Father Sam’s final words,to the people of Huli and Tari,“For me, I am not retiring, I am fading.”

ON the afternoon of Saturday, January 8, Hela’s favorite son and Southern Highlands Governor Anderson Agiru was driving around the Holy Spirit Seminary campus at Bomana outside Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Despite his busy schedule, Governor Agiru, went to look for an old Catholic priest and Hela’s best friend for more than 50 years, Fr Samuel Driscoll.

After some minutes’ search, Governor Agiru managed to locate Fr Sam (as he is known widely) at the hills of the Franciscan House. The duo then drove off to Ela Beach Hotel where Governor Agiru hosted a luncheon in Fr Sam’s honor, the man known and loved by Catholics and the general Hela and Southern Highlands people of Papua New Guinea as one of their best friend.

Governor Agiru also invited Komo Margarima MP and Transport Minister Francis Potape for the farewell where the two leaders presented gifts of behalf of their people back home in a memorable, moving and fitting farewell to the 78 year old priest.

All through that week in Tari, Catholics from Tari, Hela and the Diocese of Mendi also hosted feasts and bombarded Fr Sam with gifts and well wishes to send him off on a high note. Governor Agiru thanked Fr Sam for the untiring years of selfless love, care and service Fr Sam offered to the people of Hela and Southern Highlands in his 50 plus years of preaching the Word of God after first setting foot on the shores of this country in 1961.

Fr Sam is in fact the longest serving Catholic priest in the Diocese of Mendi and has many good friends in Hela and Southern Highlands.

On Jan 4, hundreds of people also gathered at Kupari Catholic Church in Tari to bid farewell to Fr Sam, affectionately known to the Huli people as “Kupari Sam” as he left Tari, Hela and Southern Highlands for ever for the United States. In front of a packed church building at Kupari, Fr Sam said his last mass with his Huli congregation.

Respectively, community and church leaders even from other denominations came to ‘thank Fr Sam’ for all his years of untiring service in meeting the spiritual needs and development of the Catholics in Tari and Hela. Bishop of Mendi Diocese, Stephen Reichert also came in from Mendi with other clergies to attend Fr Sam’s farewell mass and celebrations.

Rev Holene Yawai, chairman of the Hela Council of Churches who also represented the Evangelical Church of PNG (ECPNG) at the mass, thanked Fr Sam for his years of service to the church, the body of Christ in Hela. Rev Yawai described Fr Sam as a ‘Great Servant of God’ and someone who worked well with church workers from other mainstream churches in Tari and Hela to spread the Word of God. Kupari church committee chairman Richard Ayai said the Tari and Hela people would lose a dear friend who always had the heart to love and serve the Huli people.

“Whether you are Catholic or not, Christian or pagan, young or old, sick, dying or healthy, poor or rich, drunkards, drug addicts or not, Kupari Sam was always there to help the Hela people and he would long be remembered for his unrestricted love and care to the people apart from his main pastoral duty of spreading the Word of God in Tari and Hela,” Mr Ayai said.

After the mass, some members of the congregation shed tears and swamped Fr Sam with gifts. Local youths also sang him farewell songs in an emotional send off. Originally from Charleston in West Virginia, Fr Sam came to PNG in 1961 as a young priest with the Order of the Franciscan Capuchin Friars Minors (OFM Cap).

His first posting was Ialibu parish in the Southern Highlands where he served for more than 12 years. Besides teaching and preaching the Word of God, Fr Sam helped establish the Tukupangi and Orei primary schools in the Imbonggu area. He also trained local Catechists and at times patrolled by foot and motor bike for many hours to visit and establish new mission outstations. He baptized new Catholics, acted as counselor providing advice to young people who were about to tie the knot and live as Christian families. At times Fr Sam acted as ‘ambulance driver’ in ferrying the sick to health centers and hospitals. He even gave medicines when people were sick and came to seek his help at St Clare’s parish in Ialibu.

In 1973, Fr Sam was asked by the then Bishop of Mendi Diocese, the Late Firmen Schmidt OFM Cap, to transfer to Sohe parish at Nipa district.

Fr Sam was in Nipa for another ten years where he help started the Kurump primary school in the Wara Lai area. In 1983, Fr Sam was given a taste of the coast and city life after his years in the rural and tough highlands terrains, when he was appointed parish priest at Holy Rosary parish at Six Mile in Port Moresby.

There, among other duties, he learnt to meet the challenges of assisting the unfortunates in the tough city life. After seven years in Port Moresby, Fr Sam was recalled back to Ialibu where he caught up with his old parishioners. He served in Ialibu until 1997 when he was posted to Kupari in Tari.Fr Sam has served in Tari for nearly 14 years now.

He recalled that in all his years in PNG, he observed that people are beginning to move towards western civilization, adding that when he first come to the province, there were no good road links and they had to ride on motor bikes to visit outstations for mass, marriages, baptisms, confessions and administering of other sacraments and church duties.

He said he loves the Huli and Southern Highlands people very much and felt that he has ‘truly fulfilled God’s call and will for him to serve as a missionary in PNG’ where he would be leaving with fond memories back in the States.Fr Sam said he is sad to leave Tari and Hela at this most exciting times especially with the new Hela province and the multi-billion kina PNG liquefied natural gas (LNG) project.

Fr Sam recalled that between 1997 and 2002 were the toughest years he served in Tari. This was when the province including Tari and Hela were under siege and anarchy as politics related crisis and lawlessness perpetuated by widespread violence crippled the area.

There was also complete breakdown of government administration and civil services in Tari while people were denied basic services like power, telecommunications, banking and postal services. Armed gangs and warlords took siege of the area and tribesmen armed with guns held the Nipa section of the highway in ransom as political conflict between the two biggest ethnical groups in the province took its toll over the governor’s post.

Fr Sam was among many other Hulis who on many occasions felt victims to these armed hold-ups at Nipa as he tried to get supplies into Tari from Mendi. However, Fr Sam said things have changed drastically in the last three years and Southern Highlands, Hela and Tari unlike before is now in the safe hands of good leaders from the province like Governor Agiru where government services denied to the people some years ago are beginning to be restored.

Fr Sam only wishes that electricity, telecommunications including landline phones for fax, email and internet uses, banking and postal services are restored soon in Tari town. Fr Sam left the shores of Papua New Guinea forever on last week where he heads back to Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.

There he would still serve as a priest at the OFM Cap headquarters. His final words to the people of Huli and Tari are: “Always follow the Gospel of Christ. “For me, I am not retiring, I am fading,” he said with a smile. As Hela and Papua New Guinea bade farewell to Fr Sam this month, they also hope that the powers that be including the interim Hela Transitional Authority (HTA) can immediately heed the plight of the people in Tari town as urged by Fr Sam.

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