by Sue Williams
There were also two regular segments: ‘Matchmaker, Matchmaker’, in which the hosts paired off young people from obscure religious; and ‘Phenomenon’, with guests who’d witnessed inexplicable events, like seeing a golem, a magic creature in Jewish folklore. Another feature to develop was viewers sending in their suggestions for the billboard outside St Peter and Paul’s every week, with the winning phrase put up by Father Bob. They varied widely, from ‘Deity Deeds Done Dirt Cheap’ to ‘Wake Up and Smell the Moses’ and ‘Get the Flock Inside’. That week, ‘Deity Deeds’ won, replacing the sign already there: ‘Trouble Sleeping? Try Our Sermons!’ The show ‘Speaking in Tongues’ was also the first Australian program ever to be available afterwards as a video podcast.
The first episode kicked off into immediate controversy. John recounted that, in a private conversation with the head of World Vision, the Reverend Tim Costello – the man who’d slammed Father Bob for his Crown casino blessing – the Baptist minister had refused to appear on air with the priest, saying if he ‘had as many skeletons in his closet as Father Bob has in his’, he wouldn’t risk appearing on TV at all. John grilled Father Bob about what he meant. The priest said he really had no idea but he’d like to congratulate Tim on his World Vision job and hoped he’d be able to do great work for the poor. They then went on to interview a retired sex worker discussing her religious clients.
The show was to continue in this fashion all the way through: risky TV constantly pushing the boundaries of both ethics and defamation law. ‘And if we go too far, I’ll blame Safran and just say, “Oh God! I didn’t know it was going to be like this!”’ said Father Bob.
19
Hatches, Matches and Dispatches
The love affair between Father Bob and the media showed no signs of cooling in 2006. With ‘Speaking in Tongues’ still on air, he was also asked to take part in a clutch of new shows, some markedly more successful than others.
The first of 2006 was the interview show ‘Dream On’, on community TV’s Channel 31, appearing on a panel of celebrities helping decipher viewers’ dreams. Then came an invitation to be the co-host of ‘Good Samaritans’, with barrister Michael Kuzilny, interviewing fellow kind hearts. But it was on the third project of the year where he had his biggest hit, as a chat show guest on the Ten Network’s ‘David Tench Tonight’. The show was already making international TV history when Father Bob went on. The brainchild of Andrew Denton’s production company, it starred a host who was a complete animation in a world first, using the same capture-and-digital-enhancement technology as that which created the Lord of The Rings character Gollum.
‘I didn’t understand what they were going on about, when they asked me in,’ says Father Bob. ‘They wanted me to fly to Sydney to be interviewed by a cartoon? Then I said, Oh, all right then, I’ll give it a go. But it was very odd being in a studio with just me and a screen.’
Yet the priest acquitted himself tremendously well. He started out complaining about someone who’d walked out of mass halfway through his sermon, when he’d been saying how Jesus said you can’t have divorce. ‘But if he’d have stayed, he would have heard the second half, when I said, If you can’t avoid it, then you’d have to have it, but he missed it!’ Then Tench tried to ask him about a dilemma the host had encountered while making love to a woman. Father Bob’s eyebrows shot up. ‘No, I’m not going there,’ he said. ‘No, not there.’ Then, thinking about it, he smiled. ‘Oh, all right then,’ he finally agreed. Tench asked him, when the woman cried out, ‘Oh God! Oh God!’ should he reprimand her for blaspheming? Quick as a flash, Father Bob said he should tell her to get on the line to the local priest who’d immediately help her to get out of her dangerous situation. He’d advise her it was no good hanging around with blokes like Tench.
