A good listener - Rosie Hoban
The new provincial of the Jesuits, Steve Curtin sj, talks with Rosie Hoban about his dreams for the future.
Steve Curtin set out to change the world when he was a young youth worker. He thought he could ‘fix’ the problems and sorrows that had led many young people into juvenile detention. These days he is wiser and more faithful and content to be a bit player.
‘My faith matured’, he says, ‘and I realised that I can’t fix anyone—I can only trust that God works through me in some small way. It was an important time in my life realising that you can’t always make things right by helping; sometimes you can only be with someone and share their pain and accompany them in their experience without needing to fix their problems.
‘I began to believe that if I was going to do any good it would be by God’s grace and not out of my own power and strength. I realised I could give my work everything I had but I could only be sustained by drawing on the power of God and that was very significant for me.’
Steve, who was appointed as Provincial of the Australian Jesuits last July, will be hoping for all the help he can get in the next six years. He takes over the job at an interesting time in the order’s Australian history. More and more lay people are working in, and taking responsibility for, the running of Jesuit services around Australia, and some institutions are being scrutinised by the public in a way seldom experienced before. Jesuit ways are under the microscope.
Talking to Steve Curtin is a reassuring experience, a calming encounter and one senses he can manage almost anything that is thrown his way. He admits to bringing a calm temperament to the job, and he says he may even be a little too easy going at times. But he feels a deep inner peace, another of those gifts from God and inherited from his parents, so he had little say in the matter.
A calm and compassionate personality was not the only legacy of growing up in the Curtin household with his beloved parents, Marie and Bryan, and coming sixth in the line of eight boys. Faith was strong in Steve’s home and their belief in God was central to how they viewed the world—justly and compassionately. It was one of the reasons Steve, as a young man, became a social worker and worked with young people who were in strife. It was also the reason that he joined the Jesuits 23 years ago when he was 28 years old.
Marie, who still lives in Sydney, and Bryan, who died four years ago, clearly have a lot to answer for! They built a home that Steve loved: one filled with boys, noise and love. He learned very young to roll with the punches, adapt to the situation, and get on with things.
‘I grew up in a very loving and happy family and it was a simple family life. I experienced unconditional love from my parents and brothers and I learned how to manage relationships, so I don’t think I carry a lot of emotional baggage’, he says of his childhood in Sydney. That doesn’t mean no regrets. Like many men and women who join religious life, Steve would have liked a family of his own, complete with wife and children.
‘Even if I had my time over again, I wouldn’t change anything, but that doesn’t mean I would not have liked a family of my own. It’s a bit like having your cake and eating it too.’
Steve is content with his lot and believes he is in the right place, doing the work that God wants him to do. There are currently 150 Australian Jesuits and hundreds of lay staff or ‘companions’ working with and for the order’s many institutions, agencies and services.
Before taking on the leadership he had years of experience working in a range of Jesuit services and posts around the world. He has worked as a teacher at St Aloysius College in Sydney, a pastoral worker with the homeless, and a counsellor with refugees from Vietnam in the Philippines. After his ordination in 1994 he spent a year at St Ignatius’ Parish in Richmond, Melbourne, before moving to Bangkok in 1996. He worked for five years with the Jesuit Refugee Service Asia Pacific, first as Assistant Regional Director and then as Regional Director. A lot of his work in Thailand was with refugees from Burma, but he also travelled extensively in South-East Asia, managing projects in Indonesia, East Timor, Thailand, Cambodia and Nepal. In 2001 he was appointed Director of Jesuit Mission and also served as Chair of the Board of the Jesuit Refugee Service.
As the new leader of the Australian Jesuits, Steve wants to nurture people’s strengths, and believes great things can be achieved in the partnership between Jesuits and lay companions and volunteers who share their mission. It’s one reason he is passionate about mission formation of Jesuits, staff and students at Jesuit schools and volunteers, and he is committed to investing a lot of time, energy and money into mission formation which he believes will sustain the work of the Jesuits into the future.
Steve believes people want formation and are hungry for spirituality, anxious to grasp what is offered. Certainly he is anxious to meet and spend time with as many of the order’s lay companions as he can, relishing the pastoral work that the leadership job demands. His primary role will be ‘care of the Jesuits here and overseas, care of the companions who work with us, and care for our shared mission’.
‘I think my people skills are something that I bring to this role’, he says. ‘My job is to listen to what people are saying and make sure they feel I have heard them. I’m a good listener and can empathise with people—I suppose that’s what first drew me to youth work.
‘I also bring to this job a deep faith and trust in God and a vision to help shape a better world.’
Steve will finish his term in six years, and while he is currently occupied with the today and planning the future, he gave a fleeting thought to the legacy he may leave. Will it be as enriching and joyful as the one given to him by Marie and Bryan Curtin?
‘When I finish I would like to leave the Jesuit community with morale at a high and with Jesuits having a strong sense that the living of religious life is rewarding and is where they can find and give love and by happy. I would like Jesuits to know that they can be loved and be loving and be apostolically effective.
‘My hope for our lay companions is that they too find meaning and fullness and be with Jesus on the mission to build the kingdom of God.’
That youthful idealism may have been tempered, but it certainly hasn’t diminished.
