On a day the world marks with roses, chocolates, and romance Lawrence Zimbe offered a bouquet not to a sweetheart, but to Our Lady represented by her statue, following his Valentine’s Day ordination to the diaconate by Bishop Daniel Meagher in Annandale.
“I’ve been devoted to Our Lady since the day I entered the seminary and I’ve always asked her to intercede for me,” he told The Catholic Weekly.
“I really pour out myself to her, she tells Jesus what I need, she tells Jesus what I am going through and what I desire.
“I dedicated my vocation to her and for her to intercede for me and that’s why I had to offer the flowers to Our Lady.”
The Mass and ordination ceremony, held in St Brendan’s parish, attracted a full house of parishioners, well-wishers, and family for Deacon Zimbe’s milestone along the journey to priesthood.
Also present were Bishop Anthony Percy, St Brendan’s parish priest Fr Matthew Meagher, and other members of the clergy and seminarians.
Hailing from Kampala in Uganda, Deacon Zimbe joined the seminary in his local archdiocese in September 2016 at the St Mbaaga’s Major Seminary Ggaba before transferring to the Seminary of the Good Shepherd in Sydney in 2023.
Deacon Zimbe told The Catholic Weekly he expects to be ordained a priest back in Kampala within the next year.
He was delighted his mother and members some members of his extended family were granted visas which allowed them to travel to attend his ordination, and was grateful to Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP and seminary rector Fr Michael de Stoop for their assistance.
However his six siblings and other friends and family had to content themselves with following the ordination ceremony via a livestream.
“It began 6pm here and in Uganda, that was 10am, so that was a good time for them,” he said.
During his homily, Bishop Meagher detailed some of Deacon Zimbe’s life in Uganda as the second eldest in his family, his strong Catholic education and parish involvement and the admiration he held for parish priest Fr Augustine Kato.
“Fr Augustine was a humble, hard-working priest who knew all his parishioners; a really good village pastor,” Bishop Meagher said.
“Lawrence, to this day says that Fr Augustine is the kind of priest he would like to be.”
The bishop said the new deacon’s arrival in Australia in January 2023 and ordination just three years later was “God’s plan slowly working out.”
“At an early age, God must have touched Lawrence’s soul and so his deep attraction to God and his desire to be completely committed to God as a priest,” he said.
Deacon Zimbe said his motto as a deacon is Psalm 27:4, ‘I want to be in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.’
“That’s what has kept me going, I want to be in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that is the Psalm which has been guiding me.”