Shortly afterwards, John Safran became an even closer media collaborator, or, as Father Bob termed it, co-conspirator, too. In 2007, his ‘Sunday Night Safran’ radio show was extended to two hours on Triple J and the 71-year-old priest became his regular co-host. ‘We’d been working together for a while by then, and we’d never had a fight,’ says John. ‘It was just this weird archetype of two people yelling at each other over a microphone. But I love working with him. He’s so smart, funny, and yet so humble. But I think some people want him for his shock value but they might not understand how interesting and substantial he really is.’ For Father Bob it had enormous value too, and not just in reaching a new, younger demographic. ‘You learn how to be constantly ready for a barb, and for someone making a coarse remark about your most sacred truths,’ he says. ‘That was a very good lesson for me. I learned how to take attacks, not be offended and give back as good, sometimes, as I got.’
John Safran and Father Bob.
Father Bob’s rising profile meant a constant flood of invitations coming his way, to make appearances at functions, to give speeches at dinners and conferences, and even to bless events. He was asked to review the TV show ‘Underbelly’ (‘A good show about redemption. People should see it!’ was his verdict) and at one Variety Club fundraiser, he was persuaded to perform a rap song he wrote himself, ‘Finding a Better Four-Letter Word’, with Tottie Goldsmith on backing vocals. It was an act that brought the house down. But he still never liked being called a celebrity. ‘I’m not an actor, I’m an activist!’ became his regular catchcry.
Yet he was pleased to discover his ease with the media, and it even inspired him to make videos of his own, appealing for funds to help with his Father Bob Maguire Foundation. Interviewed by Mike Ryan of the online radio and TV company Melbourne Business Now, Father Bob asked for thirty viewers to donate $7500 each in order to pay the annual costs of supporting the Foundation’s 300 dependants: kids on scholarships, battlers and migrants without any other support. ‘It’s all about the security of the community,’ he explained. ‘If you’re able to provide people without any connections in society with those connections, then the quality of your community will rise. If you want to beat terrorism, you only have to run around the countryside reconnecting the unconnected, and you’ll be fine!’
The next year, in order to attract funds, he even dressed up as a nun and introduced himself as Sister Roberta of the Order of the Leaping Sisters of Saint Beryl, saying people were sometimes more willing to donate to causes introduced by women, as they assumed they’d be speaking from the heart, rather than by men who spoke from the head. ‘Other Churches have women priests, but this is an opportunity to have a male nun,’ he said. ‘This shows how far I have to go to raise awareness and money for the Father Bob Maguire Foundation … I’m seventy-four, fat and bald but my face is my fortune, which is why I’m broke!’
His Emerald Hill Mission was working well, with various high-profile celebrities and sportspeople dropping by from time to time to go out with the food van. With Open Family, however, he didn’t have much idea how they were doing as, despite still being on the board, he seemed to be more and more on the outer. He was alarmed by the continual talk there about spending cuts, still arguing that the board should be working harder to raise more funds rather than considering reducing services. By now, there were branches of Open Family in Sydney, Canberra, Albury/Wodonga, Shepparton, Benalla, Seymour and Wangaratta, as well as the HQ in South Melbourne, and after working so hard to make it a national organisation, the priest felt it would be terrible to see it shrink. In 2006, board member and sometime chairman Phil Ruthven even made overtures to the Sydney street kids’ champion Father Chris Riley of Youth Off the Streets, to discuss a merger in order to be able to gain some economies of scale. The approach, however, was rebuffed.
By the next year, 2007, Father Bob was off the board too. He was devastated. ‘I’d started the thing and here I was, having no say in its direction at all,’ he says. ‘But it wasn’t the same organisation as the one I’d started. It had moved in quite a different way.’ Relations grew so bad that Father Bob, at one stage, went to his lawyer saying the body shouldn’t be allowed to use the name Open
Family anymore. He even trademarked it as his own. But eventually he dropped that. ‘It was a very sad time for me,’ he says. ‘I would have liked to have kept Open Family with me till the end. But it wasn’t to be. It was time to move on.’
Back in the parish, things were going well. The development plans for the block were progressing nicely, with a project control group being set up to determine goals and outcomes, invite expressions of interest, advertise and go through the assessment process. Information would be reported regularly back to the parish community, it was decided, and negotiations with the Archdiocese would begin.
