Electrical engineer Tafara Jakopo, 31, trained hard to become a builder of cities until a life-changing encounter with a Sydney parish priest made him start thinking about what builds up souls.
It sparked an insatiable thirst for understanding the intellectual grounding of his Catholic faith and now he can’t wait to pass it on to others.
Zimbabwe-born Tafara was completely career-focussed when he moved to Sydney from Perth for work in 2018.
He’d worked hard to secure a prized spot on a graduate program straight out of Murdoch university, rented the cheapest flat he could find, and threw himself into his job.
On a phone call a few months later, his father asked him if he’d found a church to go to yet. He says the following weekend sparked the next stage of his life when he walked into the foyer of St Charles Borromeo church in Ryde…the nearest Catholic church.
“I remember walking in for the first time on my own accord without Dad banging on the door, telling me to go to church. It really was a big moment,” he recalls.
“There were more young people there than I had ever seen in a parish in my life before. But I got into a good routine of going in during the opening hymn or a bit after, and leaving before the closing hymn, so I didn’t have to talk to anyone.”
That was until the fourth of November, St Charles’ feast day.
Brother (now Father) Daniel Drum FMVD and Jemille West, the youth leader at the time, caught Tafara before he was able to sneak out, and invited him to the feast day celebrations.
He met the priest there, Fr Greg Morgan FMVD, who asked him a question.
“Looking back on it, that was a life-changing moment. He asked me, ‘So what can you offer our parish?’
“It really put me on the spot, I had no idea what to say, and just said, ‘Well I do play a bit of guitar.’”
Playing a “bit of guitar” soon became playing at Mass each week, and then accepting the role of a youth leader, helping to run sessions for young people, give talks and going on mission trips.
Tafara found himself in front of a thriving group of around 50 teenagers every single week and realised many of them had more knowledge about their faith than he did.
Spurred on to educate himself, he discovered the works of St Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine, and went right down the intellectual rabbit hole and out again, eventually tracing the faith to the missionaries who brought it to his birth-country where his family were devout Catholics for four generations.
“From Aquinas and Augustine, I started digging into the Greeks and the classical world and nothing could stop me from that point,” he recalls.
“It helped me grow deeply in my faith and I discovered a new world and parts of myself I didn’t know existed. All those things coming together, my service in the parish, my reading, and even my work awakened me as a person.
“I had never doubted the existence of God, but I felt a great sense of relief that all the petty criticisms I had about the faith had been answered. There is real meat behind everything that we believe as Catholics.
“Far greater thinkers than I am already forged that path ahead of me and I feel confident being in their company.
“And I also started trying to understand what sort of education did these guys have? What sort of education did Aquinas have; what sort of education did Augustine have in order to be the well-rounded thinkers that they were?”
His passion for knowledge made Tafara a successful candidate for a $48,000 scholarship to study Australian Catholic University’s new Master of Liberal Arts (Western Civilisation) program, offered through the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation.
Now halfway through the course, he’s enjoying exploring the foundations of western civilisation and the role the church has played through the arts, literature, and the intellectual tradition.
He says his parish work and his part-time studies are helping him to see his work, which has involved working on the Sydney Metro, Australia’s biggest public transport project, in a new light.
“I could really sense that engineers are mediums through which they bring into visible monuments, the spirit and voice of any given civilisation,” he explains.
“If you think of any civilisation, really, it’s the buildings you think of. If you think of Greece, it’s the Parthenon—Rome, it’s the Colosseum.
“Even here in Sydney, we will eventually be defined by things like the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, so there is a satisfying link there in everything I’m doing.”
ACU and the Ramsay Centre are offering up to 10 scholarships valued at $48,000 to students enrolling in the Master of Liberal Arts (Western Civilisation) for next year.
An information session will be held on 21 November in North Sydney, email [email protected] for information.