He dodged incoming missiles and escaped a war zone without government assistance. Now Fr Junjun Amaya preaches to his flock alongside the beautiful Murray River.
Cobram’s new Catholic priest, Fr Junjun Amaya, is a softly-spoken man.
The priest, who originally hails from the Philippines, was officially installed as the St Joseph's Cobram Catholic Church priest on December 27, 2023, after Fr John Corcoran retired.
Fr Amaya is also the Sandhurst Diocese priest at the Sacred Heart Church in Yarrawonga.
For the newly arrived priest, it’s a far cry from a seminary in the Philippines.
“I joined the seminary in the Philippines,” he said.
“I started my studies in the Philippines for the priesthood, which takes 10 years. And after seven years of studies, I moved to Australia and finished my studies in Melbourne.”
Fr Amaya explained that while in the seminary in the Philippines, the former Bishop of the Sandhurst Diocese, Bishop Joseph Grech, visited seeking priests to fill the void in the Goulburn Valley and Murray areas.
Asked why he wanted to become a priest, Fr Amaya said he found a love for the church as a child.
Following Catholic tradition, Fr Amaya was ordained first as a deacon in Bendigo before finishing his studies.
He returned to the Philippines to be ordained a priest in 2011 and then returned to Australia.
Since being ordained a priest, he has ministered in numerous parishes, including Wodonga, Bendigo and Myrtleford, before coming to the Moira Shire area.
"I’ve been assigned everywhere,” Fr Amaya said.
He said the best part of being a priest was sharing in the pivotal moments of people’s lives, such as christenings, baptisms, Eucharists and weddings.
Though a priest’s life is never simple, life got much more complicated for Fr Amaya in 2023 while on a six-week sabbatical in Israel.
Fr Amaya said the majority of the trip was enjoyable.
However, it was in the final week of his time in the Holy Lands that the October 7, 2023 war between Israel and Hamas began.
For Fr Amaya, who was located between Israeli-controlled Jerusalem and Palestinian National Authority-run Bethlehem, his experience was one he isn’t likely to forget soon.
Though the Palestinian Authority is a separate organisation that controls the West Bank and is not involved in the current war being waged between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the war was still uncomfortably close.
“Where we (him and his fellow priests) were was about 80km from the Gaza Strip,” Fr Amaya said.
The Cobram priest said he could hear the air raid sirens and feel the vibrations of the incoming missiles, and though the building he was staying at had a bunker, it was nonetheless a frightening experience.
“It was scary... we had to run into the bunker three times that week,” Fr Amaya said.
With foreign governments attempting to evacuate their citizens from the active war zone, Fr Amaya decided to try and make a break for it to get to Australia.
However, despite registering for one of the Australian Federal Government mercy flights, he never managed to board one, a fact Fr Amaya puts down to not being an Australian citizen.
“I think they were prioritising the people with Australian passports, and because I’m holding a Philippine passport, I couldn’t get on that,” he said.
Luckily for him, Fr Amaya managed to get on to a costly commercial flight out of the region.
Since he escaped from incoming missiles, Fr Amaya has made himself at home in the Cobram-Yarrawonga district.
When asked how he had settled into the area, Fr Amaya said the congregations of both Cobram and Yarrawonga had welcomed him with open arms.
He joked that his car was his most regular office due to his role ministering to two churches roughly 35km apart.
As for anyone considering joining the priesthood, Fr Amaya said it was important to be committed.
“(Priesthood) is a calling; it’s a vocation,” he said.
“There’s a lot of sacrifices... just take the call. It’s an inner calling, and if you are called to it, you will be at peace.”