A Real Diamond

Father Kevin Dance (SVC 1954-57) recently celebrated his Diamond Jubilee as a priest of the Passionist Order. In 2016 his contribution to the church both in Australia and overseas was acknowledged in his being awarded membership on the St Virgils College Heritage Roll of Honour.

Father Kevin was born in 1942 to Rigney Dance and Thelma Bell at Queenstown where his father worked at the Mt Lyell Mine. 

He has four sisters and one brother -  three of his sisters eventually entered religious life. Sister Trish and Sr. Damian (now Sister Jill) joined the Sisters of St. Joseph.  Judith (now Sister Angela) joined the Little Company of Mary.

The family moved from Queenstown to the Huon where Kevin attended Geeveston Convent under the tutelage of the Sisters of St. Joseph whom he states ‘offered us a friendly, well focused and rather liberal education.” 

There was no possibility of a full secondary education to be had at the Area School in Geeveston. Due to the family’s financial situation, the hope was for Kevin to win a Junior Bursary.  He went on to achieve this due in large measure to the indulgent additional tutelage of Sr Mary Kieran for several months whilst he was in Year 6 – he was awarded a full Bursary which covered all boarding fees and tuition. The only place that was considered was St Virgil’s.

Kevin did not enjoy the experience of boarding, though he made some life-long friends. When his family moved to Hobart he happily discontinued boarding. Though he would never describe himself as a sporting star, he enjoyed playing football and hockey and the camaraderie that it provided.

To quote Kevin  “There were a couple of Brothers that I admired greatly – Brother Addicoat and Brother Burke. Some others will remain unnamed and unacknowledged. And of course there was the omnipresent, omniscient, Brother E.D. Joyce who helped me to develop a lifelong blockage to managing to do maths!!”

It was while at St Virgil’s that he met his first Passionist priest in the person of an eccentric, passionate and thoroughly interesting man named Father Albert Spratt who gave a retreat at the College. He became Kevin’s mentor and friend in later years. 

Kevin entered the Passionist seminary in1958 and was ordained to the priesthood at St John’s Glenorchy on 28 July 1965.

He went on to further studies gaining a Bachelor of Arts through the University of New England majoring in Sociology and Psychology, and later a Master of Arts in Psychology from Macquarie University in Sydney. 

His early ministries were working as part of a team providing Retreats for Youth and with school chaplaincies. Subsequent to the Second Vatican Council he became involved with adult faith formation and also the facilitation of the General Chapters of various congregations of both men and women, helping them to reshape their lives and ministries in the light of the Council. He did similar work for several Australian dioceses. 

Kevin has been the leader in several Passionist communities, a member of the Passionist Provincial Council and spent a period as its Provincial Leader. At the international level he has three times served on the Central Coordinating Committee for the Order’s world-wide General Chapters. 

He has been an Executive Member and later the President of the Australian Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutes.

In 2001 he was asked to go to New York to establish the Passionist Family as an NGO at the United Nations in New York. This was so that the Passionist could hope to influence the policies that were being decided by the governments of the world that affected the lives and the hopes of people, particularly those doomed to live in poverty and without dignity or freedom. He spent almost eleven years there and managed to establish Passionists International. To again quote Kevin, It was a fascinating time when we were able to advocate on issues as diverse as climate change, and indigenous issues. (We helped see the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which was adopted despite the opposition of Australia, the US, NZ and Canada). We soon realised if we were to make the right noises at the UN, we must learn how finances were managed and who controlled them. To make the world a less unequal and a more just place, a model of development was needed that was people-centred, was pro-poor and was not dictated by profit alone. We worked with governments to begin to address the flight of capital from poor countries and to call for proper control over tax avoidance and tax evasion. 

Kevin returned to Australia in 2012. Soon after he responded to a request to move to Papua New Guinea where he has administered St Joseph’s Boroko - the largest parish in that country. Three years later he was forced to return to Australia with dengue fever and recovering from a brain haemorrhage. 

He spent two years as parish priest of St Paul the Apostle Parish at Endeavour Hill, an outer Melbourne suburb. Father Kevin currently resides at St Briget’s Retreat House at Marrtickville. 

Also celebrating his diamond jubilee was local identity, Fr Denis Allen. By way of acknowledging these milestones, clergy and laity from across the Archdiocese gathered to help them celebrate.   

On 21 July, Mass of Thanksgiving was held at Holy Spirit Church in Sandy Bay, before a celebratory lunch for clergy was held at the Italian Club in North Hobart.