Father Bob

by Sue Williams

  ‘It was just my bad luck that the Church is all I’ve got. Others might have interests in life, or families, but for better or worse, richer or poorer, I’ve invested myself totally in the Catholic Church and its work in the neighbourhood.’

  While some undoubtedly felt that Father Bob was simply too ‘out there’ for the Catholic Church, and he’d certainly upset some parishioners in the past, others saw considerable merit in his view. One former insider in the Diocese says it was all simply a stoush with his bosses who didn’t want money spent on outsiders; they wanted it spent on the Church, and solely on the Church. ‘He’s certainly not Denis Hart’s kind of guy,’ he says. ‘He’s the full bottle as far as Catholicism goes, but it’s the wrap around the bottle that gets up the authorities’ noses. But when this all came out in the media, my sense was that the Church had gone too far down the track to back off. They were keen for him to move away and I think it just got to the point they couldn’t backtrack. It all went too far, too quickly, and they’d totally underestimated the amount of support he had, and how good he is with the media, and how much the media was onside.’

  He was certainly eccentric but that’s precisely why it seemed so many people were so fond of him. On Neil Mitchell’s 3AW show once, he came on to talk about a particularly controversial issue. ‘I did an intro about how contentious this was and as Bob came on air he said “Jesus Christ!”’ the radio host reports. ‘And I said, “Bob! You can’t say that! It’s blasphemy and you’re a priest!” His reply was something like, “Oh, can’t I? I was just sending my regards to the boss.”’

  The secret of his success is simply his warmth, believes his former secretary Judy Sampson. ‘Everyone recognised that everything he did was for the good of someone else, never for himself,’ she says. ‘And it’s amazing that he never shows signs of fatigue or weariness. It’s exhausting just watching him. He just plods on, and he never says “No”. He’s totally there for the people and that’s why they love him.’

  One commercial branding expert even approached the Save Father Bob campaign offering his expertise in defining, refining and harnessing the ‘Father Bob brand’. He hadn’t realised, however, that the priest was almost impossible to control. ‘I think it was only twenty-four hours before Bob was in the papers for something that was totally, totally outside the range of what he’d agreed to keep himself to,’ says Tony Long.

  One of Australia’s most respected film production companies, Ghost Pictures, also approached Father Bob with a proposal for a documentary about him, In Bob We Trust. The trio running the company, Lynn-Maree Milburn, Andrew de Groot and Richard Lowenstein, had between them a number of acclaimed projects, including Dogs in Space, He Died with a Felafel in His Hand and feature documentary Autoluminescent. Most importantly, though, they’d met Father Bob when they were making ‘John Safran versus God’, and had never forgotten his charisma. ‘He said a film about him would be boring,’ says Lynn-Maree. ‘But we knew he was an incredible subject. Every conversation with him is like mental gymnastics, ranging across history, theology, current affairs, culture … He knows everything!’ Eventually, he agreed and for the next three years, Ghost Pictures became a regular part of his life.

  All the publicity and attention didn’t make it any easier for Father Bob, though. On the outside, he was all bluff and bluster, but inside, he was terribly hurt by what he saw as a complete betrayal. ‘On the surface, they’d been full of praise for me, saying what a good job I’d done. But underneath, I was being nibbled to death by ducks. They put the word around I was financially irresponsible, which sowed the seed of suspicion and would completely undermine everything I’d done and was doing. I was being attacked by a smiling assassin, which is worse than being beaten over the head to death by thugs. They were after me. It was the poet Alexander Pope all over again: “Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.”’

  Frank O’Connor, after having watched, and worked with, Father Bob for so many years on the parish council, felt he could clearly see what was going on. On the surface, the Archbishop was talking about Father Bob’s use of money, but underneath he believed there was a lot more happening.

  ‘I think, at base, it was a culture clash between Bob on the one side and George Pell, Denis Hart and the hierarchy on the other who are all trying to drag the Church back in time,’ says Frank. ‘You heard about Pope Benedict criticising nuns in the US for spending too much time and effort on the poor rather than supporting the Church teaching on homosexuality, etcetera. And you thought, Oh dear, they’ve got it wrong. But that kind of attitude permeates so much through the hierarchy and of course they appoint their own ilk to those roles.

