Father Paul Kam Po-wai, one of the vicars general of the diocese, is celebrating the silver jubilee of priesthood in 2023. He entered the Holy Spirit Seminary in 1989 and was ordained on 2 May 1998.
He spoke with the Sunday Examiner about his vocational journey and his priesthood as a diocesan missionary. In his youth, he was a dedicated altar boy serving at Our Lady Queen of Angels Parish, Kwun Tong, but he never wanted to be a priest. When Maryknoll Father John Hines, a parish priest who is very close to young people, invited him to consider his vocational calling, he replied quickly, “nonsense, I’m not gonna be like you, Father!”
But that night, he wasn’t able to sleep. Later he approached Father Hines for discernment. The priest regularly spoke with him, patiently guided him, and eventually referred him to a spiritual advisor at the Holy Spirit Seminary so that he could receive more help. With the support of his parents and nine siblings, he eventually joined the seminary to pursue his priestly formation.
Father Kam was the first diocesan priest from Hong Kong assigned to serve as a missionary overseas. On 29 July 2003, during the SARS outbreak, he landed on the soil of Tanzania. The three years in the African country, as well as more missionary service in Cambodia from 2018 to 2021, provided him with the happiest moments of his priesthood. He holds a deep appreciation for the people of the two countries.
“They appreciate what people do for them and do not compare what they have with others. I feel so touched by this. Their joy and happiness come from their grateful hearts,” he said.
While a seminarian, he made contact with a pen-pal from Ethiopia, which first sparked his interest in Africa. After he was ordained, with the help of Maryknoll missionary Father John Ahearn, then parish priest of St. Benedict’s parish where he served, he had the chance to visit the Maryknoll missions in Tanzania and Kenya in 1999. He was especially impressed by the human touch of the people in Tanzania and has dreamed of being a missionary there since then.
After years of discernment with his spiritual advisors, he thought he had a vocation to be a missionary and wrote a letter in 2002 to John Baptist Cardinal Wu Cheng-chung asking for approval for a missionary programme with the Maryknoll Fathers who would support his daily living expenses in Tanzania.
Cardinal Wu supported his plan and encouraged him to go on with his discernment. Despite Cardinal Wu’s death, Bishop Joseph Zen Ze-kiun approved his application in just four days, demonstrating the new bishop’s support for his missionary vocation.
As a missionary in Tanzania from 2003 to 2006, he found his work to be very rewarding. “I think this experience has brought a lot of insights about people. There were many people coming to visit me, with a lot of interactions.” He estimated that more than a hundred people from Hong Kong visited him in Africa during this period and shared their experiences when they returned. “It shows that if a person is willing to share, it will bring about more sharing,” he observed.
Father Kam was also the first full-time chairperson of the Diocesan Youth Commission from 2009 to 2017, totally dedicated to youth pastoral work. Projects he initiated included a monthly retreat, a youth centre in Hung Shui Kiu, formation courses, and exchange visits with the Diocese of Essen, Germany. “This job enabled me to journey with young people. I learned a lot from them,” he said.
Now as a vicar general, Father Kam said he likes his administrative duty as it involves a lot of cooperation with people, such as keeping in touch with the parishes in the New Territories as well as the staff of the Catholic Commission for Labour Affairs.
Together with the Diocesan Vocations Commission, he plans a monthly vocation Sunday campaig, and he is also working with Caritas and the Correctional Services Department on an educational project for young prisoners.
He appreciates the leadership of Bishop Stephen Chow Sau Yan, sj, who walks together with the Curia, showing a spirit of synodality. “We listen to music together at the end of every Curia meeting and share what messages from God have touched us. I like this very much. Because it reminds us that whatever we say in the meetings, we have to go back to God. This is very important,” he said.
Father Ahearn helped him to choose the date for his priestly ordination: Vocations Sunday in 1998, a very significant day for every priest.
Father Kam recalls Father Ahearn as a very good shepherd who loved his parishioners, an excellent teacher who gave interesting lessons about the liturgy, and a mentor who organised well-designed formation for priests.
A silver jubilee celebration will be held on April 29 and 30, Vocations Sunday at St. Benedict Parish, Shatin Wai, where he was ordained and began his ministry as an assistant parish priest.
After his ordination to the priesthood, he was very committed to his pastoral work. Father Ahearn, however, suggested that the hardworking priest should develop new projects on his own to improve. In the same year, he was assigned to lead young people in the parish to visit the leprosy sanatoriums regularly in Jiangmen province, a Maryknoll mission in China. The visits brought a lot of insights for him and many young people for years.
Before leaving Hong Kong for Jiangmen, Father Ahearn would invite them all to his residence and cook breakfast for them to cheer them up. “He had a close relationship with us. We all miss him and feel that he never really left us. After I became a parish priest myself, his image and his manners are still imprinted in my heart,” he said.
Father Kam was the parish priest of St. John the Baptist Mass Centre, Kwun Tong, and Ss. Cosmas and Damian Parish, Tsuen Wan, and Holy Redeemer Church, Tuen Mun.
Life has affected lives. A priest from Africa, Father Joseph Osmund Luena, who was an altar boy, would join Father Kam on his visits to orphanages and homes for disabled children in Tanzania. In January this year, he visited Father Kam and they led a spiritual gathering at the Holy Spirit Seminary for young people.
Father Kam recalled that he supported him from time to time as he discerned his vocation. Seeing the young Father Luena, he saw his younger self when Father Hines and Father Ahearn encouraged him more than 20 years ago.
The motto Father Kam chose for his ordination was “The Lord is my Shepherd, there is nothing I lack” [Psalm 23:1]. And a hymn had been written by a lay composer using this verse as a lyric for him.
Remembering the verse, he said he was full of gratitude for the guidance of the Lord in his fruitful priesthood over the past decades as a parish priest, missionary in Tanzania and Cambodia, a shepherd for young people and now a priest taking part in diocesan management.
