Story By: Fr Vince Carroll MSC

Recently the Parish Council of Clifton, under Fr Warren Padilla’s leadership, agreed to a request for a statue of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart to be donated to a new church on the Tiwi Islands under the patronage of Our Lady of Peace. The statue was stored in excess to Clifton’s needs in their beautiful church and it was given in memory of the many Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC) brothers and priests who had worked in the Tiwi Islands from 1911 to 2023.

Fr Vince Carroll MSC requested the statue and installed it at Wurrumiyanga, Bathurst Island, on 8 December 2023. This date is significant not only as the Feast of the Immaculate Conception but also as the founding date of the MSC in 1854. The statue is specific to the MSC and is similar in design to that of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, which was created by the founder in 1855. There are many such statues dotted around Australia.

St Joseph is saluted by the MSC as a model and patron of those who love the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The MSC brothers especially had a great devotion to Joseph. It is fitting that this particular statue finds its new home where it does as many MSC who worked at Downlands College Toowoomba also did parish work at Clifton and mission work later on the Tiwi Islands.

Fr Vince is fairly sure, but cannot prove it except circumstantially, that there is a familiar connection to this specific St Joseph of the Sacred Heart statue. His grandparents, Thomas and Bridget, or possibly aunts, could have originally donated the statue to Clifton. The family lived in Clifton in the 1920s and donated a similar statue to Beenleigh convent where their daughter Sr Avitus (Anne) was a Josephite Sister. In 1992, Fr Vince obtained that statue and relocated it to Ferguson Island in Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea, at the Village of Meudana, in memory of his father, Thomas, who served in PNG in WWII.

The Divine Word Missionaries are now servicing the Tiwi Islands and were very grateful to receive the statue along with parishioners.