Sydney
9 June 2002

Home
Archive
Subscribe
Links
Contact

Madonna in Prayer

No ‘hush money’ paid – Dr Pell

$46m grant for embryo research: PM attacked

Don’t be seduced by funds, Catholic Health warns Govt

Changes urged to asylum seeker policy

Call to abandon ‘Pacific Solution’

Under fire from Amnesty

... with grace by His Grace?

Rich experience came at Rite time for Caringbah parishioner

Charity uncorks a real winner: I’ll drink to that

‘Team effort’ needed on social justice proposals

Editorial: A pilgrim’s progress

Letters: Open challenge to moral teachings

Conversation: After Rome 2000, a ‘leap of faith’ - Nicole Hellyer, parish youth minister

Reflections: Mary – Our Lady of Social Justice

Rain falls on their parade but can’t dampen schoolkids’ spirit at Mass

Liverpool club helps duo on way to uni

Inspirations: Painting and poetry – therapy and art

Conversation: After Rome 2000, a ‘leap of faith’ - Nicole Hellyer, parish youth minister

By Marilyn Kerjean

At 29, Nicole Hellyer (pictured), the parish youth minister at St Declan’s, Penshurst, recently made a quick calculation that since the World Youth Day is held every two years, she can only go to three more before she no longer qualifies as a ‘youth’ aged 16–35.

“I thought: ‘I wish I’d known about it when I was younger.’ And so that’s why I’m so passionate about supporting it.”

Nicole says she will support the World Youth Day events for the rest of her life, because they have been such an important part of her life’s journey.

She will make her third World Youth Day pilgrimage to Toronto next month.

She has found the previous occasions to be life-changing, especially the last one held in Rome.

Thanks to that experience, she gave up her well-paid corporate managerial job to work full time for the Church.

She was a human resource manager for the Commonwealth Bank, looking after more than 200 staff and managers in 13 branches in Sydney’s inner west.

But, by the time she returned from the Jubilee World Youth Day 2000, she had decided to resign and work full time for the Church instead.

“From 1999 to 2000 I was really discerning,” she says. “I felt that I was really being called to work in the Church.

“Being in the corporate world and getting good money, I didn’t want to do that.

“But it just kept growing in my heart that I had to, so World Youth Day 2000 was a real time of discernment; it was where I just really took a step back and prayed about everything.

“At the final Mass where the Pope was saying: ‘You are the saints of the new “millennium, go and share the love of Jesus’, it was then that I’ve just gone: “Ooh, OK.”

“And that’s where I received the calling to give up what I can and to take a leap of faith, I suppose you can say, and actually do it,” she says.

Her supervisor and area manager at the bank were not surprised at Nicole’s decision.

“I had great bosses … and I’ve always been open about my faith with them,” she says.

“So it was really nice when I came back. They must have just seen it on my face, because they said: ‘OK, Nicole, what are you going to tell us?’

“And I said: ‘Ooh, I haven’t planned to do it so soon’.

“I poured my heart out to them and said: ‘Look, I’m going to resign at the end of the year; I feel I’m being called to work with the youth of my parish or of Sydney, and so I’ve decided to do it’.”

They wouldn’t accept a resignation but offered Nicole a three-year career break instead.

For the next six months she worked at the Ephpheta Centre, the Catholic ministry for the deaf and hearing impaired, a time she describes as “just beautiful”.

Then she finally made a pitch to her parish priest to work with the parish’s youth.

“I just rang (Fr John Crothers) up one day and said ‘I want to come and speak to you’ and wrote out a short proposal and said: ‘I’d like you to employ me’,” she says.

“It was just totally not me. I’m actually naturally quite shy and doing that, I was, like: ‘Oh my goodness, what am I doing?’

“It was only by praying and God’s strength that got me through it, and Fr John was all for it straight away.”

Nicole has been a St Declan’s parishioner for most of her life.

She is the second eldest of three boys and three girls, and lives nearby in Mortdale in her parental home.

She has worked in the parish voluntarily since she was a teenager, mainly through Antioch, and then serving on the parish council.

Nicole has always felt inclined to working with the Church’s youth.

When Antioch was closed at St Declan’s in 1997, just before Nicole’s first World Youth Day experience, she still wanted to be involved with young people.

“I had got so much out of being involved in the Church I wanted other young people to see that it’s so great.”

In looking for her niche in the Church it made sense for her to try to place herself at the service of her own parish. It is where she has belonged for the past 25 years.

“I’ve got a great love for the parish, and because I was giving so much voluntarily beforehand I didn’t want to go away from it,” she says.

“It’s funny, even when I think of my life, when I get married, for example, I don’t want to move out of the area, because I want to stay in this parish.

“It’s a really special thing and I feel really blessed that I have it.”

Six months into her new job, Nicole is focusing on supporting five young parishioners who are also going to World Youth Day 2002.

That’s partly because she believes it will help in their formation as leaders in the parish, particularly in its youth ministry, which she hopes to expand.

“It’s not a one-man show,” she says.

“Also, what they receive on World Youth Day they’ll just want to share 10 times over, so I’m looking at it as actually helping them with that.

“We’re supporting them by fundraising as much as we can, but in return they have committed themselves to helping us, because I believe that they will be the leaders of the parish.”

Nicole’s other initiatives include a parish youth newsletter and monthly youth Masses run by a team of about 15 people aged 13–34.

She plans to build on that to introduce other things such as youth scripture study groups, prayer nights and social outings.

After almost six years in the corporate world Nicole still finds it strange adjusting to working out of a presbytery.

“I have to sort of get off my corporate world (approach) of being totally organised, and sometimes just take it (as it comes),” she says.

The best example was the first time she had not assigned anyone to help at a parish youth Mass.

When she stood at the door and asked young people at random, some she hadn’t spoken to before, she was surprised at how happy they were to be asked.

“The youth Masses are going great, and people are now getting involved who wouldn’t have normally, so I’m so glad I did that,” she says.

“I think everyone likes to belong. I think everybody, whether they’re young or old, they feel as though they’re alone in their faith.

“When I went to WYD in ’97 I really felt that I was alone, and it was a big wake-up call.

“There were all these people worshipping Jesus and God in a totally different way to me but even more so.”

So young people interested in participating in a World Youth Day should start saving now to go to the next one, Nicole says.

“They’ll miss out otherwise,” she says.

“It’s an experience that people who come back can’t describe what is really on their heart and what they really and honestly experienced.

“So it’s really a matter of going there and you’ll find out.

“It will really change your life, whether it’s by the sea of young people from around the world with the same faith as you or whether it’s in the catechesis that you’ve heard something that touched your heart, or just meeting people roughly your own age from the same area and experiencing your faith together.

“It’s just amazing.”