Home is where the mass is for Fr Martin

SCARIFF native Fr Martin Bugler left Ireland’s shores for New Zealand on November 4, 1958, the day of Pope John XXIII’s papal inauguration but he returned home to coincide with a number of other historical and memorable occasions.
Fr Bugler has been based in Helensville/Haupai in northern New Zealand, close to Auckland, since 1958 but is currently in Scariff, where he is visiting.
The Scariff priest had three special events happening in Ireland that led him home, the first being the international reunion at the former seminary at St Patrick’s College in Thurles. The second “highlight” as he refers to it, was that of the golden jubilee of his sister as a Sister of Mercy, while an added bonus to his visit was attending the ordination of the new Bishop of Killaloe, Kieran O’Reilly.
Speaking to The Clare Champion, he recounted leaving Scariff for his new home, a six-week long voyage away.
“Growing up here, in Scariff, one must remember it was the great depression, also called the economic war, everything was minimal. We had a family farm here. The ancestral family farm was in Moynoe but my father, being the youngest, he got the farm up in Clonusker. We went to Clonusker School. There were four schools in the parish then. I went on to St Flannan’s. It was just as the war had started and money had began to flow and so we were able to have secondary education. They were good years,” Fr Bugler recalled.
He explained his chosen career path came to him after some time but his dedication to God and to the Church has never wavered over the years.
“It was a sense of a call, I was a so-called late vocation. I had kept the wheels of industry going in Ireland for four years in Shannon Airport, where I worked in the met office. The call to become a priest was similar to those getting married because there was an equivalent love of God. I left Shannon and I set out to be a Redemptorist. I went to Esker, Athenry and then I went to Clunmhuire and I was not achieving,” Fr Bugler revealed.
He then joined the seminary in St Patrick’s College in Thurles, where he studied for the priesthood and was ordained, as he says, “for far away”.
On his ordination, Fr Bugler knew he was destined for New Zealand and prepared himself for the voyage and life in a strange unfamiliar country.
While aboard The Himalaya, Fr Bugler documented his trip in a journal and this account was published as a book two years ago as part of his golden jubilee.
“It’s like the Old Testament and the New Testament, one part of the book covers the six week voyage and the other covers 50 years,” Fr Bugler said.
His journal begins, “November 4, 1958 was the day of Pope John XXIII’s Papal Inauguration. It was also the day that I bade goodbye to dear old Ireland.”
Part one records the times that were the 1950s and how the passengers of The Himalaya coped with the arduous journey Down Under.
Fr Bugler travelled out with seven other priests, five bound for Australia, another to New Zealand and a further priest travelling to Tasmania.
Between them, they were responsible for offering the Catholic mass services on board. The journey took them down past the coast of Portugal and the Rock of Gibraltar, along the coast of Africa. Their first stop on the journey was Port Said, where Fr Bugler recalled the bargaining merchants who would call out to the boat “how much too much?” which is what he decided to call the publication.
He recalled his encounters with the merchants onshore in much the same way and said, “One fellow tried to give me dud coins in change, another tried to cheat me. The whole thing was a nightmare. I was certainly far from home.”
Ten days into the journey and Fr Bugler outlined the changing fashion on deck.
“By then, they had reached the all-low mark of swimsuits and slippers. The swimming pools were kept going all day – mixed bathing so we did not go in. We held a conference on the problem and decided that we would take over when there would be no one else, after dinner each evening and hope that no women would care to join us. In this plan, we were successful and we succeeded in having a swim most evenings,” he remembers.
The longest part of the journey was from Aden to Singapore and Fr Bugler wrote of the clammy weather but with it came incredible lightening varying from chain, fork, sheet, white, red and gold during this part of the trip. He also documented the wildlife, noting flying fish and whales that passed the ship and entertained the passengers.
“New Zealand would have been an extension of Ireland in terms of being a priest, there were so many Catholics in 1958, it was strongly Irish Catholicism. It was a different lifestyle. There were small things that were different, which we would take in our stride now, a summer Christmas is a bit different,” he said with a smile.
There were also many things that bore a resemblance to Ireland that were a comfort to Fr Bugler, among them was that New Zealand was an agricultural country and was green albeit not as green, as the Emerald Isle.
While this was one similarity, there came some notable differences for the Scariff cleric to that of Irish living.
“A midsummer Christmas, people dressed in almost nothing, while the priest walked the shimmering streets in regulation clerical dress,” is one such memory.
Speaking of the attachment he now has for his adopted home, he says, “People often ask, ‘which do you love most Ireland or New Zealand?’ and I would answer with another question, ‘which does a man love most, his mother or his wife?’ I had married New Zealand. It is my country now,” he said.
While New Zealand is his country, that is not exactly what makes it home for him as he describes joining with Fr Pat Sexton in the mass service in Scariff.
“I would feel far from home if I didn’t have mass everyday, that’s what makes me feel at home wherever I am,” he concluded.
Fr Bugler has been catching up with old friends and relatives while he has been home. However, he has another ‘highlight’ to look forward to when he returns to New Zealand, his retirement.