Fr Don Grant SVD is to receive an honour from the Government of Papua New Guinea, in recognition of his 45 years’ service to the community as a missionary to that country.

The honour, the Order of the Star of Melanesia, is part of PNG’s own national honours and awards system known as The Orders of Papua New Guinea.

Fr Don says he is humbled to receive the honour, which could have been bestowed on so many of his confreres and other colleagues living and working in PNG.

“I feel very humbled by it,” he says. “So many have done more than I have and their work hasn’t been recognised.

“So I receive it on behalf of the SVDs who have worked so long and their work hasn’t been recognised.”

Fr Don, who was brought up in Melbourne, first went to PNG in 1959, as a lay missionary teacher, before being ordained for the Diocese of Wewak following seminary studies at the Beda College for late vocations in Rome.

“I worked in various roles there in the Wewak Diocese until about 1995 when I had the call to become a Divine Word Missionary,” he says.

He took his first vows in 1996 and was assigned to Papua New Guinea, where he was to stay in ministry until 2005, when he returned to Australia, after developing Tropical Sprue, a disease which mimics Coeliac Disease, and was making him too weak to continue.

Much of Fr Don’s life in PNG was spent in parish ministry, as well as a period spent teaching English at St John’s Minor Seminary on Kairiru Island, where he eventually was appointed Rector.

After that, Fr Don was sent to Mount Hagan Diocese.

“The most challenging years I had up there were the 13 years spent on the Sepik River. I began at Angoram and then Timbunke and Kanduanum. They were challenging years, but I enjoyed it,” he says.

“I had to work completely by boat. There were only a few places that I could walk to. And when you’re in those places you do feel remote. There were no mobile phones then. You’re living among another culture and another people.

“But I got a great sense of satisfaction in ministering to the people there. They appreciated it. In fact, the more remote they were the more they appreciated having you there.”

Fr Don is unable to travel to Port Moresby to receive his Star of Melanesia from the Governor of PNG, but it will be conveyed to him in Sydney.