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Retired priest serving those at sea |
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By Maria Wiering
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Wednesday, 18 November 2009 |
Flecks of wheat sprayed through the air over Lake Superior as the discharge chute’s long metal arm shot the grain bin’s contents into storage containers aboard a freighter.
- Photo by Dianne Towalski / The Catholic Spirit
The 591-foot-long Ziemia Lodzka, a bulk cargo ship from Poland, was moored in Superior Harbor, across the Blatnik bridge from Duluth. Its 20-member crew had been on the sea for two months, stopping in Romania, Spain and Israel before sailing north to push down the St. Lawrence Seaway in Quebec and enter the Great Lakes.
A series of locks allowed the ship to navigate the lakes’ varying sea levels until it reached Duluth Nov. 10.
After loading the wheat, they were leaving on the afternoon of Nov. 11.
Their next stop was Casablanca, Morocco. It would take about two weeks.
Typically, Father Bob Sipe, 76, would have scaled the gangplank to the
ship’s deck to meet the men, but he was stuck on the ground due to a
cold he didn’t want the seafarers to catch.
A retired priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Father
Sipe now volunteers with the ecumenical Twin Ports Ministry to
Seafarers as a member of the international Catholic organization
Apostleship of the Sea.
On this day, retired Minnesota state representative and fellow Twin
Ports Ministry volunteer Mike Jaros met the crew alone to bring them
cell phones and 42-minute calling cards when they arrived; later he
took the crew members into Duluth to shop for necessities.
Jaros also translated Nov. 11 when The Catholic Spirit met the seafarers who are among Father Sipe’s new water-bound flock.
Polish seafarer Marek Jankowicz visits with a Twin Ports Ministry to Seafarers volunteer. - Photo by Dianne Towalski / The Catholic Spirit
A busy retirement
The Apostleship of the Sea was founded in Glasgow, Scotland, in the
1920s to serve mariners, fishermen and their families, and all who
travel the world’s waterways, including cruise-goers.
The seafarers who come into the Twin Ports of Duluth, Minn., and
Superior, Wis., hail from all parts of the world, typically working in
six- to nine-month contracted periods, the entirety of which they’re
living aboard the ship.
In addition to meeting the seafarers’ practical needs, Father Sipe also
offers to celebrate Mass aboard the ship, or he helps the crew get to a
religious service if they’re in port over a Sunday. He’s also available
for confessions and other sacraments.
After serving a handful of archdiocesan parishes over 45 years, Father
Sipe retired from full-time parish ministry in 2004. He celebrated his
50th jubilee last summer.
After his last parish assignment at St. Peter in Forest Lake, Father
Sipe moved to his family cabin near Grand Rapids, where he has
childhood memories of swimming, fishing, hunting and spending summers
with his parents and four siblings.
Even during World War II when gasoline and tires were rationed, his
father, who was in the filling station business, would garner a few
extra gas stamps to get the family up north from its home in
Robbinsdale.
The 1940s cabin is about 80 miles from Duluth, a distance Father Sipe
travels about once a week to spend a couple days meeting ships. He
first learned of the Apostleship of the Sea a few months before he
retired through a mailing that invited him to consider being a cruise
priest. He thought he could get used to that.
International scope
Now he sits on the board of the U.S. chapter of Apostleship of the Sea, and his work has taken him well beyond Duluth’s harbor.
As a cruise ship chaplain, he’s rounded Cape Horn, Argentina’s
southern-most tip; marveled at the Alaskan fiords; explored coast towns
in the Caribbean, Hawaii, New Zealand, Japan, China, Hong Kong and
Korea; visited family in Australia and inquired about the life of
seafaring families in the Philippines, from where at least a third of
the world’s seafarers come.
“I’ve never felt more like a priest,” he said, noting his retirement
frees him from the meetings and parish politics that can entangle a
pastor. And, ministering to a cruise ship crowd lets him mingle him
with people who don’t always go to church. He often hears, “I used to
be Catholic, but . . .” and has the opportunity to listen.
He celebrates Mass daily for cruise-goers and weekly for the crew. He
wishes he were allowed to spend more time with the crew, who, like many
of the seafarers he meets in the harbor, are from poor, politically
corrupt countries.
Back at the Twin Ports, Father Sipe is grateful to have a center
coordinating volunteers. Most U.S. Apostleship of the Sea volunteers
are priests or deacons who work out of their cars, he said. Duluth is
the busiest Great Lakes port.
“What you do find rewarding is the gratitude that somebody cares enough
about them,” Father Sipe said. He’s had the chance to bring Eastern
Orthodox crewmen to Divine Liturgy, and once took a group to Gooseberry
Falls.
“They loved that,” he said.
Father Bob Sipe, a retired priest of the archdiocese, shuts a gate to a Lake Superior port where he ministers to seafarers. - Photo by Dianne Towalski / The Catholic Spirit
Maritime ministry
The hard life of a seafarer has weathered the faces and hands of the
Ziemia Lodzka’s crew. They are always working, they said, maintaining
equipment and cleaning when they’re out at sea, and assisting with the
loading or unloading of cargo while at port.
Eugeniusz Bornia, 55, has worked on ships for 30 years, he said,
wearing a yellow hard hat and standing on the ship’s deck. In his
hometown on the Baltic Sea, it’s a tradition to work on the water, he
said. His great-grandfather did, his grandfather did and his father did.
His three children won’t, however, he said. Borrowing an adage from his
father, he explained why: “The sea is for fish, not for people.”
Father Sipe recalls once asking a captain how many times he was able to
celebrate his wedding anniversary with his wife, to whom he had been
married 30 years.
The captain thought for a moment, calculating. “Once,” he answered.
While at sea, the men get news of deaths of family members or other
life-changing events at home, and Father Sipe listens to them if they
want to talk about it.
However, many ships are in port for only a day or two, and the
opportunity isn’t always there to establish the rapport sharing often
requires, Father Sipe said.
So, he supports them in other ways. White boxes with red ribbons are
stacked against a wall in a basement room of the Twin Ports Ministry to
Seafarers Duluth office. With the guidance of the ministry’s executive
director Tom Anderson, a Lutheran pastor, they’re being filled with
“ditty bags” — handmade cloth bags stuffed with nail clippers,
toothpaste, sewing kits and other things useful to seafarers.
In late October, volunteers started giving them to ship captains, who
will give them to the crew on Christmas Day. The office will distribute
about 600 boxes by the holiday.
‘Majesty of the sea’
Father Sipe is impressed by the abiding faith he finds among the
seafarers and the rootedness of many of their Catholic cultures.
Ziemia Lodzka crew member Marek Jankowicz, 51, said he relies on his
prayers and holy cards to sustain him throughout the voyages. Because
of the seafarers’ varied schedule, Pope Benedict XVI grants them a
dispensation from their Sunday Mass obligation.
Working on the water has increased Father Sipe’s own appreciation of
“the majesty of the sea,” he said, which he sometimes ponders while
walking the cruise ship decks. “It’s bound to hit you — not only the
vastness of it, but the depth of it,” he said. When he rounded Cape
Horn in 2005, he felt truly at the end of the world, he said.
In his travels, he’s found special meaning in the allegory of Psalm
139. It describes how deeply God knows man and includes the verse: “If
I fly with the wings of dawn and alight beyond the sea, even there your
hand will guide me, your right hand hold me fast.”
Father Sipe plans to continue his ministry as long as his health —
which is good — will allow, he said. He hopes to eventually establish a
foundation to ensure the continuation of the Twin Ports Ministry to
Seafarers.
“We are by far the best center on the Great Lakes,” he said. “I want to see this ministry continue to grow.”
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