When thinking about the nationality of chaplains to foreign communities, it is usually assumed they are a native from that community’s country, however, this is not the case with the Brazilian Chaplaincy in Cork. Fr Bernard Morawski OFMCap is a Polish priest who worked with Spanish speakers for many years and today says Mass in Portuguese every Sunday in the Holy Trinity Church, Cork.
Two years ago, Fr Morawski considered the possibility of moving to Ireland or England to practice English. He came to Ireland and was surprised by the size of the Brazilian community here, so he decided to talk to his superiors about moving to Dublin to assist with that community, as he had worked in Latin America and thought Spanish and Portuguese were not very different. With his superiors’ support, he moved to Portugal for three months to learn Portuguese before officially moving to Ireland.
Assist
At first, Fr Morawski was going to move to Ireland to assist Fr Severino Pinheiro da Silva Neto, the Chaplain to the Brazilian Community in Dublin, but in 2023 the Brazilian priest Fr Ademir Marques arrived in Ireland for that.
“The superiors decided to send me to Cork to work with the Brazilian Community. It’s not much work daily, I have Sunday Mass, every Sunday at 4pm. I have every Friday evening the prayer group, Brazilian charismatic prayer group, which I’m attending, supporting [and] sometimes giving some talks.”
When moving to Ireland, the Polish priest stayed around ten days in the Provincial House in Dublin, where he met Fr Neto and had the opportunity to ask some questions about the Brazilian community. He still maintains close contact with the Brazilian priest, and if he has any doubts or questions, he still calls the priests in Dublin.
The priest is not as comfortable with Portuguese as he is with Spanish yet, “but it’s enough. I understand people, people understand me. There’s [a] good communication, so it’s not a problem.”
From the beginning of his vocation life, Fr Morawski knew he wanted to be a missionary. He talked to his superiors and after being ordained priest, he worked for five years before getting permission to move abroad.
The way Latin American people celebrate Mass is much different than the way it is celebrated in Ireland or Poland. For him, their way of celebrating Mass is ‘more alive’”
The priest has been working as a missionary ever since. “I’ve been a missionary in Central America, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica… I really loved it, and [at] the beginning when I arrived in Guatemala, there were many things that were very difficult for me.” At first, Fr Morawski found difficult the way Latin American people greet each other, touching with hugs and kisses. However, after the first cultural shock, he thought “it’s really very warm, very friendly and very nice.”
The differences didn’t stop in the greeting traditions, or even the food. The way Latin American people celebrate Mass is much different than the way it is celebrated in Ireland or Poland. For him, their way of celebrating Mass is “more alive”.
At first, he was frustrated, because “similar to [the] Irish”, his Mass experience was much stricter, “people [are] very much in silence, [the] priest is doing practically everything, and when I came to Latin America [there] was clapping hands and talking… In my mind, [at] the beginning, was that people have no good faith. But it’s a different expression of faith.”
Today, the priest understands that all the differences in the way the Brazilian and Latin American Catholics celebrate Mass is only different, a not a ‘wrong’ way of doing it. “The Polish Mass for me now is boring.”
When he went back to Poland to visit after a few years celebrating Mass with the Latin American community, the priest went to Mass and was “looking around from the Altar I was beside in the Mass, I [was] smiling to the people, I [was] happy to be with the people,” But they were all “very serious…so very much distant, when the Latin Americans are very much like a family”.
Sabbatical
After ten years in mission in Latin American, the priest asked to take a sabbatical year to learn English. He went to the US for a few months and then moved to Australia.
After one year in Australia, he felt his English was not good enough, and having met so many Latin Americans to whom he was ministering to, he “asked to stay a little longer.” He lived there for fifteen years.
In Cork, Fr Morawski has been working to improve the Faith experience of the Brazilians there. Currently, the chaplaincy has one Extraordinary Minister of the Holy Communion, and the Chaplain is preparing formation for another six people, which will probably happen next month with authorisation of Bishop of Cork and Ross Fintan Gavin.
“Continuing from last year, we have been organising a pilgrimage to Knock, [with] all the Brazilians from Ireland together, and we will possibly be doing that in June.” Another pilgrimage the chaplaincy is organising is to Italy for the Jubilee at the beginning of April.
The priest thinks it is “important to support the family”, so they are planning more programmes to work with families and couples for the near future. He has now been in Ireland for almost two years, and hopes to “give” himself to that community “for as long as possible.”
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