Experience: Ignited by Faith ( Kairos Global, May 2026, Issue 98 )

Title: Ignited by Faith

Intro

From getting into scrapes as a boy to being a bold advocate for the faith, Patrick Sibly shares the story of his journey.

Highlight

What I did not understand at the time was that I had been caught in a vicious cycle of woundedness, resentment, unforgiveness and acting out. My poor parents could not make sense of it all as I had oscillated between happy and sad. It took the power of the Holy Spirit to break the bondage. And thus began the rest of my life. 

Article

Our Father, Who art in heaven,

As a child I had a lively faith inherited from my Dad's Irish Catholic, and my mother's Italian roots. Anna, my Italian Nonna (grandmother) went to Mass every day and was a strong early example of the faith alongside my Great-Aunt Kath, who taught me the difference between sins of omission and commission.

hallowed be Thy name;

When I was eight-years-old, I decided that I wanted to be a saint. Between football, playing at the farm, fights at home with my five siblings and at school with whoever upset me, I was going to do my very best to become a saint! I gathered all the holy pictures from around the house and put them in my bedroom.

I took prayer seriously and would speak up at school when other boys blasphemed, which earnt me the name ‘Fr Pat’. But I wasn't so saintly and my first of many visits to the Principal's Office was at the age of seven after I punched a grade five boy in the face and drew blood because he sat next to me on the school bus in a way I didn't appreciate. 

Thy Kingdom come;

When I was ten, my parents took me to Melbourne to attend a pro-life Right to Life March in protest against legalised abortion. I was tiny, so to get a better view in the busy crowd of protestors outside Parliament House, I climbed a light pole. I was standing not five metres away from the pro-abortion protestors waving coat hangers and screaming over and over in rhythmic aggression: ‘Smash the Church, and smash the State, women will decide their fate.’ 

Their song deeply penetrated my heart and consciousness and helped shape my character, interests and future work in bioethics and education in defence of women, the unborn, and the family. 

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

I grew up on a dairy and beef farm in South Gippsland, Victoria. My two brothers and I, and later my three younger sisters played and worked on the farm with endless avenues for adventure. Bike riding, fishing in the creek, camping, rounding up sheep and mustering cattle – always on horseback. We had plenty of work to do and plenty of milk. 

Give us this day our daily bread;

We played sport – Australian Rules football in the winter and cricket in the summer. 

On Sundays we always went to Mass. Our parish was made of local farming families and a few retirees. Our parish priest was a long-suffering, faithful and saintly man who was a strong example.

I prayed my hardest after Holy Communion, the same way that I always played my hardest on the football field; I twice represented my league. I chose St Anthony of Padua as my Confirmation saint; he famously helped me find chicken eggs many times and he remains my friend to this day. 

and forgive us our trespasses 

As an early adolescent I became very lost, confused and somewhat sinful. Perhaps influenced by the hedonistic and pagan culture that surrounded me, I absorbed all sorts of bad spirits. Watching lustful TV movies on Friday nights when my parents were at prayer meetings, and learning from my culture at large that violence is acceptable. Once I got into a violent punching fight at a wedding reception against six other boys and that same year, under the influence of alcohol, I beat another boy, kicking him down after he crossed me. 

I became troubled and agitated and the depressing music I was listening to wasn't helping. At the start of grade eleven, I heard about a Salesian boarding school with a farm and felt a call to go there; my parents sent me immediately. I felt alone and a little rejected by my family, but there I began to pray like Joseph in Egypt. I clung close to Our Lady, praying one sincere decade of the Rosary every morning and evening. She was watching over me.

I read the Proverbs, and received guidance from my Indian-born biology teacher, and much care, advice and consolation from the Salesian brothers and fathers who were so kind and reliable.

as we forgive those who trespass against us;

Following school, I returned to the farm where I worked as Dad's apprentice. Three months after my eighteenth birthday I came to a realisation: I was so unhappy, deeply anxious and thought my life was an irretrievable failure. 

After what seemed like six months of endless fighting with my parents, one day I cried out from the depths of my heart: ‘Jesus, please help me!’ and He did. Two or three weeks later, two girls from my parish invited me to attend a faith weekend for youth. There, I listened to testimonies, joined in with the songs and fellowshipped; I felt very much at home. On Saturday night I was given an opportunity for prayer ministry and eagerly accepted it.

I sat there and told the Prayer Team leaders all my pains and deep sadness and disappointments from the age of eight onwards that had contributed to my being so unhappy.

In hindsight, I was simply carrying the sufferings of my dear mum and her father, my grandfather, who suffered a childhood of separation from his own father. My grandfather's life of itinerant labour began at the age of nine. During World War II, he lost his older brother in the Italo-German invasion of the Soviet Union. At the end of the war, my grandfather's money was worth nothing and after all the sorrow and loss, he was so embittered that he never wanted to see Italy again. My mum carried all this, and I felt it too. 

At the end of my sharing, the brother leading the prayer said, ‘You have to forgive your parents.’ I remember replying, ‘Yes, I know, but I don't.’ In that moment I thought that I had to generate the feeling of forgiveness out of my own resources. The brother then explained that we could ask the Holy Spirit to come and help. I agreed. 

I repeated a prayer after the leaders, expressing forgiveness to a long list of people for their possible offences against me, including my parents for their normal imperfections. Then I repeated after the leaders, The Miracle Prayer, which is about expressing sorrow for sin, asking forgiveness and invoking the Holy Spirit. Then a miracle of grace happened that changed my life forever.

They asked if I would like to pray asking the Holy Spirit to come into my heart. ‘Yes,’ I said. They began to pray in tongues and the grace of the Holy Spirit fell heavily upon me. I began to weep deep silent tears, of both sad recognition and healing. I distinctly remember knowing that Jesus knew all of my inner pain; this was transformative. 

