'The best part of priesthood is the people': Fr Tony Hill reflects on 40 years of Ministry
Fr Tony reckons he is "a bit of a rare sort of person." He was born in Euroa, baptised in Euroa, made his First Communion and was confirmed in Ruffy (in the Euroa Parish) and made headlines as the first priest (and still the only priest) to be ordained at St John the Evangelist Church, Euroa. For most of his forty years of priesthood he has ministered in the north-east of the Diocese, the last eighteen years before his recent retirement as Parish Priest of Euroa.
“There was a time when I thought about applying for a parish appointment in another part of the Diocese, but I was driving up to Harrietville in the Bright Parish, and looked up at those beautiful snow-capped mountains and thought, “Why would you leave this place?” And so, Fr Tony stayed.
Now, after forty years as a priest, Fr Tony looks back less at the milestones and where he served than at the people he met along the way.
“The best part of priesthood is the people,” he says emphatically.
It’s not surprising, given Fr Tony grew up wrapped in the warm embrace of his Irish Catholic family and small agricultural community of Ruffy, 29 km south of Euroa. As a child, he looked forward to joining the larger social hubs of Euroa and Longwood (every second Sunday). For young Tony Hill, Mass was about community just as much as it was about worship, and he unearthed something that would remain at the heart of his vocation: faith is lived alongside people.
“We enjoyed gathering with other families; it was very natural and we knew everyone. The women stood chatting outside the church. The men talked beneath the gum trees. Children ran freely between them ... it was the same in both Euroa and Longwood.”
“My father’s side of the family was very large and very religious,” reflects Fr Tony. “We had an Aunt Grace, who was a Josephite. Many others in the extended family became religious Sisters and there were three priests. All of that had an impact on the whole family. So, for me, becoming a priest was just a normal thing.”
Although totally immersed in faith-life, Fr Tony’s path to the priesthood was not immediate. After leaving school, he worked first for the ANZ Bank before joining the Department of Social Security in Melbourne. While he remained faithful to Sunday Mass, life in the city felt lonely and disconnected, and he found it “hard to break in” to community life.
One summer evening back home in Ruffy, he recalls sitting outside with his mother, catching the breeze. In a quiet moment, his mother sensed he wasn’t happy in Melbourne, and she gave him a ticket to change, "You used to think about becoming a priest."
“I sort of fell into it after that,” reflects Fr Tony.
The two of them laughed at a time when Fr Tony, at ten or eleven years old joined their Parish Priest, Fr James Dowling, and a seminarian on a trip to Bendigo to visit Bishop Bernie Stewart. On seeing the small country boy, Bishop Stewart looked perplexed and suggested the young Tony do some growing up and come back quite a bit later.
Back in Moonee Ponds, where he was living, Fr Tony enquired with the Vocations Director of the Archdiocese of Melbourne who suggested he get involved with his local parish, so Fr Tony headed to St Monica’s, Moonee Ponds.
“I remember ringing the doorbell, and this fairly rough-looking fellow answered the door. And I thought, ‘Oh, he must work here’. And I said, "I'd like to see a priest." He said, "Will I do?"
I visited the priest at Moonee Ponds once a week, then once a fortnight. He had me reading things like Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross and scripture – which I had never delved into much as a kid. He seemed to think I was narrow-minded, well, I wasn’t worldly, but anyway, I kept taking direction from him.”
One day, Fr Tony was driven to meet Bishop Stewart, who was attending a retreat for priests in Kew. “I’d done some growing up since he last saw me,” laughs Fr Tony. “And that was that. I entered Corpus Christi at Clayton in 1978 and I absolutely loved it.”
Ordained eight years later, Fr Tony served in Wodonga, Kennington, Wangaratta, Bright and Mount Beauty, Beechworth and finally, Euroa.
He remembers that some of his experiences as a young priest prepared him for the full gamut of human nature.
“Before I went to one of my first appointments as Assistant Priest, I was told the parish priest was very tough – ‘chews up young priests and spits them out’, but when I got there, he said, ‘Would you like a cold beer?’ We got along very well.”
