Father Mark  Sexton



Before Fr Mark Sexton left for a six month stint as army chaplain in Afghanistan last June (2011), one of his parishioners gave him an Ipod to play music while he was away.

A self-confessed Luddite, he had to get instructions on how to use it and with some scepticism he made a last-minute decision to buy an Ipad as well.

But the downloading of an application called “I Breviary” and surprisingly good internet access meant he could look up any liturgy for any occasion and his reliance on it for Sunday Mass saw one Australian digger dub him “the Ipad padre”.

Every Sunday Fr Sexton would say Mass for between 20 and 30 [Roman] Catholics, mainly American and Australian, in the Ghan Chapel and he heard confession a couple of times. While many Catholic service men and women were non-practising, the St Christopher or St Michael medals sent to him by his old parish at Newton would quickly disappear from the chapel.

Fr Sexton said he was particularly pleased to have his Ipad app when an American female soldier who’d been brought up as a Baptist but wanted to convert to [Roman] Catholicism asked him to baptise her. Fortunately he had taken the baptismal oils with him as part of the Mass kit but it was the last thing he expected to do. Sure enough the app included the Rite of Baptism!

Based at Tarin Kot in the north-east of Afghanistan, Fr Sexton was one of three chaplains assisting defence forces from Australia, the United States, Singapore and Slovakia. Together with workers from Third World countries and contractors from the West, the population numbered 7000.

 (Extract from the Southern Cross Feb 2012)