Australian Priest Given Pakistan's Highest Civilian Award
Catholic Communications, Sydney Archdiocese,
22 Feb 2012
Fr Robert McCulloch inspired by the courage
and faith of Pakistan's Catholics
Melbourne-born Columban priest, Father Robert McCulloch has been awarded the Pakistan Government's highest civilian honour for his services to health, education and inter-faith relations.
In a nation beset by Muslim extremism and where Christians are frequently persecuted or even jailed for their beliefs, the Sitara-e-Quaid-Azam Award given to Fr McCulloch reveals the esteem in which he is held in Pakistan, where he has lived and worked for almost 34 years.
"When the Governor of Sindh phoned me to give the news I had been honoured by Pakistan in this way, I thought of all the different people in Pakistan whom I have known and ministered to, and worked with," he says. But he insists although he is personally honoured as a Columban priest to receive the award, he sees it more as a "wonderful public recognition by the President and people of Pakistan of the presence and role of the Catholic Church in Pakistan."
"I see the award as a public statement by the Government of Pakistan that it rejects the current stream of anti-Christian feeling being pushed by Islamic fundamentalists and extremists. It is also a reminder of the vision for Pakistan of its founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah who wanted Pakistan to be a nation that embraced the diversity of languages, cultures and religions in unity, harmony and equality," he says explaining that in Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah is known as Quaid-e-Azam, after whom the award was named.
Appointed Procurator General for the Columbans in December 2011, Fr McCulloch is now based in Rome but continues to return to Pakistan as often as possible and will be in Islamabad on 16 March when the President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari will present him with the award. This will be followed by a reception at Government House in Karachi hosted by the Governor of Sindh, the region where he spent more than three decades.
Ordained in 1970, Fr McCulloch spent four years in the Philippines followed by liturgical studies in Rome. From there he obtained a Master's degree in Church History in Washington DC and it was while in the US that he first learned the Columbans were opening a mission in Taiwan and another in Pakistan.
Fr McCulloch with students at the Catholic Centre
of Academic Excellence he founded in Pakistan
"I instantly volunteered, hoping Pakistan would be where I was sent. I am not sure of the reason for this but somehow my heart was drawn there," he recalls.
Arriving in Pakistan in 1978, the 32-year-old priest was based first in the Punjab, a province of the Sindh, where he established extensive programs in adult literacy. Then moving from Lahore to Badin, he worked closely with the District Health Office, extending and revitalising a program of immunisation as well as establishing a medical centre offering free care to people suffering with TB. He also founded a network of village schools, including a high school in Badin, to provide education for more than 550 children.
During this time, Fr McCulloch was instrumental in helping save the culture of the Parkari Koli one of Pakistan's ethnic tribal people. Regarded as outcasts in the caste system of the Hindus, the Parkari Koli people had no written language. Working with two linguists, Fr McCulloch and fellow Columban missionaries painstakingly began the process of preserving the language and creating the first-ever Parkari dictionaries.
"It used to be said that missionaries go in and destroy people's cultures. But in Pakistan it was the Catholic Church that saved the culture of the Parkari Koli People," he says with a smile.
In 1990, Fr McCulloch moved to Hyderabad, the city in the centre of a rural area about 100 km east of Sindh's capital of Karachi. Ministering to the community of 300 Catholic families, he became Chairman of the Administrative Council of Saint Elizabeth Hospital, which provides quality medical services to people throughout the region. The Council also administers the Hospital's School of Midwifery.
In addition Fr McCulloch established a Mobile Medical Outreach Program which provides more medical care to more than 20,000 people through rural Sindh. He also set up the first home-based Palliative Care Unit in Pakistan for terminally cancer patients.
Long a champion of education, he initiated projects to provide educational, spiritual, moral and personal formation for 150 boys and young men and chaired the Board of Governors of Academic Excellence and the Catholic Youth Development Centre.
Melbourne born Fr Robert McCulloch
receives highest civilian honour
from Pakistan's government
In addition, for the past 27 years Fr McCulloch has lectured at Karachi's National Catholic Institute of Theology and in 2004 as Academic Dean he initiated an affiliation between the Institute with the College of Divinity at the University of Melbourne where seminarians and religious lay men from Pakistan are now able to study for their degrees in Theology.
Although Christians make up just 1.6% or 2.8 million of Pakistan's population of 187 million, and often face danger and persecution, Fr McCulloch says the nation's Catholic laypeople are extraordinarily gifted and committed.
"The Church in Pakistan has an outstanding young generation of good and enthusiastic priests and while the Church there is poor in monetary terms, it is rich in its good and faithful people."
Fr McCulloch who was on the frontlines during Pakistan's devastating floods of 2011 and 2010, directing and facilitating the response of St Elizabeth Hospital and helping oversee the construction of more than 800 new homes for flood affected families.
"Christians are a minority in Pakistan but I encourage them when they are told 'you can't do that because you are non-Muslim' to reply, 'yes I can because I'm Catholic.,'" he says.
Fr McCulloch agrees that Christians in Pakistan often face opposition, threats and danger. "And as a priest, I am in their debt because they have inspired me to be full of faith, in spite of everything that may happen."
