witnesses to that Faith in the Church were crucial to the young Fr Dominic taking up his vocation, which would begin at Blairs College before moving onto the Scots College in Rome. But his Irish background and the many qualities and characteristics associated with that, had a massive impact not only upon his decision to become a priest, but they would also subconsciously imbue him with many values that would prove to be vital while on mission.

“All four of my grandparents come from Ireland—County Fermanagh and County Leitrim,” Fr Quinn said. “My father's parents came to Scotland late 1920s, early 1930s and settled in Clydebank. They were bombed out of Clydebank during the blitz and rehoused in Partick, in Byers Rd. My maternal grandparents were from County Fermanagh in a place called Boho, near the town of Derrygonnelly and I still have family there. They still have the farm. That's where my mum would have grown up, on the farm there. I'm very, very proud of my Irishness, being Scots-Irish, you know. 

“My mother gave us so much really,” he added. “She came from a family of four and as I said grew up on the farm. There, the family worked as a team—they had to—meeting all the challenges that they would have faced. It was a very simple lifestyle that they lived, but it was all underpinned by their life of faith to an extraordinary degree. It was just woven into everything that they did. So, for example, everyone would stop to say the Angelus at midday or in the evening at six. Everyone would—the men in the fields, those who were at home and the children. So, growing up in that environment, their faith that was just woven into their humanity. There was no distinction between faith and life, it was one and the same thing. So, religion wasn't just something for Sundays, it was something which influenced everything in life.

“So, there was that element of working together, of sharing, of collaborating, of supporting neighbours, a sense of solidarity, caring for each other and an extraordinary humility too. There was a great awareness of the equality of individuals. So, many values came from my Irish background that I could probably write a book about it all, but certainly from my mother and from my Irish roots, those things were conveyed to us as children from a very young age, a great sense of fairness and using your talents for the benefit of others. Those are things which I think remain with me.”

Vocation

That connectedness with God and its ongoing nature is something that Fr Dominic feels aptly describes the term vocation, ‘taking the Lord’s hand in some way and walking with him for a lifetime.’ And that is exactly what he has done in his various parishes in Motherwell Diocese and eventually on mission with the St James Society to Bolivia and Peru. During that journey though, there was a spell in jail… as he became Chaplain to Shotts Prison, something he looks back on as a hugely important role.

“It’s a very isolating experience for people and the Catholic priest has a unique role,” he said. “It's different from other chaplains I think because of the connotation of confidentiality and it ties in with the perception of the priest. So, the role of the priest in the prison is particularly important. And just at a human level, it's important to have a trustworthy person to confide in. With regards to faith, it’s important too because when people are in prison, sometimes there's a resurgence of feelings of faith and it's good to be able to respond to that.”

Prison chaplaincy no doubt re-emphasised the importance of faith, hope and love, something Fr Dominic has always been conscious of given that he chose 1 Corinthians 13:13 as the scripture passage that featured on his ordination card: “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” Meeting people with faith, giving them hope and treating them with the love of a father is something that would colour his experience in Bolivia and Peru, but the response of the South Americans was reciprocal. When learning the language at the start of his mission, he stayed with families, who not only warmly welcomed him but were also keen to teach him about their customs, their lifestyle and their culture.

Cultural sensitivities

However, as he candidly admits himself, his lack of experience and understanding of that culture was something that was exposed—in the early days at least—in the historic, rural parish of Paria, some 12,500 feet up in the Andes, in which he lived and to which he served. The way in which a parish feast day was celebrated shocked him at the time.

“We served about 30 villages around the mountains, which had old Spanish colonial churches in them,” he recalled. “We would reach them by Jeep along mud tracks, travelling and out to visit them to celebrate Mass or do Baptisms maybe twice or three times a year, but we would always visit them on the day of their feast day. So, whoever the patron saint of their own church was, we would go out to celebrate Mass and the celebrations for the feast would last a week.

“One time I went to this small village, driving out with our Deacon. We arrived at this wee place and I went into the church. Everyone in the village had been partying the night before, so there were all these drunk men, literally lying in the altar, on the sanctuary, all over the place. I said to them ‘I'm not celebrating Mass in this situation, this is unacceptable,’ I proceeded to give them a big lecture and drove back to Paria. I explained to my colleague, Fr Dario, what had happened and he said: ‘Well, they wouldn't have expected that reaction from you!’  

"The following day the following day, three members of the community arrived, the leader of the community and two of his councillors, in full ceremonial dress—the coloured ponchos that they would only wear on formal occasions. They pleaded with me to come back and celebrate Mass because if not, it would bring down a curse upon their community and they apologised profusely about the drinking and so on. So, of course, I went back and celebrated Mass for them.

“I hadn't realised the depth of feeling that they had about Mass being celebrated on their feast day and how much it meant to that community. I shouldn't have left. I should have just stayed and taken my time and it made it a kind of teaching experience, but back then, I didn't quite get that. So, it was a good lesson and there was an element of humour to it.”

Another memorable story from his time on mission in Bolivia was something that put his hillwalking skills to the test! During lunch, after a Baptism, some members of the community asked Fr Dominic to do a blessing at a hillside site where a lightning strike killed a sheep.