During these fifteen minutes, the Holy Spirit was entering into my heart. For the next three months, I experienced a joy that I had forgotten existed, and peace that I didn't know was possible. 

What I did not understand at the time was that I had been caught in a vicious cycle of woundedness, resentment, unforgiveness and acting out. My poor parents could not make sense of it all as I had oscillated between happy and sad. It took the power of the Holy Spirit to break the bondage. And thus began the rest of my life. 

I stopped retaliating to every antagonism and fighting with my older brother, tormenting my younger sister, and made so many new friends everywhere I went, handling with calm all sorts of complex social situations. Where I had previously obsessed over women, now I thought first of their needs and gave affection in a disinterested fashion and where it was welcome. I was very free and light; life became an amazing adventure. Furthermore, God was equipping me to become a missionary evangelist.

and lead us not into temptation,

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own (1 Corinthians 6:19).

It was during this same year that I had a profound conversation in my heart with the Virgin Mary. I promised her that before marriage I would remain a virgin and received the grace to do so. It was none too soon; she knew what was awaiting me. 

Soon I left home again to attend the University of Melbourne’s Country Agricultural College, where I lived on campus and commenced studies for a degree in Applied Science Agriculture. Surrounded by drunken debauchery, I experienced serious temptation and began to lose the peace and joy that I had received the year before. One day in the second semester, I realised that I had been so busy partying and adventuring that I had missed Sunday Mass nearly four weekends in a row. 

I knew that this was drastic and I had to make hard decisions; there was no way I was going to trade the gift of faith I had received for this world of illusions and self-serving.

I called my Dad on the pay phone and asked him about the Mysteries of the Rosary. He wrote me a handwritten letter with a list of the three Mysteries at that time and all their decades. I locked my door, did not answer when others knocked and began to pray the Rosary every day. I re-commenced reading the Bible and spent maybe hundreds of hours reading it during my second and third years of study.

In those first three years at university, I became isolated after withdrawing into prayer. In my fourth and final year, I felt called to courageous witness on campus like Joshua was called to lead Israel into the Promised Land. 

Once, I walked into the bar during Orientation Week. The second year students had placed large derogatory name tags over the necks of the first year students. I approached the girls wearing the most disgusting labels and asked if they liked their new name. When they finally had the courage to say ‘No,’ I promptly tore it from their neck, threw it on the floor and said ‘Don't wear it then.’ 

God commanded Joshua to be strong and courageous and to not be afraid. I was emboldened to take the lead in some awkward situations. And by speaking the truth, standing up for the weak and vulnerable, refusing to take part in filthy campus culture, I unexpectedly became very well respected. I felt as though I was like Joseph being made Prime Minister of Egypt.  

By the time I finished studies, I no longer wanted to work as a field officer with farmers; I wanted to work for God harvesting souls, and completed the first of two years of full time mission. It was 1999.

but deliver us from evil.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10).

One time I attended the graduation ceremony of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. The master of ceremonies began promoting the cause of a famous ethicist who strongly advocated for everything that offends God including abortion, euthanasia and bestiality. I was filled with the boldness of the Holy Spirit. In front of 1,100 people, I stood up and yelled that this was a ‘disgrace’ and walked out. The hall was silenced. I was surprised that three others walked out behind me. 

The graces that sustained me throughout the years of my studies and mission came through many prayer retreats, discovering Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, praying the Rosary, and from the charity of the many saints surrounding me. 

In 2002 I commenced working as a teacher in Catholic schools and engaged in front-line-battle against a culture of unscientific secular atheism which permeated every aspect of life including the Catholic schools’ curriculum. I know exactly what Our Lady was talking about at Fatima when she said that the final battle would be against the family.

Feeling ill-equipped, I returned to study moral theology – a Master's Degree in Bioethics at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family. There, where we studied-on-our-knees, we received the intellectual weaponry equipping us to fight aggressively against pretentious unscientific lies attacking the faith and God's order. I was now, as I had been as a boy, ready to fight, but against a spiritual enemy, that by way of deception, was leading people away from the truth of the faith and leaving carnage everywhere.

Darwin, Jesus Youth and the Ongoing Journey

In 1986, Pope John Paul II visited Australia and said this: ‘Until the Aboriginals have made their contribution, and until it has been joyfully received, the Church in Australia will not be the Church that Jesus wanted it to be.’

In response to this I moved to Darwin in 2015. By September I was suffering from isolation and was anxious. One day on the way to work I prayed, ‘Jesus, please give a prayer group.’ That very evening I decided to catch a second bus and go to Saint Paul's Nightcliff for evening Mass. After Mass I remained behind to pray. There was one other in the church praying and after some moments I felt such a strong grace of consolation that I knew that someone was praying for me. I presumed that it must be my prayer group back at home. 

After twenty or thirty minutes of this consolation, some Indians started to arrive at the church. They came over and invited me to join their prayer meeting. It was the members of Jesus Youth.

About twenty minutes in they invited me to share and it was at that moment that I recalled that my prayer from that morning had been answered. It was one of them, Jinu, who had been praying for me in the church after Mass.

Since then I have been walking with Jesus Youth, enjoying many wonderful prayer times, ongoing mission, enormous prayer support, many Malayali home cooked meals and two visits to Kerala.

By God's grace alone I have survived and sometimes thrived in adult life as a Catholic in Australia. I'm increasingly aware of my own poverty of spirit, and my dependence on God's Holy Spirit is ongoing and ever necessary as I join other soldiers of faith to defend the truth and freedom of our faith against the many wiles of the enemy. 

Amen.