Early on the first Sunday in June, Ansir Aquinas packed up his car with a laptop, speaker system, 10kgs of chicken curry and biryani.
Somehow he also found room for his young family, and drove to St Joseph’s Church in Rockdale.
The occasion was the first monthly Urdu-Hindi Mass in the Archdiocese of Sydney, which is bringing up to 100 people together, mostly families, to share the Eucharist and their cultural traditions.
It’s a dream come true for many like Ansir.
He and his wife migrated to Australia from Pakistan 15 years ago. Their three children were born here.
They quickly noticed that Sydney parishes host many Masses celebrated in Italian, Vietnamese, Arabic and other languages but never a regular Mass in Urdu, the mother tongue of Pakistani Catholics.
Attempts by various people to get one going have struggled to get off the ground until this year when Ansir and fellow Pakistani-Australian Catholic Elliott Bowen approached Rockdale priest Fr Yacub Barkat to see if he would host a monthly Urdu-speaking Mass in his parish.
“As immigrants our culture is very important, our language, food, dress and especially our prayers in our language, so this opportunity is a great blessing,” Ansir said.
“People have told me they have been wanting this for 40 years or more.
“At first we had in mind just the Pakistani community but many Indians speak the same language—calling it Hindi, the script is different but the words are the same.
“So a group of them are very committed and are joining us as well. It’s amazing, because politically the two countries are enemies but here we see each other in prayer.
“It’s really Christ who is bringing everybody together.”
Fr Barkat said he had been supportive of the idea of an Urdu Mass but didn’t know where it should be located.
Elliott, Ansir and others convinced him that if he made it available at Rockdale, the people would come.
“It’s a wonderful experience and they are very well organised, with a liturgy committee and a choir,” Fr Barkat said.
Three months on and the community continues to grow with people travelling from as far as Mt Druitt and Wollongong for the Mass, followed by a relaxed lunch in the church hall.
Elliott, who is also the Archdiocese of Sydney’s parish renewal manager, says the initiative has a strong evangelisation aspect.
He hopes it will include other opportunities such as retreats, in time.
With no community Masses or formation opportunities available in Urdu, the Catholic Church had lost formerly devoted parishioners to Pentecostal or other churches, he said.
“We still have a little way to go, but hopefully the monthly Mass is an invitation and opportunity to bring some of our people back into the faith and to join their local parishes—people who practiced very reverently and passionately in Pakistan for many years,” Elliott said.
“So it’s about the Mass but also about forming our people who may have missed out on formation in the last 15 years or more because of the language barrier.”