- Albin Hennequin
- Athanase Gonelli
- Bernard Cunningham
- Denis Ward
- Edward Harrop
- Gerard O'Brien
- Henry Paul
- James Cronly
- John Cooper
- John Spiteri
- Julian Messina
- Lam Vu
- Leonard Busuttil
- Luciano Rocchi
- Paul Hanbridge
- Paul Winter
- Peter Hand
- Robert Stewart
- Romano Franchini
- Stanislaus Dawidowicz
- Tung Nguyen

PAUL WINTER OFM Cap.

I was born Thursday, 22nd June 1961 in Manly, Sydney. I am the eldest of three boys – Rodney (35), Andrew (33). My mother is a devout catholic, my Dad is a retired carpenter and a non-catholic.

Financially we always struggled. For most of the first 10 years of my life, we lived in a little flat on the back of my paternal grandmother’s house – Dad built the flat.

We kids never really went without – Mum and Dad sacrificed a lot in order to give to us.

Mum and Dad were very close to another family who lived in Catherine St. Leichhardt – the Jarvies. Rosemary Jarvie was my godmother and, unknown to me, she worked much of the time for the Capuchins who still have a friary at Leichhardt. Even then there was a hidden link to the Capuchins!

When I was 10 our family was offered a housing commission house out at Mt. Druitt. I had never heard of the place but it seemed like a great adventure to move house. So we left North Balgowlah and my grandmother’s place. I missed her greatly – I was very close to her.

Mt. Druitt was like another world – no beaches! Blazingly hot in the summer and cold in the winter. So many people too!

My entire schooling was through the NSW state school system. I never went to Catholic schools.

I went to Mt. Druitt High. At the time (1973), the largest High School in NSW. In First Form (Year 7) there were 18 classes alone! For all that some of you may have heard about Mt. Druitt High, it was a good school. I was lucky to have very good and dedicated teachers who were genuinely interested in my future. The fact that I am here as a Capuchin speaking to you today is in no small way also due to their efforts.

I was baptised as an infant as a catholic and my mother always took us to Sunday Mass (Dad would drive us and then wait in the car and read the paper).

Like most other kids I often got bored with Mass but there was always a certain kind of attraction about God, Christ and the Catholic Church. I guess I have always felt that God is present to me. I have never really been able to doubt his existence. For me it is like doubting my own existence – incomprehensible.

But there was a distinct time in my high school years when I began to search my faith. Why should Christianity be truer than any other faith? Why so many different Christian denominations? Through that time I became more certain about my Christian/catholic faith. I started to become more committed to it within myself.

It was in Year 12, a time when everyone is questioning their future, that the possibility of Priesthood really started to gnaw at me. In one sense the lure of the priesthood had been with me right back into my early childhood – it was just there (a fact that I tried to deny to myself many years later).

Without anybody else knowing how I was feeling, I started to write away to different religious orders and the diocese.

An important thing happened – I had never really known "religious" (monks and nuns etc) even though I had grown up in the Capuchin parish of Plumpton. I went to mass every Sunday but I did not know the friars personally. In all my letter writing to different orders a new possibility took shape – that of being a religious without being a priest. This question would complicate my religious life for quite a few years!

As it turned out at that time I decided that priesthood and religious life were definitely NOT for me. So I put all my correspondence away and pursued a career in banking and computers.

The funny thing is that if I had applied to join an order at that time it would definitely not have been the Capuchins. They never even entered my head! It would have been the Franciscans, the Columbans, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart or the Diocesan Priesthood.

For about four years I tried to put the issue of priesthood and religious life behind me. I had a great job as a computer programmer – I enjoyed it, I was earning lots of money and the sky seemed to be the limit. Yet, this nagging yearning and attraction would not go away!

I remember one Sunday going into my room and digging out all the old correspondence with the Orders. I went through it and this great desire welled up within me to once again pursue this further. It was only a few weeks to Christmas so I made an agreement with myself to leave the question alone until after Christmas and then to do something about it.

Then a funny thing happened. I couldn’t contain this any longer I had to do something about it immediately! I walked straight out of my room and went to my mother and father who were watching the TV and told them that I wanted to be a priest! I couldn’t believe that I did that and it was just as well that Mum and Dad were sitting down – there was a stunned silence!

I was lucky. Mum and Dad were actually very supportive of me. I was a bit worried about my Dad: since he wasn’t a Catholic I wasn’t sure how he was going to react. But he was really good. The only thing he said then was that I better think about it very seriously before I give away my job, which was a very good one.

Mum suggested that I go and speak to our parish priest – something that I had never really considered doing for some strange reason. My parish priest of course was a Capuchin, Fr. Frank Delia. Even now I still hadn't considered the possibility of joining the Capuchins.

So I went to see Fr. Frank. He interpreted my saying that I was interested in being a priest as "I want to become a Capuchin"! and he suggested that I go and spend a weekend with the friars in the Seminary at Plumpton. I thought that it couldn’t hurt so I did.

And that was when it struck me. For a number of years I had been very much attracted to Francis of Assisi and his freedom in living the Gospel, which was why the Franciscan friars were high on my list.

When I spent that first weekend with the Capuchin friars I felt like I had come home. I knew then that if I was going to join any order it would be the Capuchins.

