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KILKEE native Fr John Glynn will feature on Lifers, an RTÉ 1 television documentary at 10.15pm on Tuesday. He is one of a number of Irish missionaries who will appear in the production.
KILKEE native Fr John Glynn will feature on Lifers, an RTÉ 1 television documentary at 10.15pm on Tuesday. He is one of a number of Irish missionaries who will appear in the production.
Fr John didn’t start training for the priesthood until he was 40 and was ordained when he was 44. He had lived a life of adventure and challenge up to that point.
So what brought on the idea of joining the priesthood? Fr John wasn’t quite sure.
“That’s a very hard question. I’ve been trying to answer it ever since. It kind of grew on me. But I can’t give you a straight answer to that question. My faith as a Christian and a Catholic has always been extremely strong and very meaningful to me. But the Catholic Church has another dimension too and that is as a community. As theology would have it, the Body of Christ. That’s the church that I belong to and that’s the church that I’m faithful to,” he told The Clare Champion in 2007. He has been working as a missionary priest in Papua New Guinea since the ’70s.
Long before John Glynn had heard of Papua New Guinea, he was a regular on the West Clare Railway which brought him to primary school in Kilrush from his Kilkee home. His next stop was Castleknock in Dublin where he received his secondary education.
“Because I was always good at maths, I went to UCC to study engineering. I dropped out after three years without a degree and toddled off to England and worked on the buildings in London,” he recollected.
“After a few years of that I emigrated to Australia. I was what they called a £5 migrant. It took about a month to get out there and I spent a few years in Sydney. But I’ve never been a city person. I enjoy cities but I could never live in one,” Fr John noted.
He worked in the market research office of a large company called Courtaulds. Soon he was off again.
“I went to a teachers college in New Guinea. It was in a place called Rabaul on the island of New Britain. It was the main town in the New Guinea islands. The Australians regarded the Papua New Guinean islands as one and began preparing them for independence. As part of the scheme they wanted to introduce primary education. I was part of that scheme and I became a primary school teacher in Papua New Guinea with the Australian administration,” he remembered.
His first post in his new career was in New Ireland, north – east of New Guinea, which John describes as “a long skinny island”.
“I went up there as a teacher and taught in bush schools. Straight out of teachers college and I was a principle. It was a boot strap operation, believe me! I was a pretty lousy teacher and an even worse principal to start off with. It was a six-hour drive into the nearest town unless it had been raining in which case it might take you two weeks,” he recalled.
Shortly afterwards he was sent to the New Ireland capital on promotion. Instead of being marooned in the outback he was confined to an office. So he left the office, concentrated on secondary school teaching instead and became deputy principle of a Methodist missions school. He loved it but the call was winging it’s way to John Glynn. Then 40, he trained for the priesthood in St Paul’s seminary in Sydney.
“I went to a late vocation seminary for people who were liable to drop dead if they weren’t ordained quickly,” he reflected fondly.
“I went back to Papua New Guinea and I’ve been a priest there ever since,” he said.
