Father Kolodisi: How Columban Priests Inspired my Journey to Priesthood
‘I WAS IMPRESSED WITH HOW THEY WOULD PATIENTLY CARRY OUT THEIR SERVICE, THAT WAS THE BEGINNING FOR ME’
As a young boy, Timoci Kolodisi was awed with how the Missionary Society of St Columban priests carried out their service at Vuaki Village, in the district of Nacula in Yasawa. Though he was only eight-yearsold at the time, he told himself that he was going to be one of them some day.
This was 50 years ago and now he is known to many as Father Timoci Kolodisi.
Yesterday he was 16 days short of serving 25 years as a diocesan priest, and 17 years as director of the Navesi Catechist Training Centre in Lami.
“As a primary school student at St Patrick’s Primary in Yasawa, I was impressed with how they would patiently carry out their service and that was the beginning for me,” Father Kolodisi recalled.
“It was when the Marist Brothers were moving on from the Yasawas and the Columban priests were taking over.
“There was a special gift about them that awed me, I was fascinated – I was in the beginning of primary school.
“I wanted to be like one of them and that was how I became what I am today, a diocesan priest.
“If there is something I work for and long to see with the flock I serve, it is change. It is change and transformation of creation for the coming of the Kingdom.” His former schoolmates from St John’s College in Cawaci travelled from as far as Lautoka and turned up in numbers at the St Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church in Navesi, outside Lami to celebrate mass with him yesterday.
Father Kolodisi soon after mass, like a true servant of the Kingdom swept the space he was going to host his former schoolmates.
By the time they joined him he was at the doorway picking up the doormat to the shake dust off it. Navesi was established in 1973 for the formation training of catechists of the archdiocese of Suva including Rotuma and Rabi. After completing his primary education in Yasawa, he went to St John’s College and thereafter to the Pacific Regional Seminary. He was ordained on December 5, 1992 and was assistant priest at Bemana in the upper Sigatoka River for a year before he was posted to Navesi for 15 years.
He returned to the seminary for further training for two terms of three years. He completed his stint in 2015 and returned to Navesi. “Navesi is home to 20 to 30 trainee catechists every term, of which some come with their families as we have the facilities here to cater for that.
“Some leave their families especially those whose children are attending school.”
There was a special gift about them that awed me, I was fascinated – I was in the beginning of primary school. I wanted to be like one of them and that was how I became what I am today, a diocesan priest. Father Timoci Kolodisi