Anglican church: Father Bill Chapman departs parish, but still in service in Hawke’s Bay

Veteran padre Rev Bill Chapman, or Father Bill as he is most-known, is stepping down from parish duties. Photo / Paul Taylor

Veteran padre Rev Bill Chapman, or Father Bill as he is most-known, is in the right place to keep-on keeping-on stepping down from parish duties.

Covering three parishes was getting a bit much to do, at the age of 79, he confirmed after being farewelled by the flock at Crownthorpe on Sunday “I’m alive”, has “one more to go”, at Puketapu, but “The Bishop” has issued him a licence as a veterans’ padre, so that he will continue meeting the spiritual needs of those who’ve been in the defence forces, among them those who’ve been to war.

“In particular, Vietnam…and the Navy,” he says, as the convivialities started at Matapiro Hall following his final service in the 102-years-old St George’s Memorial Chapel at Crownthorpe.

It was while in the Navy that he got the calling, telling late Hawke’s Bay Today writer Roger Moroney in 2016, at the time of clocking-up 35 years in the priesthood and with perhaps a little irreverence, saying “it wasn’t so much I was looking for God – God was looking for me,” and that he’d been found in a loo while reading a newspaper in a dockyard in England in the mid-1960s.

Father Bill Chapman and his wife Mavis. Photo / Paul Taylor

Long-story-short, he became the Anglican Diocese of Waiapu’s first “community priest”, unpaid and reiterating on a Sunday in 2023 it remains so, and as such, with a little trace of the humour, it’s not enough to afford a cellphone, so why would he ?

He spent 13 years in the ministry at St Augustine’s Napier, and began his association with the services in Napier in the 1980s, becoming chaplain to the Mission to Seamen, the Napier RSA, the Ex-Royal Navalmen’s Association, to name a few, forging an even closer association with service, and war, veterans.

In 2001 he and wife Mavis moved from Napier to Crownthorpe, where he has conducted the monthly service.

He says the licence as a veterans’ padre is “unique” and helps him maintain the connections and continue the service.