Fr John Hogan knew he wanted to be a priest at the age of 12 when he joined the junior seminary near to where he grew up in Yorkshire, in the UK.
Now, with 43 years as a priest under his belt, he has just taken the reins of his second parish.
He started as Parish Priest of St Finbar’s at Glenbrook, in the foothills of the Blue Mountains, in November and is still finding his feet, especially learning the names of the many volunteers who make up the vibrant parish ministries.
“It’s a tremendous resource to have such interest and people volunteering,” he says.
A personal transformation
Fr John came to St Finbar’s after 14 years as the Rector of Holy Spirit Seminary, in Harris Park, a role that he says transformed him as a priest.
At the seminary he was in charge of the propaedeutic program for first-year seminarians, which lays the groundwork for priestly formation.
For three mornings a week, for three hours on each of those mornings, he taught human formation, an expertise he had developed over decades in specialised ministries in the UK, leading retreats and religious adult education, and then as a rector at a seminary in England.
“Every time I taught, I picked up new things I needed to attend to, and that just changed me as a person, and hopefully for the better,” Fr John says.
Over time he says he became more mature, “putting myself in charge of how I think and how I feel, and integrating those two things, which is what I try to pass on to the people here now at the parish”.
Already he has introduced human formation into his weekly column in the parish newsletter – “the way we need to approach other people and help them out as part of evangelisation” – and is planning a 12-week course for interested parishioners on emotional development.
“Emotional life is probably the most misunderstood aspect of our human living. What I want to teach is especially to do with the so-called negative emotions – which we don’t like because generally we’re then out of our control. They are so valuable that we must pay attention to them, because they have a message, and the key is understanding that message.”
He says human beings have been bad at dealing with these negative emotions “since the fall from grace”, but that our use of social media amplifies them and “keeps it running”.
“The best thing to do is keep away from the thing,” he says of social media.
Fr John is also aiming to give talks in the parish on the seven main areas of social teaching of the Church – “what John XXIII described as the Jewel of the Church” – and a course on different elements of Scripture – “we’ve already got a Scripture course on the Book of Exodus coming up”.
A life-changing decision
Fr John recently celebrated 30 years of being in Australia, a move that was initially meant to be a short stay during a period of personal upheaval in his life – “a mid-life crisis where I no longer had meaning and purpose” – but which turned into a lifelong, and life-changing, decision.
The longer he stayed, the better he felt and the more he enjoyed being here.
“The church in Australia was much bigger and much busier than back home in England,” he says.
“At the time it was far more culturally diverse than what I was used to, which I enjoyed very much, learning about other ways of doing things and looking at life.
“I’ve been on the up and up ever since, I love Australia.”
It was here that he was properly introduced to parish life. Back in England he had spent little time in parishes, but here he was assigned to Guildford Parish as Assistant Priest as soon as he arrived.
From there he became Assistant Priest at Penrith, then Assistant Priest at Castle Hill and from there was transferred to Richmond where he served six years as Parish Priest.
He says parish life was a “very different way of doing things” to what he had been used to.
In parishes “you’re far more involved with a whole variety of people and their needs”, than the “seminarians or people coming on retreat who tend to be good Catholics…already geared for the spiritual”.
Fr John Hogan is the new Parish Priest at St Finbar’s, in Glenbrook, in the Blue Mountains. Image: Mary Brazell/ Diocese of Parramatta
‘Culture of encounter’
And because of this variety, a Parish Priest needs all sorts of skills, he says.
The first thing they need is a rich prayer life “because he is dependent on the Lord Jesus Christ for doing the work”.
Another important skill is empathy, in which “a person feels that he has been heard and understood with no judgement”.
“This is a way of enacting what Pope Francis calls ‘the culture of encounter’, and that’s a key skill and there’s many facets to it for a Parish Priest,” Fr John says.
Another is to be in charge of “your own emotional life and cognitive life”.
“Human formation is absolutely vital,” he says.
This article was originally published in the 2025 Lent & Easter | Autumn edition of the Catholic Outlook Magazine. You can read the digital version here or pick up a copy in your local parish.
