I wanted to share this with you. Fr Jan was my childhood Priest, he is also our family Doctor. He operated on my sister, my Dad and myself. He encouraged all the girls in my family to continue our studies onto University. A wonderful, wonderful person. Our family drove him 200kms through the jungle to see Pope JPII the Great when he visited PNG, an experience I will always treasure.
When Jan Jaworski graduated from medical school in Poznan, Poland in 1970, he was determined to take his skills to someplace in the world where doctors were scarce. When a university friend became a Priest and was sent to Papua New Guinea, it became the young doctor's objective.
But first came many more years of medical training, accumulating the skills he hoped to one day take to PNG. Finally, in 1984, he was ready. He was in Vienna finishing up a final year of training. He dropped into an exhibition of PNG culture. The pictures showed highlands men in traditional costume. 'I was a little bit frightened of where I was going, and what I would do.'
Then 'a friend of mine, a Pallottine father who had been taking spiritual care of me for many years, said, 'Now is time for you to make a decision - you should enter the priesthood.' I was ready for this somehow I never before directly spoke of it, but I was sensing I was going in this direction. I was waiting for a sign from God.'
He sent off a letter of application to the PNG Health Department, and he put his name down to enter a novitiate to study for the priesthood.
'I made a contract with God - that whatever will happen, I will accept.' Two weeks before he was supposed to enter the novitiate, the visa paperwork came through from PNG, and he flew to Port Moresby - with some relief.
'The priests had said, 'You have to make a decision. Once you enter our congregation, you will not practise surgery.' This was very painful for me, but I said 'God's will is God's will.' One of the first people I met in PNG was an Australian missionary father, Father Peter Flynn, who had entered medical school and become a doctor, and was doing some basic surgery. I thought perhaps it is possible for me to be a priest and to practise surgery.'
But four years later, the Bishop who sent him to Rome to the seminary for late vocations was adamant that when he returned he would need to choose - he could be a doctor, or a priest, but not both. By the time of his ordination by Pope John Paul II in 1992, the Bishop had undergone a pragmatic change of heart - he could keep operating.
By all accounts, this was a great mercy to the people of Simbu. Professor David Watters, chair of surgery at Geelong Hospital and a former professor of surgery at the University of Papua New Guinea, based at Port Moresby General Hospital, describes Father Jaworski as 'a remarkable and wonderful man who has served the people of Kundiawa and Simbu province well', and whose breadth of surgical ability would be hard to match anywhere.
If you understand the lack of medical resources in the area, where people die from preventable diseases, to the thousands of people of my area he is a godsend. He is already a Saint in our eyes. When he departs from us, there will be a week long feast to celebrate his sacrifices, commitment to God and the area and for being an integral part of our family.
