COLUMBAN priest Fr Frank Hoare had learned that mission work in Fiji was rarely about grand conversions or crowded crusades. We learnt that very well last week.
More often, grace arrived quietly, in village squares, at schoolyards, or in the warmth of an evening fire.
Last week, Fr Hoare navigated living in Kinoya before moving to Ba, and in these years, we will follow him moving between Ba, Raviravi, and Votua.
These years offered moments that revealed not only the humour and humility of intercultural life, but also demonstrated how respect for each other binds communities together.
The fire beside the porch
On May 8, 1996, Fr Hoare sat with Sukh Deo, a Hindu man married to a Catholic wife, in their remote settlement in one of our hinterlands.
Over tea, Sukh recalled an episode from his childhood, a story that had stayed alive in the family like an old proverb.
In those days, doctors were few, transport scarce, and money rarer still.
“When Sukh’s uncle fell ill, his jaw locked wide open from endless yawning, the neighbours could only suggest herbs, massage, or the witchdoctor. Nothing worked,” Fr Hoare said.
“Then a stranger appeared and he promised a cure, but only if the family obeyed his instructions completely.”
Early next morning, he kindled a fire beside the porch and placed a branding iron in the flames.
The sick man was seated beside him, growing paler with each flicker of heat.
Suddenly, the stranger snatched the red-hot iron and thrust it forward, just inches from the open mouth. Startled by fear, the man jerked back and screamed and his jaw unlocked.
The village spoke of it for months. For Fr Frank, it was one of those small parables of village life: faith, fear, and healing often walked together in the strangest ways.
A false fakawela
Two months later, on July 16, the parish of Raviravi hosted a lively fundraising bazaar.
The crowd was a tapestry of Fiji itself, Fijians, Indo-Fijians, and others sharing food, laughter, and culture.
“A young Hindu lady, specially invited by the organisers, performed a classical South Indian dance.
“As she danced, an indigenous Fijian lady approached her and did a fakawela by placing a $2 note on her ear, knelt, did the cobo (clap of respect) and returned to her place.
“Then an indigenous Fijian youth sauntered up to the dancer. He threw a sulu (wraparound cloth) over her head and while holding her in it he began to dance in a mocking erotic style in front of her.”
Fr Hoare said the laughter that followed was sharp and thoughtless.
When the performance ended, he and the organisers approached the dancer, apologised, and offered her a small gift. She accepted it with quiet dignity.
“I was very angry. angry not only at the youth’s ignorance, but at his own hesitation.”
He realised, painfully, that cross-cultural spaces must be guided, not just hoped for. Respect does not happen by accident.
When drama becomes real
By July 30, 1996, intercultural dialogue had become central to Fr Hoare’s ministry. Fiji, still bearing the scars of four coups, needed not just political solutions but human understanding.
In Ba parish, he developed a role play series for teachers and parishioners to explore cultural taboos and stereotypes.
“We filmed it yesterday as an educational tool. The setting was a school typical in Fiji where both teachers and students are of different ethnicities and are unaware of taboos in the other culture.
“Scene one had a frustrated Indian teacher grab a male Fijian student by the hair (a strong taboo for Fijians) and threaten him. In the second scene a Fijian teacher was going to punish an Indian female student by hitting her legs with a sasa (coconut leaf-rib) broom.
“However, on hearing the instructions, the young Indian girl began to cry and refused to participate. To be beaten with a dirty broom is so humiliating in Indian culture that she could not allow it.
“We had to change the instructions so that she was only threatened with the broom.”
He said when the young actress began to cry, unable to continue, the group stopped and talked. What had begun as acting had turned into revelation.
In the final scene, the parents of both students met outside the head teacher’s office and realised how blind they had been to each other’s sensitivities.
Understanding, Fr Hoare said, began the moment they saw their own ignorance clearly.
The weight of a whale’s tooth
On August 12, 1996, Fr Hoare prepared to celebrate Mass in Votua Village when a family approached him carrying a polished whale’s tooth, a tabua, to offer a traditional i soro, an apology.
Years before, a clan member had “borrowed” church money and never repaid it. Since then, the family’s misfortunes had been seen as divine punishment. The priest accepted the offering and prayed for their peace.
Not long after, Fr Hoare said when the parish began planning a new church building, the priests realised they had made their own blunder, they’d begun without consulting the archbishop. There was only one way to make it right.
Carrying a whale’s tooth and yaqona, they went to the archbishop, confessed their mistake, and asked forgiveness. He accepted their apology warmly. “It definitely helped,” Fr Frank noted, “that we approached him in the traditional way.”
Lessons from the Lord
Faith, Fr Hoare often found, lives not in sermons but in respect, for people, cultures, and the quiet wisdom of tradition.
Its often said Fiji’s strength has always been its diversity. At least that’s what we tell tourists. Yet that strength can so easily fracture when pride replaces understanding.
We see this more clearly than ever today. Where Fijians of different cultural and racial backgrounds vilify each other on social media over the most trivial of things.
Faith should never be used as a weapon.
When we start confusing conviction with supremacy, we risk tearing apart the fragile threads that hold our communities together. We forget that belief was never meant to make us better than others, but better to others.
In moments like these, Fiji is being tested, not in how loudly we condemn, but in how deeply we reflect.
Healing doesn’t come through outrage; it begins with humility. Sometimes what a community needs most isn’t a miracle, but the courage to apologise, to listen, and to learn the rhythm of another’s heart.
Holiness, Fr Hoare seemed to show, is not about being right, it’s about being kind enough to make things right.
And maybe that’s the truth Fiji needs most right now: that unity doesn’t come from winning an argument, but from choosing to understand one another even when we disagree.