  ‘So someone like Bob who’s willing to speak very publicly and provocatively around what he sees as the proper message of the gospel is going to make them very nervous. They want to get rid of him, and the money perhaps became their ammunition in the end to be able to apply the seventy-five rule.’

  Tony Long also believed there was a hidden agenda at play. He’d seen the axing of Father Bob’s regular column in Kairos as the start of a predetermined campaign to oust the priest. ‘There was nothing in those pieces and his understanding of religion that the Church could possibly find anything but admirable,’ he says. ‘So when they told him they had no need for further columns, some of us felt that this was Step One in the plan to get him out.

  ‘The real reason for this has neither been given nor acknowledged. But one only has to observe that Father Bob has been the most vocal and most “public” of those priests and commentators who want the Catholic Church to practise what it preaches. For Father Bob and others schooled in Vatican II in the mid 1960s, they require a practical and active interest in the poor and needy. This is a concern that has driven him for nearly fifty years as a priest. Today, action for the poor and needy is not just out of fashion at an institutional level within the Church, but it is also being consciously placed behind an emphasis on the pious and the devotional, and a renewed emphasis on the role of the cleric. The lay believers are mere witnesses to the various ceremonies ostensibly conducted on their behalf. On the surface, the dispute with the Church was about style, but at a deeper and more substantial level, the institutional Church and he just didn’t have the same view about what Catholicism was all about.’

  The fact that one of the poor and needy people Father Bob was championing – Costas – was deeply unpopular in the Church hierarchy, also didn’t help. ‘Costas knew he was putting me in harm’s way and he didn’t want that, but he couldn’t help himself,’ says Father Bob. ‘It was getting around that he was still about, and then they were chip-chip-chipping at my reputation.’

  He says the atmosphere at the time was just like on the US TV show ‘M*A*S*H’, about a team of doctors stationed in South Korea during the Korean War. ‘The battle’s on and people are firing at you, but then your own HQ starts firing at you too and it’s hard to pay attention and work out who’s the real enemy. You just never know when and where the next volley is coming from. You never suspected your own side might turn feral, but it was their friendly fire, their treachery, that was finishing me off.’

  The day after Denis Hart issued his statement, however, was Father Bob’s regular Sunday mass, held the day before his seventy-fifth birthday. Over 400 people packed into the pews and, as he walked down the aisle to the altar, they all burst into spontaneous applause. He frowned to cover the emotion he felt rising up in him, and concentrated on the service.

  When it was over, and he walked back down the aisle, everyone rose to their feet to give him a rousing standing ovation. He nodded to the congregation. ‘It’s Crazy Bob, The Musical,’ he commented wryly, along the way. Outside the church, he was stopped by reporters. ‘What’s the message for today, Father Bob?’ they asked him. He smiled. ‘Always look on the bright side of life,’ he told one, quoting the song
from Monty Python’s irreverent movie The Life of Brian. And when asked by another, he amended John Lennon’s famous song line. ‘Give priests a chance!’ he said, grinning back.

  He spent the next hour outside, surrounded by wellwishers chatting to him and relaying their admiration and thanks. But, in truth, he was feeling far from confident he would ever get that chance, which he both felt he had earned and craved.

  Father Bob with his supporters.

  22

  The Dismissal

  It’s not the size of the dog in the fight that’s important, Father Bob Maguire has always believed. It’s the size of the fight in the dog. And he was certainly putting up one hell of a scrap.

  ‘Well, I was fighting for my life,’ he says. ‘I was fighting for everything I’ve ever believed in, everything I’ve done and everything I still wanted to do. I didn’t want to give up. I’m not a leader, I’m just a clown who confuses the Romans in charge. I’m an embarrassment and I can see their predicament, but I had too many people depending on me to give up now.’

