By Michael Newhouse
FOR the parishioners of Sunshine’s Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, Friday marked an emotional and somewhat sad end of an era.
After close to six years serving as parish priest for the booming Sunshine church, Father Harry Dyer last week left the community he’d grown to know and love to head up the Australian division of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate – an international role.
It was an emotional time for parishioners, who become used to Fr Harry’s energy and drive, which has helped the local parish expand over the last few years.
“He’s been very popular in the community, and it’s sad to lose him,” parishioner Geraldine Williams told Star last week.
“(In) the time he has been here he has done so much,” said Teresa Laszcz, Fr Harry’s secretary at the church for the last three years.
She said under his watch the church had been renovated, and the parish centre had been updated and brightened up.
Another priest, Father Daniel Szewc, left two weeks ago, which, when combined with Fr Harry’s departure, will leave a big hole in the tight-knit Catholic parish.
And while Fr Harry said it would be difficult leaving the community to which he’d become so attached since he moved to Sunshine in 2002, he was grateful to have experienced the variety that Sunshine has to offer.
“You do invest a lot of yourself into a place … so it is hard to move on,” he said.
Fr Harry’s work with the local migrant groups, especially the Sudanese community, in Sunshine was a major part of his work, with the church helping teach English to new arrivals.
“I suppose we’ve taken an international look, because we are an international order, just to give people (an idea) that the world’s much bigger than Sunshine,” he said.
“It’s hard to talk about yourself, but I suppose I’d like to be a man who, as a priest, is inclusive of everybody, and also somebody who knows it’s not just a priest parish, but also a people’s church as well.”
His new role as the new Australian Provincial for the order will see Fr Harry responsible for overseeing and developing the Oblates’ Australian priests as well as missionaries in Hong Kong and mainland China, although his new office is just across Melbourne, in Camberwell.
Ordained a priest in 1990 – the same year as his beloved Collingwood won the AFL Grand Final, Fr Harry noted – the 53-year-old joined the clergy to give people hope and support, he said, something which he has provided in spades at the Sunshine parish.
“It just takes really simple gestures to make somebody feel welcome and to make them want to come back again,” he said.
And while deep down they know he’s moving on and up, there are at least some parishioners who wish Fr Harry would take a little of his own advice and come back and to the place where he’s touched so many hearts over the past six years.