“I remember my first Ash Wednesday; I dropped the jar with the ashes in it, and they blew everywhere. There was broken glass; someone had to help clean it up … When I told the Parish Priest about this, he exclaimed, ‘I’ll scarify you’. I had to go and look it up in the dictionary; it meant ‘to skin alive’.”
“It was there in Bendigo that I came up against something that many shy away from – secondary school chaplaincy! With the great encouragement of Sr Mary Duffy, we managed. What I learned and discovered in Bendigo translated into Wangaratta and Galen Catholic College, and then into Wodonga Catholic College. Eventually, in my days in Bright and Beechworth, I found myself volunteering as a Secondary Chaplain back at Galen College for thirteen years.”
“It was a lot of fun in a way. The highest accolade came from a lad in Year 10 who told his mother, ‘Fr. Tony is the coolest priest I’ve ever met’. I don’t think I was radical ... I just stayed open to the humanity of those young people, and somehow, I broke through.
All experiences which galvanised Fr Tony for his ministry in Beechworth.
“When I got to Beechworth, I was made the Chaplain at Beechworth Prison,” he says. “Something I really wasn’t looking forward to, but I ended up loving it.”
“Prisons are inherently scary places,” says Fr Tony. “When I first started, we ministered to the old prison which was in the centre of town; the gallows were still there as a constant reminder of cruelty …”
Behind the prison walls, Fr Tony encountered men whose lives had unravelled in different ways. Some had committed terrible crimes; others had made mistakes they couldn’t take back. Fr Tony learned very quickly that prison ministry wasn’t about judging people, but seeing the person first. In such a dehumanising environment, Fr Tony discovered that ministry often meant helping incarcerated men to keep their humanity and restore their dignity in the smallest ways.
Fr Tony shares an example:
“When prisoners were released, everything they owned was handed to them in a black garbage bag. Imagine the indignity – getting on the train to Melbourne carrying a garbage bag. It just didn’t sit right with me." With the help of the local St Vincent de Paul Conference, he started taking backpacks to the prison gates. Before the men boarded the train, their belongings were transferred from the garbage bags into backpacks. "At least they had a bit of dignity."
There were heartbreaking moments, too.
Fr Tony remembers one prisoner who asked him if he could bring him one of those large blue-and-pink striped shopping bags before his release."I said, 'I could get you a nice backpack’. 'No,' the man replied. 'I want one of those stripy bags'." Fr Tony found one through the Brigidine Sisters in Beechworth.
Months later, he discovered the man had travelled home to Melbourne, met up with his drug dealer and died that same afternoon. "Sometimes it was so sad."
Then there were moments that made him smile.
One former prisoner sheepishly asked if Fr Tony knew somewhere in Wangaratta where he could have his chest waxed before seeing his girlfriend. He said he’d toned up in the prison gym, but the girls liked a smooth chest. "I paid for the spruce up”, he laughs. "Oh heavens!"
But perhaps the experience that shaped him most came after a prisoner took his own life. Called to bless the body, Fr Tony found him lying beneath a blanket while prison officers stood nearby.
"I said, 'Would you take the blanket off his face?'"
"They said, 'Why?'"
"I said, 'Because I'm dealing with a person.'"
Six months later the young man's grandmother contacted him to thank him. "That sort of made it special."
Then Fr Tony poignantly adds something that says almost everything about his priesthood. "I remember how near I felt to God when I was standing over his body. I feel that same closeness when anointing someone who is dying in hospital.”
Over forty years, there have been countless funerals, hospital visits, baptisms and weddings. Fr Tony has learnt that often the little things matter most. Keeping spare packets of tissues in the sacristy for grieving families; inviting people to stand for a moment during a long funeral service, because "You could see it on their faces that they needed a break”; trying to find a gentle laugh during a homily because grief and joy often sit side by side.
"They're funny little things you do that nobody really knows about."
Looking back, Fr Tony doesn't talk much about achievements. He talks about his experiences where he felt God most present, through shared experience with people.
The little country church at Ruffy taught him that faith grows in community. Prison taught him that every person deserves dignity. Forty years of priesthood confirmed what he'd been learning all along: wherever people are at their most joyful, their most broken or their most vulnerable, that's where Christ is already waiting.
And that's where a priest is called to be.
