Sylvester Warwakai MSC anticipating Pope Francis’ visit to PNG, September 6th-9th
Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in PNG provide education and health services to remote communities from L’Osservatore Romano. Superior General Abzalon was also interviewed about MSC and PNG can be found on our site, July 12th 2024.
The Catholic Church has played a key role in Papua New Guinea’s education and health sectors, which face numerous challenges due to a lack of government support. It’s what Father Sylvester Warwakai, Provincial Superior of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Papua New Guinea Province, said in a phone interview.
The Missionaries are currently working in seven dioceses contracted to parish work, teaching and nursing. Most of the parishes where they work have a school attached because, as Father Warwakai explained, schools are crucial to the development of the Catholic faith.
The Missionaries do not own any facilities; rather, they work in collaboration with the dioceses and within the existing framework.
Father Warwakai explained that the work of the Catholic Church is especially important in hard-to-reach rural areas with no government services. “We do not work in the hinter highlands region of Papua New Guinea; however, we have missions in most rural parts of the country. Currently two of our parishes in the mountain regions of Bereina and Kerema Dioceses are St. John Vianney Parish, Tapini and Sacred Heart Bema, respectively. They have schools, both primary and high school and Health Care Facilities.
They come under the Catholic Education Secretariat and Catholic Health Services of both dioceses but are administered by our priests and brothers. Due to the deteriorating condition of the road networks, the only means of transport to get to both mountain parishes is plane”. He lamented that for the last 20 years “the health services and the education system have failed in many ways because there is very little government support in terms of the subsidy that is committed to the Church-run institutions, especially health and education. Sometimes those subsidies don’t arrive on time, and for schools, they simply close”.
As for health facilities, Father Warwakai explained that sometimes they don’t receive the government funds necessary to buy medicine, which results in “people dying from curable diseases”. Often, he added, these facilities have to scale down their operations, and “they only attend to certain cases that are very life-threatening, like mothers giving birth or someone who is going to die of malaria”. Father Warwakai expressed his concern that this problem of limited resources and financial support is creeping into cities and other rural areas.
He said much of the limited help the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart receive comes from abroad, including from agencies in Australia and Europe. “We improvise with what we have, even though it isn’t sufficient”, he lamented.
Turning then to Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to Asia and Oceania, which will include a stop in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, from 6 to 9 September — broken up by a short visit to the city of Vanimo on 8 September — Father Warwakai said it “will give some sense of belonging, hope and some optimism” to the Missionaries who minister to the Papuan communities, as well as to other dioceses and institutions outside the capital city.
Sylvester lived with us at Blackburn while he studied at YTU. He then went to Rome.