Acknowledging Vince Carroll MSC, 80
Today, Vince Carroll turns 80. A Queenslander, secondary school at Downlands, Profession, March 3rd 1959. Studies at Canberra and Croydon, including some ANU courses. Ordained July 21st 1965.
Vince’s ministry has been in MSC colleges, parishes, NT and PNG missions. In more recent decades he has been working in South Africa. Since his return, he is chaplain at Downlands.
Here is an excerpt from an article he wrote some years ago (OofSHof for Our Lady of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and DoOLSG oJ for the Daughters of…)
I always love to talk about OLotSHoJ because it seems to me that Mary has always been where I, and perhaps we MSC arrive later. I want to start with a story about where I come from: I was born (in 1940) in Taroom, central Queensland, but my family started in Cracow, a Gold town, about 60 hard dirt miles away to the East. In the little church there there was a statue of the SHoJ and also of OLotSHoJ. I was later (in 2005-06) resident priest in Taroom and visited Cracow. Our family home was burnt down in Cracow and so we move to Taroom where there was a convent school for the kids to go to. Mary- OLotShoJ followed us in this fashion. Cracow has been in and out of the Toowoomba diocese and the Rockhampton diocese. (It is now only 30 bitumen road miles from Theodore).
One time, it could have been when the DoOLSHoJ sisters where in Taroom a few years, and numbers had dwindled in Cracow and maybe it was now in rocky, the Taroom People pinched the statue and put in the church in Taroom. In front of a nice window there- just made for it. Well, maybe it was when Cracow came back into the Taroom parish the people from Cracow came and pinched it back! I call this the Mary Wars. And your right, when and even before the church was finally sold in Cracow and the people go to Theodore instead, the Taroom people came and pinched it again. So we have a nice grotto outside to OL of Fatima and OLotSHoJ inside. I want to if I can get behind the scriptures and see what might have been going on in the family of Jesus.
Also, I get a thrill whenever I enter a church and find Mary there: it seems as if wandering MSC Missioners, had a statue of Mary in their saddle bags as they went about in the old days, and dropped them off after using the statue for their instruction point. I found her at Longreach, at Springsure (there is the parish of OLotShHoJ, and a friend priest from the Riverine speaks of one there in a parish of the name. (There is one in the Sisters Rest Home in Gregory Terrace). In Africa- the diocese I worked in founded by MSC had Mary OLotShoJ as the patron as well as St Joseph, patron of this parish. Then next door too Darra is dedicated to OlotShoJ. And so it goes. When I arrive and OLotShoJ is there, I know the place is in good hands. Here you have the sisters all four of them and I wish them a happy Feast day, and ask you to pray for them and our Societies, and all our members, including the MSC sisters all round the world. (I think we number about 8,000 or 9,000 altogether and are growing fast in some third World countries.)