From that moment on I spent a lot of time with the friars at Plumpton. It was easy for me because I only lived 10 minutes walk away. This went on from December 1981 through to August 1982.

By that August I still wasn’t any closer to making a decision to join the friars. The main thing that was holding me back was that I also had a very strong desire to get married and have a family of my own.

In that August I can remember being alone in my room one night after work and just thinking. I came to the decision that even though I was not any more certain about joining than I had been months earlier I had to apply. The reason being that unless I joined and started to live the life I would never know for sure whether this was where God was calling me. And I didn’t want to live for the rest of my life wondering. So I decided that as soon as I got to work the next morning I would ring up Fr. Darren, the then Vocations Director, and tell him that I wanted to apply.

The next morning I no sooner got to work and my phone rang. It was Fr. Darren! He wanted to know what I was going to do! I was so flabbergasted that I said a really stupid thing to him. I said, "Yes, I’ll come along for the ride." To which he said, "I hope that you’ll do more than come along for the ride!"

Late that November, I was to spend a weekend at the Plumpton friary because Fr. Carmel, the Provincial Minister of the Order, was coming and he would tell me whether I was accepted into the Order or not. The Friday evening before I was to go there I was still at work. Only me and my boss were there. We were good friends and he came up to me and asked if he could ask a personal question. He said, "Why haven't you ever thought of becoming a priest?" I was a bit stunned to say the least. So I proceeded to tell him what I was about to do that very weekend. He seemed to be very pleased and wished me well.

As it turned out, I was given the news that I was accepted into the Capuchin’s Postulancy program on that weekend and my boss was very happy for me.

I could end the story there but there actually is more.

As I said before the question of being a Capuchin without being a priest had been raised within me during my discerning. When I joined it was just assumed by the Order that I would go on for priesthood because I seemed to have the necessary qualities for that. Even though I had doubts I was willing to go along with that.

I got through Postulancy and Novitiate and returned to Plumpton to begin my theological and philosophical studies for the Priesthood. And that was when all hell broke loose.

I never did like study much and coming out of a deeply contemplative experience in Novitiate straight into full bore tertiary studies was a great shock for me. That was when my doubts about priesthood became a crisis, as well as the reality that I had become disillusioned with myself and with the Order.

One thing led to another, and within that first year after Novitiate, I left the order. Never to come back, or so I thought.

After a bit of a holiday I applied for different jobs back in computing. I rang my old boss to get a reference from him. In the end I received three job offers: one with Arnott’s Snack Foods, one with an Australian chemical company in Botany and a job offer from my old boss (one which I had not sought). Overall, the best offer was from my old company; so by a quirk of fate or an act of God, I ended up back where I started from.

In the three years that I had been away the computing industry had made unbelievable advancements so I was on a very steep re-learning curve. But I loved every minute of it and I was soon very much up to par again.

But I guess that after a year or so I knew that I had made a mistake in leaving the Order. Or perhaps I hadn't made a mistake but needed the time out of the Order to work through a few things.

In any case it seems to me that God put me back where I was to learn a few lessons. One was that serving God and God alone was the only thing that would truly fulfil me. It was like he put me back where I was to say, "See. You’ve got what you want, now you can see again that it is not truly what you want or need."

It was at that time that I was very lucky to have a spiritual director who seemed to understand me well. He is now the parish priest of Emu Plains, Fr. Geoff Dickinson. He suggested that I look further afield than just the Capuchins. I found myself very attracted to the contemplative life of the Benedictines. So it came to the stage again of choosing between the Capuchins or the Sylvestrine Benedictines at Arcadia just outside of Sydney.

The Sylvestrines were a Benedictine reform started around the same time as Francis and having quite a few things in common with Franciscan life. In fact I realised that what attracted me to them were the very things that they had in common with the Capuchins: fraternity, contemplative prayer.

Late that year, 1986, I went on a trip through Europe and parts of Asia. I planned to visit the holy places of both the Franciscan and Benedictine traditions while I was in Italy.

Some of our plans didn’t quite work out and it meant that I had to drop some of the places that I wanted to visit. When the crunch came, it was the Benedictine places that I dropped from the itinerary. I guess it was the final answer for me as to who I would join.

I was re-accepted back into the Capuchins but my question about priesthood had not really been resolved.

My student director hit on a brilliant but simple plan – I would continue my studies but would make the decision not to go on to the priesthood. The idea was that part of the discernment was making the decision and then having to live with it. After a while it would become clear whether I had made the right decision or not.

And that is exactly what happened. After making the decision not to be a priest I became increasingly uncomfortable with it. Something deep inside me hurt every time I had to explain to someone why I wasn’t going to be a priest.

The definitive moment came when a young man came to our friary at Plumpton one day in a very emotionally distressed condition.

He wanted to see a priest but there were no priests available so I offered to talk to him. His story was a tragic one but it seemed to help him to "let it out". However, there were also things that he had done that definitely needed the healing of the sacrament of reconciliation and it hurt me deeply to realise that I couldn’t minister this to him and would never be able to do so.

I had no doubt then what the Lord was calling me to be. And I have not looked back ever since.

I was a very slow learner! But God has patience with me.