(From fifth left, seated) Fr Sepp, Fr Jepy, Henry, Pemanca Daniel Teho and Vincent join the others as they strike their best poses for a group photograph.
BAU: Austrian priest Fr Josef Schmolzer (fondly known as Fr Sepp), the prime mover behind the Catholic Memorial and Pilgrimage Centre (CMPC) on Mount Singai, was feted to a special lunch on Tuesday to commemorate his return to the state.
The lunch, attended by parish council chairmen and lay leaders from St Stephen’s Parish, Bau and Holy Spirit Church, Lundu, provided an opportunity for them to catch up and reminisce about the efforts to set up the CMPC in 1981 and the growth of the Church in Bau-Lundu.
Taking turns to speak at the rostrum, they also spoke about current matters including their hope for better appreciation and welfare of Bidayuhs who became priest, and expressed their wish for a Bidayuh to be appointed as a Bishop one day.
This followed a general feeling among the Bidayuh Catholics that they deserve better appreciation due to the growing number of Catholics within the community.
Meanwhile, the lunch also saw the host, entrepreneur Henry Harry Jinep, presenting tokens of appreciation to Fr Sepp, Fr Augustine Jepy, Fr Peter Liston, former priest Jetro Nyidom and CMPC chairman Vincent Eddy.
Fr Sepp, currently serving in Rome, was back for more than two weeks to celebrate the Gawai festival and also the 130th anniversary of the Catholic Church in Singai celebrated at the CMPC.
Fr Jepy, the first priest from the Singai area, said the CMPC would not have existed if not for the efforts of Fr Sepp.
“For the Singai people, we are very happy that Fr Sepp started this pilgrimage centre. Without his initiative, I think this will never materialise,” he said.
Henry, on the other hand, said the lunch was organised as farewell for Fr Sepp who was to travel back to Rome, Italy yesterday.
“The celebration of the 130 years of the Church in Singai is very significant because it tells us
that we are still growing. We are also making ourselves remember what was in the past, celebrate what is in the present and to plan what is in the future for the
Church and the community,” he said.
Mount Singai is reputed as the birthplace of Christianity among the Bidayuh community in Bau — thanks largely to a young Roman Catholic priest from Holland named Father Felix Westerwoudt who arrived in Kuching in 1885.
In 1981, when the Catholic Church of Sarawak celebrated its 100th anniversary, Fr Sepp who was then a Mill Hill priest serving in Bau-Lundu parish suggested that it was proper for the parish-level celebration to be done at the original site of the Mission at Mount Singai.
This then started the efforts to turn this site into a pilgrimage centre, and the CMPC was built on ‘gotong-royong’ basis before it was completed and blessed by Archbishop Dato Sri Peter Chung on September 5, 1995 followed by a visit by the Apostolic Delegate Archbishop Luigi Bressan two weeks later.
During the Jubilee Year 2000 programme, the centre was officially dedicated to Christ the King, blessed and declared as a place for pilgrimage by Archbishop Chung on Nov 21, 1999.
Since then, thousands of people have visited the centre, not only Catholics but also members of other Christian denominations, both locally and from overseas.