Fr Matt Digges, Administrator Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish, Broome

Catholic Communications, Sydney Archdiocese,
28 Jul 2010

When Fr Matt Digges celebrates Mass in Broome, rather than English, he sometimes uses Kukatja, one of two Aboriginal languages.

After 20 years ministering and providing pastoral care to Aboriginal communities scattered across the vast expanse of West Australia's Kimberley Region, Fr Matt is also able to lead prayer in five different Indigenous languages as well as in Yulcarija, the other language he learned during his time in the desert.

Now based back in Broome, WA, he is administrator of the Parish of the Cathedral of Our Lady Queen of Peace, Vocations Director for the Diocese as well as being involved with the Cathedral schools and the prison ministry. But despite his new commitments, his close association and involvement with Australia's Indigenous people continues.

"But if you don't keep up with languages, you lose them so I am always grateful when people from Balgo come to Broome and address me in Kukatja or other dialects," he says, admitting when he returned to Broome in 2009 after two decades in the bush, the town felt like "the Big Smoke."

"When I was working in remote Aboriginal communities, I knew everyone in the parish by name and just as I knew most things about their lives, they knew most things about mine. But in Broome this is different, and it is not only a far bigger town but more diffuse with a much larger congregation."

Which Fr Matt tells you cheerfully is yet another opportunity to "learn about God from the people you work amongst."

"They share their experiences of God and I share mine and together we continue to learn and continue to grow."

Gathers Indigenous Youth for WYD

Ordained in 1991, the Sydney-born Fr Matt's vocation as a priest has not only been fulfilling and joyous, but has also been filled with excitement, and unexpected demands. The challenges he has faced include obtaining a pilot's license and using a tiny Cessna to make regular trips to Indigenous outposts across the vast 773,000 square kilometres of the Broome Diocese. Together with decades of living in isolated Aboriginal communities with their different languages and rich cultures, Fr Matt was the man responsible for ensuring Indigenous youth from every corner of Australia played a key role, and fully participated, in Sydney's World Youth Day in 2008.

Appointed Indigenous Liaison Officer, Fr Matt spent the year before WYD08 working closely with organisers and Australia's Aboriginal communities.
"It was a wonderful time and I loved the opportunity to assist young Aboriginal people to take part in World Youth Day and become fully involved in this wonderful event," he says remembering the excitement and enthusiasm of the international event and how Indigenous youth joined together to carry the WYD Message Stick across Australia to the Indigenous welcome given to Pope Benedict XVI, and for many the great honour of actually meeting the Holy Father himself.

Originally a Beach Boy

Fr Matt believes the greatest thing about being a priest is the fact that "you are continually learning," and insists that life as a priest is like no other.
Full of energy, humour and down-to-earth warmth, Fr Matt is the first to agree his current life is a far cry from the life he expected growing up on Sydney's beaches.

"I was a real beach boy," he says of his childhood where the family home was midway between Clovelly and Coogee, enabling him to spend every spare moment swimming, surfing and hanging out with his mates.

The fifth in a family of three boys and three girls, Fr Matt describes his parents as two of his most important influences. They were strong Catholics, but in what he calls a "typical Australian way," did not talk about it. "Instead they showed us by example. They lived their faith and were wonderful role models, showing us how faith should be integral to every part of our lives."

Thanks to his parents, he says he not only grew up with a strong belief in God, but always regarded his local parish church as "pretty much like an extension of the family room at home."

"All of us thought of St Anthony's as 'ours,' and had a comfortable easy relationship with the church as well as with our local priest. He was always treated as just another member of the family, rather than as someone in front of whom we had to be on our best behaviour."

Thoughts of a Vocation

At age 11, Fr Matt became an altar server at St Anthony's and this was when he first recalls admiring not only his local priest, but the priest's way of life. "He seemed to have real purpose and meaning to his life, and also a contentedness that impressed me. Later, when I was a bit older and a boarder at St Joseph's College, Hunter's Hill, I saw that same sense of purpose with the Marist Brothers there. Like my father they were real men, and like Dad they really lived their vocations."

In despite of his admiration for the Brothers and their commitment to God, Fr Matt is quick to point out he was no "no goody two shoes," and wasn't above sneaking behind a shed for an illegal cigarette or getting up to all sorts of other schoolboy mischief. But by the time Fr Matt reached Years 11 and 12, thoughts of a priestly vocation began to take shape.

"In those final two years, I really learned a lot, particularly from one Brother, and although he never asked if I was considering the priesthood as a vocation, he'd always describe why he was doing what he was doing, and talk about what the life of a priest was like. He'd answered all my questions and challenged me further by giving me books to read, as well as supporting and encouraging me."

A Pharmacist First

On leaving school, the idea of the priesthood was put to one side with Fr Matt's enrolment at  the University of Sydney where he studied for degree in pharmacy.

"I wanted to help people and make a difference in their lives and thought pharmacy was a way of doing this. But after starting my second year at uni, I began to realise being a chemist was not what I really wanted to do." Unable to make up his mind, Fr Matt took the advice his father had always given his children in times of stress or big decisions.

"So I joined Dad at early morning Mass and prayed for guidance."

Prayer convinced Fr Matt of his true vocation. "I realised I'd make a better priest than I would a pharmacist while still being able to help people and hopefully make a difference," he says.

His family gave him their full support at his decision to enter the priesthood, but before he entered the seminary, he returned to university to finish his degree "in case things didn't work out and I needed something to fall back on." 

