Columban Fr Dan O'Connor meeting with local communities in Pakistan, strengthening relationships. - Photo: John Hall
Having just returned to the Australian autumn from the Pakistani spring, I start penning this reflection in Holy Week. It’s Palm Sunday. During Mass, our parish community followed Jesus in His Passion.
This provides the context for a reflection on my visit to an old friend, Columban Fr Dan O’Connor and the Columbans in Pakistan’s Hyderabad diocese.
Fr Dan works with the Parkari Kohli tribal group across the Karachi diocese, from its sleepless industrial port to the villages and steel skeletons of factories under construction that surround the growing sprawl of Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city of over 20 million people.
The Parkari Kohli come from the south-eastern Sindh province and have been part of Columban work since 1983 when Columbans first came to the Hyderabad diocese. The Parkari Kohli are low-caste Hindus. Traditionally, they work as street sweepers and sanitation workers, or as bonded labourers indentured by debt for life to wealthy landowners with no prospect of owning land or a home of their own.
Over time, some have moved from their homes in and around the Columban parish of Badin in Hyderabad to Karachi to find work in the rapidly growing factories, where they work as cleaners and factory workers. Still at the bottom of the social scale, at least now they earn a monthly wage and are not bound to a landowner. These people’s priorities are to educate their children and to gain access to at least basic health care.
Although from New Zealand and proudly so, Fr Dan has been in Pakistan for thirty-five years. “My heart is in Pakistan,” you will hear him say, in English or in Urdu to the curious chowkidar who watches the gates, to the young seminarians visiting from Lahore and to out-of-towners like us. He loves the people and it is obvious that the people love him.
Columban Fr Dan O'Connor travels through flood-affected areas, accompanying communities and offering support during a time of hardship. - Photo: John Hall
Whether he’s there to celebrate Mass, look in on one of the Columban-supported schools, or sit with a young parishioner who wants to discuss his or her career at the end of a long Sunday, Fr Dan is an integral part of each small church community, received with love and generosity. His familiarity with parishioners and their extended families often goes back two generations through births, marriages, celebrations, sickness and death.
Fr Dan lives the Church’s teaching on the preferential option for the poor through a very simple, humble life with no luxuries. He’s most often found behind the wheel of his small, beaten-up van, at ease in the Karachi traffic, living in solidarity and synodality in the service of his parishioners.
During this Holy Week, as we walk with Jesus through His Passion, it is striking how Jesus chose to accept betrayal, a false trial and the excruciating pain of the Crucifixion for the sake of each of us. His sacrifice is our salvation and freedom. My strong sense from our time with Fr Dan is that this Columban is living in solidarity with the Parkari Kohli people as they live that same Passion in their daily struggles while entering the joy of the Resurrection.
John Hall is a Columban benefactor.
Related links
- Read more from The Far East - July 2026