  On deadline day – 17 September 2009, three days after his seventy-fifth birthday – the priest finally replied to the letter Archbishop Denis Hart had given him. Politely, but firmly, he wrote that he did not want to offer to resign. Then he gave his blessing to a plan by his inner circle of supporters to organise a delegation to the Diocese, hoping to negotiate a better solution. He then held his breath, hoping against hope for a last-minute reprieve.

  Head of that delegation was lawyer Tony Joyce, who’d acted for Father Bob for many years. The diocesan business manager Francis Moore had once been a law firm partner of his, so he reasoned he could be the ideal person to broker a deal. He saw the issue as a fundamental disagreement over the right way for a parish to be run: Father Bob plainly believed that the Church’s capital, its old buildings, should be used as income, and spending on the poor and looking after people was what the Church should be about, rather than preserving huge edifices.

  ‘That became the catalyst for the Church to say, We aren’t going to give you any ongoing period of time because you don’t manage money the way we feel you should,’ says Tony. ‘And Bob was always a burr under the hierarchy’s saddle. He made them uncomfortable. He was an itch that wouldn’t be completely scratched. But the Archbishop never wanted to get in a slanging match with him on a public stage. Bob’s always been a great performer, and Hart knew Bob’d kill him. So we had meetings in private instead.’

  Meanwhile, the public outrage at his dismissal con­tinued unabated. Letters still poured in to newspapers, and the issue dominated talkback radio and social media, with daily updates on TV. ‘It’s a sin to mothball him!’ was a regular cry. ‘Isn’t that what a church should be about: giving money to the poor?’ asked others. A few even quoted Jesus, the ‘founder of the firm’ as Father Bob was wont to describe him. ‘If you want to be perfect, go sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.’

  Apart from Denis Hart, there was another loud dissenting voice against the general tsunami of affection towards the priest. Predictably enough, it was Derryn Hinch. On 21 September, he weighed in on radio with yet another spray against Father Bob, again bringing up his giving twenty dollars to someone who allegedly spent it on drugs, and the Vincent Kiss affair.

  ‘For the past couple of weeks I have watched with interest the deification of Father Bob Maguire,’ he said caustically on 3AW. ‘The people’s priest. The Mother Teresa of South Melbourne … Well, I know I bit about Saint Bob and money. Dirty money. I remember when he was laundering dirty money, stolen money, for a notorious paedophile priest named Vincent Kiss … Bob Maguire made a pact with the devil … you may understand why I have not joined the “genuflect at the feet of Saint Bob” crusade.’

  He wasn’t completely alone. Some onlookers did sometimes wonder how realistic Father Bob was being in his insistence that both the parish and his Foundation clients really needed him, and might well not survive with him gone. ‘But in talking so much about how we needed him, you also have to realise that he needed us and this job,’ says one parishioner, who asks not to be named. ‘What else did he have in his life? Without us and his causes, his life would really be pretty empty …’

  Yet Hinch and the handful of other critics seemed the least of Father Bob’s problems. Their voices were almost drowned out by the clamour of those on his side. Helping it all along was also the priest’s – quite coincidental – appearance on the ABC TV show ‘Compass’ that Sunday, discussing the nature of charity, and on John Safran’s new series ‘Race Relations’, talking about sex. Both served him well, and with quite different audiences.

  In his quiet time, he took heart in pondering the fates of the various Catholic saints over the years who’d rebelled, but then finally been recognised, and celebrated, by the Church: people like John Vianney, the patron saint of priests and a champion of the poor, and Mary MacKillop, at first excommunicated but later exonerated. ‘The Church wants you to be like these saints but, as soon as you do anything, you’re under arrest,’ Father Bob says. ‘They want to have their cake, then eat it too. But I regularly talk to these saints, who worked tirelessly for the poor like Jesus, and I’m still here!’

  The very next day, the Archbishop and Father Bob’s representatives finally announced they’d reached a deal: he’d be allowed to stay on for an extra two years and four months, until February 2012, with, as a concession, the Diocese hand­ling the financial side of running the parish. Father Bob was both pleased and dismayed. He’d been hoping for an indefinite stay of execution but instead had another firm cut-off point.

