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Our Parish Priest

We bade a fond farewell to our outgoing priest, Fr David Anderson, at the end of December 2008, as he left to take up his duties as parish priest of Tableview.

In January 2009, we welcomed our new priest, Rev. Fr. John Keough who has the following to say about himself :

It seems like I am getting requests from all over to let you all know a little something about myself. I was born in East London at the Mater Dei hospital on the 1st of February 1973. If you “do the math” as the Americans like to say, you should work out that I am almost 36 years old (and not 26 as people so often seem to think).

My mother moved up to Pretoria from East London when I was 18 months old. Due to his work commitments, my father could only follow us up there about six months later. When it came time for me to go to crèche, my mother sent me to an Afrikaans one called Eldoraine Kleuterskool. This came as quite a shock to my system, since I had been raised English and could not speak a word of Afrikaans! However, by the time I left there, I think that I had almost forgotten how to speak English.

So what does mom do? She sends me to an English school: Loretto Convent in Skinner Street in Pretoria. The plan was that I should go to C.B.C. Pretoria, but they only took boys in from standard two (present grade 4). This meant that I had to do grades one and two, and standard one at the convent school – some of the best years of my early life! The result of the English-Afrikaans-English is that I am now totally bilingual.

What can I say about C.B.C. except that I hated it? The system seemed to work for some, and they took to it like fish to water. For me, however, it was four years of pure hell on earth. At the end of 1985, when I had just completed standard five, I convinced my mother to take me out of the school. She and my father had divorced some years previously, and she had remarried and was staying in Vereeniging. So, in 1986, I began my high school career at a public school: General Smuts High School. What a pleasant change! I matriculated from there in 1990, and then moved back to Pretoria in January 1991.

I guess that I should say at this point that people often ask me about my vocation: when did it come to me that I want to be a priest. Well, I can honestly say that wanting to be a priest is one of my first memories.

Therefore, in my Matric year I applied to go into the seminary for the Archdiocese of Pretoria in 1991. However, I was turned down because it was deemed that I was too young. I applied again the next year, and was told the same thing. I started to get the feeling that it was not going to happen, and so I moved to Johannesburg in 1993, and began studying a Bachelor of Arts at Wits University.

More and more I found my life moving away from the Church. I grew my hair long and became what we referred to as “alternative.” I discovered the joys of night clubs, parties, and eventually even raves (yes, I have to admit, I was a “raver”). At university I worked in restaurants to support myself, and that was how I got involved in the restaurant / catering / guesthouse industry. I got the opportunity to move down to Cape Town in September of 1997.

By this time I had found my faith again, and the idea of priesthood started to resurface. Before I left Johannesburg, I spoke to the priest there in charge of vocations, who by this time I had gotten to know very well. I told him of my idea to go to the seminary, but that I had also been offered the opportunity to relocate to the Cape. He advised me to come to Cape Town and to contact the vocations team down here, adding that he would give me a good reference. And the rest, as they say, is history.

It took me about two years to settle here, and then I initiated the process of becoming a priest. I did a year of discernment in 2000, and I entered the seminary in 2001.

There I did two years of Philosophical studies (2001-2002), and four years of Theological studies (2003-2006). You will notice that I only studied for six years instead of seven – I think that they gave me a year off for good behaviour! I was ordained a deacon on the 28th of April 2006, and was ordained to the priesthood on the 16th of December in the same year.

My first assignment was to the parish of St. Anthony of Padua in Kraaifontein, and for the last two years I have been the Assistant Priest there.

Now I have been assigned to this wonderfully dynamic parish, where it is my hope that we can grow together in our faith.