Costas had quietened down a little too, and seemed to have beaten his addiction to heroin, although his behaviour was no less irrational. He still haunted the presbytery ‘like the Hunchback of Notre Dame’, according to Father Bob, but he’d adopted a dog, a Jack Russell called Rosie, and the pair would obsessively prowl around the neighbourhood. Yet he seemed a lot more settled. He took to giving people little presents he’d collected on the streets: a little flower here, a butterfly there, a pretty stone. At one stage, he took to giving away cigarettes, and buying ice-creams for people living in the Housing Commission flats. He also made friends with some of the tradespeople around the area, who didn’t seem to mind the volume at which he lived. They liked him as he could play the clown very well.
Father Bob’s then-secretary Judy Sampson says Costas always remained an enigma. ‘I didn’t understand him,’ she says. ‘At first, I thought he was just a crazy boy who screamed a lot. He’d be very loud and in your face like a puppy dog. Then all of a sudden, there’d be silence and you’d look up and he’d put a little flower on the desk.’
The priest tried to keep him out of harm’s way, while still tending to the business of the parish. He was in constant demand to conduct weddings, funerals and baptisms, often now baptising the grandchildren of the people he’d first met as young couples in his congregation. He loved that idea of tending to the whole circle of life, and the way he knew nearly everyone in his church, and often their parents, grandparents and children too.
Father Bob conducting some of the innumerable weddings and baptisms during his time at St Peter and Paul’s.
He certainly had his critics who longed for more traditional services and wished that, just for once, Father Bob would stay on track, and there were occasions when he couldn’t quite meet parishioners’ expectations. One time, a woman came to him crying, saying her husband was cheating on her and she didn’t know what to do. One of the priest’s helpers, Henri Ser, reports Father Bob gave her a tissue and a sandwich and then told her that a lot of people seemed to be having affairs these days. ‘Bob said to me afterwards, “Look, what do I know about marriage? I’ve never been married; I don’t know anything, really. I can give lectures on it and talk on it and toe the line on what I’m supposed to say, but, really, a priest giving advice on marriage isn’t the best idea.”’
Yet Father Bob was still enormously popular with others for the way he was happy to conduct ceremonies, and make them personal expressions of the people involved, not even seeming to mind the novelty elements that were being introduced more and more often. Over the year 2006 alone, he held more than 100 weddings at St Peter and Paul’s, sometimes conducting as many as three a day. He said the main attraction was the magnificence of the church itself – although, ‘I may be added value,’ he conceded.
One of his more unusual weddings involved the bride imploring him to lock the doors of the church as soon as she was safely inside so her mother couldn’t get in, while, in another, the couple had eight parents there. A big wedding between an Egyptian bridegroom and an Italian bride saw Father Bob standing waving all the guests to their correct seats. ‘Egypt to the right! Italy to the left! You, sir, wrong side!’ A dog came up the aisle in another, with the wedding rings in a pouch on her back. Father Bob had a bowl of water waiting for her at the altar. ‘I don’t care what they do,’ he says. ‘It’s their wedding. The church is a living gathering. It’s about what’s important to the people at the centre. Our role with the Church shouldn’t be about telling people what they can and can’t do!’
He always liked to use humour to make the ceremony more meaningful too. He would tell the single men in the congregation, ‘Bad luck!’ if they’d ever had designs on the bride. If the Amens weren’t loud enough at the end of the prayers, he’d joke about everyone needing to eat at the wedding supper. The Amens would inevitably then come back loud and strong. But his blessing was still no guarantee of marital bliss. One couple he married had a blazing row at the wedding reception and parted just a few days later.
One funeral even turned into a wedding, when Father Bob asked the daughter of the deceased, who was there with her boyfriend, why she wasn’t yet married. She mumbled an answer and the priest then suggested she get married, there and then that day. She and the boyfriend agreed, and Father Bob performed a marriage ceremony. It was a day of both great sadness and of great joy, with tears mingling with laughter.
