`WHAT-A-MAN'

He is the priest in a very poor parish in a small town
By Elisabeth Castonier
CATHOLICS and nonCatholics as well call him " What-a-Man."
He is one of the most active priests and one of the most imaginative I have met in a long lifetime,
He works in a small, very poor parish in a small town. He makes his rounds on an old hike if he visits in town and in an ancient. second-hand butcher's van he has converted into a six-seater by fixing wooden benches. With this rumbling contraption, his own Mass " special," he collects parishioners who are not on bus routes or too far away tucked away in some remote hamlet.
Every Sunday he collects his half-dozen for early Mass and returns them to their homes. to start without delay on his second collecting round for the sung Mass—which means that his Sunday dinner, after two ',minds of Mass-collecting. is sometimes taken at teatime. because on the way he throws in a sick visit or some urgent hospital call.
In all, he serves about 40 villages, camps, hamlets and cottages on large estates. He ferrets out lax Catholics on caravan sites (making friends with non-Catholics, some of whom are surprised to see that a priest is not at all what they have been told " they " are).
HIS day starts with early Mass, catechism and visits. Regular meals do not seem to matter—nor do they seem to exist.
He may turn up at 9 p.m. to sec somebody who is very sick because he had a bunch that that person might need him. He works for his church as if there was not a minute to lose. And all goes to the church this is clearly shown in his threadbare clothes. To save, he cuts his own vestments.
What-a-man's church is a rusty, bent former Nissen hut, with a small porch and a minute sacristy. It is not really necessary for him to mention that the roof needs repairing—because rain falls on to parishioners' missals and on to "You feel it yourselves . . ."
It is not really necessary to mention. as he always does, that a new church is urgently needed, because his tin shed church has become too small : within three years attendance has increased by 400 per cent.
It is not only a leaky, draughty shed, but it is ice-cold, with a few paraffin stoves glossing without warming. In severe weather the water in the font is frozen solid. Everything he touches is frozen. His fingers get so numb they can hardly handle anything. The pews -rough wooden benches — wobble and topple and slide.
The confessional is a converted large cupboard.
ON Sundays about 300 people crowd themselves into the church—now more tightly packed than ever with the addition of Hungarian refugees attending. " You sec for yourselves that we need a new church," he said last
year. This Easter. the model of a simple church is standing in the
porch. " It will only cost a few thousand, but I shall get it in my
lifetime. I don't want to be an old man . .."
His secret : intensity, imagination, a deep and genuine interest if not to say curiosity, about all human needs. But above all, a keen sense of humour — a seemingly never exhausted energy. although this huge. smiling man, What-a-man, knows that he is sick man .