  Tony Joyce says, however, that it was the best possible deal on the table. ‘We wanted more but we couldn’t get more,’ he says. ‘I know he wanted life, but he got two and a bit years instead. He was too much of a thorn in their side to let him go on for much longer. He’s always been a great catalyst for good but he’s a great challenge for the Church, which doesn’t quite know how to handle him. He’s always loved that but when it came to negotiations with the Church, it didn’t help.’

  Frank O’Connor was disappointed too. One of the problems was that the lawyers, while they put a lot of time and energy into helping Father Bob, were acting pro bono so his closest circle had limited involvement in instructing them. ‘I always had a bit of trouble accepting that our lawyers, including a QC, only negotiated two and a half years as opposed to a period of time with a review at the end of that,’ Frank says. ‘If the Church’s excuse for getting rid of him was financial mismanagement, and that had been fixed with new processes in place, then a review might find everything’s running smoothly, so there’d be no need to kick him out. I wasn’t quite expecting a drop-dead day, and one that was signed, sealed and delivered. But still we hoped that, as we got closer to the deadline, we’d be able to get some kind of extension.’

  The Archbishop was gracious in what, effectively, was something of a backdown. ‘I am pleased that we have found a way forward, to our mutual satisfaction, that will allow Father Bob to continue his work in the parish and for the disadvantaged in our community,’ he said. ‘I believe this decision will be welcomed by Father Bob’s parishioners and his supporters throughout Victoria. It’s a win–win.’

  In truth, the outcome felt like a win for no-one. But Father Bob also put a brave face on the situation as he fronted up to the TV cameras, reverting to his old military speak. ‘I’m an old digger and I salute the Archbishop as a senior officer, and he acknowledges my competence as the unit commander,’ he said. ‘And if a two-year contract is good enough for [AFL player] Barry Hall, then I might settle for one too.’

  Secretly, however, he hadn’t given up on his dream of being parish priest of South Melbourne for life. By the time the deadline came around, he hoped that the Church might have relented. He just had to hope for the best, work hard and keep his head down. But that was always easier said than done.

  Life was now busier than ever for the rep
rieved priest. There were appearances for the Melbourne Storm NRL club, for which he was the now number-one ticket holder, and he was a keen member of the campaign to have the Grand Final, late in 2009, shifted from Sydney to the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Although he blessed the team, and they ended up winning the match, that was another campaign that ultimately failed, followed by the disappointment of the Storm being stripped of the title for salary cap breaches. There was some consolation for the priest though. Each win, try and goal scored in their last fourteen games of the year raised money for various char­ities, including the Father Bob Maguire Foundation. There was also his other new campaign, no less ambitious: teaming with Les Twentyman and rocker Angry Anderson to curb the rise of gangs and the carrying of knives.

  Angry Anderson (left) with Father Bob and Les Twentyman.

  In between, his national fame brought him even more attention. He was invited to MC more charity events, with most of the funds being earmarked for his Foundation; he was asked for his opinion on everything from the weather to Christmas; he fronted a campaign for improving the care of older Australians; he was named one of Australia’s favourite ratbags; he was again an Australia Day Ambassador; and he was ranked the eighth most loved and admired person in the country in an AGL Energy survey.

  As a result, as 2010 arrived, he saw himself now able to play a higher-profile role in the wider community, taking initiatives like publicly calling on the teen killer of an Indian student to surrender himself to him so he’d have guaranteed safe passage to the police, joining the campaign to bring jailed drug smuggler Schapelle Corby home from Bali, and saying that Opposition leader and staunch Catholic Tony Abbott’s views on asylum-seekers – ‘Jesus didn’t say “Yes” to everyone’ – didn’t sit comfortably with the Church’s philosophy of ‘Love thy neighbour’. ‘As a preacher, Jesus always put himself with the outsiders,’ said Father Bob. ‘Jesus would have put himself on that boat with the boatpeople.’ He had another skirmish with Tony Abbott a short time later, when the politician said he’d be giving up sex for Lent. Father Bob responded in Latin, ‘De gustibus non est disputandum’, or ‘There’s no accounting for taste’.