Man in a Hurry

By Fr Matt's own admission, he was a young man in a hurry, and rather than following his father's advice, took off to spend time with one of his brothers in Europe before returning home to enter St Patrick's College at Manly as a seminarian. During these years, he remained close to St Anthony's, the church that had sustained him as a child, and recalled how at age 11 he had met  Bishop John Jobst, the first Bishop of Broome who ministered to 8000 Catholics spread across the largest diocese in Australia. During that time he had also met Fr Chris Saunders, who would later become the second Bishop of Broome.

"Bishop Jobst and Fr Chris used to stay with our local priest when they were in Sydney," Fr Matt recalls, and vividly remembers them regaling him with stories of the Kimberley, its people, its fascinating landscape and the rich culture of the Aboriginal people. Although he had never been to Broome, Fr Matt fell in love with region, and when he realised his priestly vocation, this was where he was keen to serve.

Going Bush

Having finished his studies as a seminarian, Fr Matt spent several months working as a Deacon in Bourke, Western NSW, then after his Ordination in Sydney, he left for WA to join the Diocese of Broome.
Although Fr Matt's close rapport, admiration and respect among Australia's Indigenous people is well known, when he first arrived in Broome, he admits that other than his brief time in Bourke, he had little experience of working with the Indigenous.

"That was something that developed over time," he says, adding that he was fortunate during his months in Bourke to work alongside Fr Brian Ebert who taught him a lot. But once in the Kimberley, he says, it was Fr Kevin McKelson, who was working at the La Grange Mission, 190 km south of Broome, who shared his experiences, his profound love for Australia's Indigenous people and his wide understanding of them.

"Bishop Jobst sent me to La Grange as Assistant Priest and told me to work with Fr Kevin, who'd been there 30 years, and to soak up as much as I could from him."

One of the first things Fr Kevin told Fr Matt was to throw out any preconceived ideas. "'We speak English and we use Australian currency but if you want to settle into this place, draw a line under this, and be aware that nothing else about the Australia you know is here,' Fr Kevin said, stressing this was another culture entirely, and although La Grange might be geographically in Australia, in every other way it was another country."

According to Fr Matt one of Fr Kelvin's passions was Aboriginal languages, and he encouraged the young priest to learn the Indigenous Yulparija language, as well as other dialects. He also showed Fr Matt how to approach Indigenous people in a respectful way, and set him on a path of reconciling the Gospel with the culture and spirituality of the Aboriginal people, presenting Scripture in such a way they could identify with it as well as see their own culture reflected there.

"I didn't learn half of what Fr Kevin knew. But the four years I spent with him enriched me in every way possible," Fr Matt says referring to these years as "an extraordinary time."

On a Wing and a Prayer

During his time at La Grange, the young priest would not only learn to pray in other dialects as well as the Yulparija language, but would establish an Outreach program for other desert communities down as far as the Canning Stock Route. The only drawback to visiting these communities was the m 17 hours plus it took driving on rough bush tracks to reach them. So it made sense to Fr Matt, when Bishop Jobst began encouraging him, to study for a pilot's licence.

"Thanks to the Bishop calling on his great friend, the Vicar-General of the Diocese of Paderborn in Germany,  together with his own remarkable fund-raising abilities, enough money was donated for the Broome Diocese to purchase a Cessna 182 and that's what I began using," he says.

With a plane, Fr Matt's visits to the outlying communities where he'd evangelise, catechise dozens at a time, and conduct baptisms, became monthly events.

With Fr Kevin's return to NSW, Fr Matt was parish priest at La Grange when the Stolen Generations inquiries began. Bishop Christopher Saunders was now Bishop of Broome and he had established meetings with Indigenous communities to find out what they wanted the Diocese to do in response to the shocking revelations about Aboriginal children being forcibly removed from their families. He then tasked Fr Matt to establish a roving youth ministry from his base at La Grange.

Describing his time at the Mission as exhausting, exhilarating and uplifting, Fr Matt's next posting was to Balgo, an even more isolated community literally half way between Broome and Alice. The move meant learning another Aboriginal language, this time Kukatja. But as the priest says with a grin, this time he had a bit of a leg up because while different from the language spoken by the Bidyadanga people at La Grange, Aboriginal desert languages share certain similarities.

"Kukatja is a wonderful language and Balgo's linga franca," he says, adding that using their own language not only gained the trust of the people he was ministering to, but meant he could communicate with them at a profound level about Catholicism, the Gospel and their faith.

"Up until the 1980s, only the very old and the very young were baptised because so many Indigenous people believed if they embraced Christianity, they had to reject what it was to be an Aboriginal person. But I was able to allay these fears and show them how the Catholic Church respected Aboriginal culture and the Aboriginal people."

Back to the Big Smoke

Then in 2007, Fr Matt who had been working closely with young Indigenous people as part of his roving youth ministry, returned to Broome to begin preparations for World Youth Day 2008. Appointed Indigenous Youth Liaison Officer for World Youth Day, he was instrumental in encouraging many young Indigenous people from Aboriginal communities across Australia taking part in the event.

By August 2008, World Youth Day was over and Fr Matt would spend time in Wyndham in East Kimberley before returning to Broome to take up the position of Administrator of Our Lady Queen of Peace Parish, where he works closely with his long time friend and mentor, Bishop Saunders.

Expansive, warm, dedicated with a larger than life personality, Bishop Saunders is well known for taking the controls of the Diocese's light aircraft himself to visit communities across the Kimberley. But for now, Fr Matt's flying days are on hold. Based in Broome and meeting the challenges there, the energetic enthusiastic priest explains with a smile: "Since I came to town, I haven't flown. There's simply no need."