Celebrity weddings were a little more problematic. He wasn’t so keen on those, particularly where couples had added security or tried to barricade themselves away from photographers. But he happily married Australian swimming champion Michael Klim and his bride, Balinese princess Lindy Rama, and then Elise May from ‘The Price Is Right’ and ‘Postcards’ and her beau, Lee Turner. Later, he officiated at the wedding of his old Open Family mate Les Twentyman, who was in 2006 named Victorian of the Year for his work with kids. Les was finally to follow him out of Open Family. ‘I think it was somewhat hijacked by the new administration,’ he says. ‘I ended up not liking the organisation, so I quit and went back to my own charitable 20th Man Fund that I’d formed years before.’
The other major booking for Father Bob continued to be for funerals. Some parishioners didn’t like the way he conducted these, feeling they should be a great deal more solemn. Others liked the eccentric way in which he could behave, to lighten the mood. Father Bob officiated at the funeral of former boxer and referee Johnny Wheeler, calling it ‘his last main event’. Carlton legend Adrian Gallagher, one of the mourners, said it was a glorious service, especially at the end, when someone rang the bell ten times. ‘Half the congregation jumped out of their seats and started shadow-boxing!’ he said.
In February 2007, Cardinal George Pell introduced new guidelines for family members speaking at funerals, saying that too often they made ‘inappropriate remarks’ glossing over the deceased’s proclivities, like drinking prowess or romantic conquests. It was symptomatic of the new conservatism still sweeping through the Church in Australia, with people like the Cardinal working hard to exert their influence to retain traditional elements.
Father Bob was by now only one of a dozen or so priests actively living the Vatican II message, opening up their churches, encouraging their congregations to take the liturgy and questioning traditional teachings on issues like contraception, divorce and gay marriage.
‘We’ve become divided,’ says Father Bob. ‘We’re split between traditionalists, who like to stay inside the church, and modernists who don’t mind going outside, where the people are. We have the physical church, and the church in our hearts.’ Church authorities said the increasing traditionalism was down to George Pell’s influence, and also a reaction to postwar and 1970s liberalism. As Father Anthony Denton, director of the Catholic Vocations Office, explained, ‘It’s a bit like the scenario from the English TV show ‘Ab Fab’, with a bong-smoking mother having a conservative daughter.’
Yet in a series of snubs of the Church hierarchy, it was usually Father Bob, much more than Cardinal Pell or Archbishop Hart, to whom the media went first for a comment on any issue of the day. They knew they’d always get a thought-provoking response, and often a humorous one, too. Asked in April 2007 whether everyone should pray for the drought to break, he said that they could pray for rain ‘until they go black in the face’, but it wouldn’t solve the water crisis. ‘Maybe our prayers need a
creative spin, like, “Oh God, please turn this wine into water!” I know a lot of people won’t like that, particularly if they have a nice bottle of Grange on the table, but this water problem is bigger than us all. We need to work on finding solutions ourselves.’
The parish also had a chance to sing Father Bob’s praises the following year, when it marked the thirty-fifth anniversary of his arrival as parish priest with a special service. Yet favourite times of year for Father Bob still remained the traditional occasions: Easter and Christmas. He often felt Christmas was becoming over-commercialised, but was determined not to be a killjoy. ‘You can be a stickin-the-mud and complain, or you can just go along with it,’ he says. ‘I prefer the latter. But I do like to remind people about the real meaning of Christmas: do no harm and do a bit of good. Treat others as a facsimile of yourself. Make a change at the local level, in your homes, in your community, in your town. You don’t have to have things to have Christmas. You need to have humanity.’ Once, he recounted, a man asked him what he should be doing at Christmas. The priest suggested he look after others. ‘What others?’ the man asked. Father Bob sighs. ‘He didn’t even know what the word Christmas meant. I told him to go home and Google it.’