"So, we all get into the Jeep and I said: ‘Where is it?' He replied: ‘Oh it's only 5 minutes away,’” Fr Dominic said. “Five minutes became 10 minutes, which became 15 minutes... Eventually we arrived at this guy's house and I said: ‘OK, so where is the spot that you want me to bless?' He pointed to an area halfway up a mountain and said: ‘It's up there and I replied: “I can't. I can’t go up to that altitude. It's too high for me.’ He said: ‘We thought you would say that. So, we have taken some of the soil from the spot when the lightning struck.’ So, he produced this basket of soil, got me to bless it and pray to St Michael the Archangel and a couple of guys went off with the soil and for my labour, for my work, he gave me half a dozen eggs, a couple of carrots and some onions. Loads of great wee things like that happened on mission!”

Faith parallels

While there were differences in culture between Fr Dominic’s experience and that of the Bolivian people whom he served, there were many things that united them. There was a shared love of football (which tends to be a universal language) and having a knees-up, but more importantly a shared Faith, which unearthed a love of Our Lady in Fr Dominic that was replicated by the Bolivian people too.

“I do have a special love for Our Blessed Lady and that's something which has really grown from childhood when I didn't quite understand the importance of Our Lady,” Fr Quinn said. “I would pray the Rosary and so on, but something clicked with me in South America about the place of Our Lady in the life of a Christian and from that time, my understanding has just grown so much. In an emergency, the first person I call on is Our Blessed Lady. 

The Bolivians—and the South Americans in general—have a huge devotion to Our Lady and I think it's connected to the cultural value that they place on motherhood. The mother of the family is a hugely influential role. It's a very male dominated culture in general terms, but in terms of domestic arrangements, the mother has a huge role to play in the family and there’s huge respect for mothers, grandmothers and so on. What struck me initially was the public transport. You would go on a bus and the front of the bus would be festooned with statues of Our Lady or tapestries in the windscreen and the drivers would have tattoos of Our Lady on their forearms, which read ‘Maria Mi Madre,’ and so on so it was widespread.”

"That got me thinking about where I saw Our Lady in my own life,” he reflected. “Was my devotion to Our Lady more on the intellectual side than in the emotional side? Through my experience in South America, I think I managed to connect emotionally with Our Blessed Lady as the Mother of Jesus and our mother too, and not in a kind of overly pious way, but just a real, natural feeling that Our Lady wasn't otherworldly, She was our mother and like our earthly mothers, She cares for us in an active way and is influential with the Lord. That all kind of crystallised in my own spiritual life in Bolivia and it was a real blessing.”

Connection and mission

Another blessing for Fr Dominic on mission in Bolivia was the ability to connect with the people whom he served, which, along with adaptability, is a quality that he feels every missionary must possess.

“Because of the distinctive role of the missionary priest, people open their doors and open their hearts to you and that is a huge privilege,” he said. "It challenges the missionary’s own generosity of heart and openness to others.”

Conscious of the importance of generosity and openness, Fr Dominic has been fulsome in his praise of Missio Scotland’s support for projects in Bolivia this year. Having supported agriculture projects, clinics, children’s feeding programmes and an orphanage via the St James Society in the country, he is acutely aware of the depth and variety of need that exists in Bolivia.

“I know that the people in Bolivia are hugely grateful for the solidarity that people show them and it's not in terms of a superior helping an inferior—they have a real sense of the human family,” he said. “From the perspective of the Bolivians that I know, they understand the notion of solidarity because amongst themselves they show great solidarity and support in the ordinary things of life, but they understand too, that the global family must show solidarity. So, any assistance that can be given to Bolivian people in need is really important. It's important for us to find ways to show solidarity to Bolivians sure, but to all the people around the world who don't enjoy all those things that perhaps we take for granted here. 

"It's really what mission is all about—solidarity, universality and trying to live out our faith in whichever set of circumstances we find ourselves and mission applies to every single person, whether it involves going from your own place to another place, or whether it involves living the particular way in your own area, but it's all about going out, you know.

“So going out of oneself and trying to share with others something of the insights of faith that you have, the love that you experience from God and seeking to encourage and involve others in the life of the Church and so on. For me, it applies as much here in the parish of St Leonard’s as it as it does to those who go, for example, out to Bolivia, to work in faith communities there. It's key to how we should live our lives as Christians, going out, finding ways to bring, in practical terms, our faith or God's love to others, whether that means creating a prayer group or organising a food bank or helping in a soup kitchen—all those things, for me, are mission. It’s the recognition that we have a responsibility to go out of ourselves.”

“Supporting Missio Scotland’s work can act as a conduit for that, “Fr Dominic continued. “In Bolivia, the Church is one of the institutions that people know they can depend upon. They have lively participation in the lives of their own faith communities and they also have a great understanding of the universality of the Catholic Church. The Pope—whoever the Pope might be in any particular moment—is a hugely important person for them; they don't feel that he's a distant figure. They understand his role as creating unity amongst Catholics throughout the world and so they depend on the Church, but they also contribute to the Church as well, not in financial terms, but in terms of the life of faith.

“So, that connection with the Pope, with the Universal Church, is important for them, but it's also important for us to be part of that effort, because one of the great commandments is to love God, to love our neighbour as ourselves and through supporting other people, it's an expression of love. The notion of loving the other can be a bit nebulous for some, but when we're actually saying that I genuinely love these people, I love my fellow human beings and I'm able to do something to help them and the challenges that they face in their life, that’s so important because it reminds us that we have a responsibility for one another—those who are who are close to us, but also those who are distant from us.

“I think we need to remind ourselves of that responsibility and having organisations like Missio Scotland is a constant reminder that we are part of something bigger and that we are asked by the Lord to show care for our neighbour. So, Missio Scotland’s work is vital and will be greatly appreciated by the Bolivian people.”

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