The parish priest of the St Nicholas Orthodox Church of Bunbury in South Australia, Fr John Sullivan, is a man who came to the Church by a long and varied route.

An out and out Aussie, Fr John has a CV that reflects a rich, restless life, switching careers from commercial fisherman, to merchant sailor, miner, policeman and state and the commonwealth civil servant.

“I have been around the block and done a lot of things and I can see with hindsight that it has helped me as a priest to understand people better,” Fr John, aged 58, told Neos Kosmos.

He is the first non-Greek to be ordained into the Orthodox Church in Western Australia.

“I may be the first non-Greek ordination in Western Australia but I do not think I am the last as there are many who are interested in the Orthodox church. Modern Christianity has sought to become relevant by becoming like the world and so has lost the spirituality that people are seeking in their lives.

“Many do not know of the Orthodox Church and it is incumbent on us to reach out to the population. It’s a big job but the Orthodox Church has always had an evangelic role,” said Fr John.

Fr John is of Irish descent. He was born a Catholic and his maternal grandmother had a strong influence in his life.

“She took me to mass and instilled a faith that never left me. She used to say: ‘if you have no faith in life, you have nothing’. She died aged 95 in 2010 and within a month I was in the Greek Orthodox Church”.

When he was still young, his mother joined the Pentecostal church and he was an active member for much of his adult life. He met his wife Deanna at a Pentecostal church camp in 1987 and they married on 12 September that year.

His doubts over the spiritual direction he was taking began in 2009 as he began to see a dissonance between what he saw and what he was reading in the Bible.

“It just did not correspond with the Book of Acts which describes the day-to-day life of the apostles. I wanted to find out about the first Church and I did a lot of reading, I read historical accounts and there was a continuity there. That was the reason in my mind, but reason can only take you so far, as you cannot convince yourself to have a faith.”

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I read a lot about the Greek Orthodox Church and I realised the Orthodox church was the way.

“It was confronting for me when I realised that I had not been following the truth. Do you walk away or do you admit you were in error? The hard part are the ramifications with friends and family.”

When he converted to the Orthodox church, friends and family members broke contact with him- they could not understand why he should join an “exotic” religion.

Over the years that followed, he read voraciously and even joined classes in Byzantine chanting in 2010 – a choice that has stood him in good stead now that he is a priest.

His spiritual advisor Fr Emmanuel Stamatiou first suggest that he should become a priest.

“It came out of the blue, while I was very attracted to the Church, I did not think I was priest material and I was not a Greek.”

But an even greater obstacle was the fact that his wife found it difficult to accept his switch. For a man to become a priest, he must be married in the church, his wife must be baptised Orthodox and she must consent to his joining the priesthood – at the time Deanne was not prepared to comply to any of these stipulations.

“We left (that idea) on the backburner. But it all happened a few years later with no pressure from myself.”

The spark was the 1980s bestselling book “Eleni”, the story by Nicholas Gage of his mother Eleni’s struggles to protect her children in the village of Lia, in Epirus, during the Civil War. She was so taken by the book that she wanted to name their new-born daughter Eleni but Fr John opted for Emily because it sounded “too ethnic”. It was a decision that he came to regret.

Years later and unknown to his wife he made contact with the author and surprised Deanne by taking her on a pilgrimage to Lia for her 50th birthday.

They met Nicholas Gage who showed them the cell where his mother was held prisoner. They found a paper icon in a crack in the wall. On the back of it, written in Eleni’s hand, was a message:  “Don’t worry about me I am with Her (the Virgin Mary).”

The faith expressed in the message deeply moved Deanne.

She returned to Lea and was baptised beside a stream in 2017. In September that year, on their 30th anniversary, the couple were married under Orthodox rites.

“After the wedding, Fr Emmanuel, tapped me on the shoulder and said: ‘I think God’s will is done.’”

“Deanne said to me: ‘I think you had better become a priest.’”

Fr John’s path into the priesthood did not follow the usual way through a theological college. His life experiences and vast reading and the guidance from his spiritual father paved the way to his becoming a priest. Archbishop Makarios on his first trip to Western Australia encouraged him and ensured that Deanne backed ordination.

He was ordained on 9 February,2020.

“I was set to retire on comfortable civil servant’s pension. The priesthood is not a job but a way of life now.

“I am an Orthodox priest and I need to connect with people and show love. You cannot be high-minded when you approach people and tell them they are wrong. You have to show friendship and be yourself. Christ is the key – without love, we are nothing. It is important to stay humble and show humility.

“It is very important, especially if you are from the outside, to be a bridge. Don’t burn your bridges but stay connected with people.”