by Sue Williams
‘I suddenly realised it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d have won the Victoria bloody Cross, or Australian of the Year; they would have still wanted me out,’ he says. ‘Honours are good as they reassure people, but for the Church, nothing I did would make any difference. This was personal, and we were past the point of no return.’
His supporters on the parish council, Frank O’Connor and Tony Long, were equally shattered. ‘Not only had Bob never been told that negotiations were already taking place with others, not only was he not told that a contract had been offered, but then he had to find out in those circumstances that a contract had actually been signed!’ says Tony. ‘The fact that it should emerge as almost, not quite an irrelevancy but almost an accidental disclosure, is astounding. Bob was treated so shabbily, I was really disappointed. Perhaps it was all about the dislike some senior people might have of Bob. Because Bob’s not someone to curry favour. He only curries curry.’
Frank too could barely believe what had happened. ‘The bishop a few years before had been telling us about parishes needing to plan for themselves and determine their own futures, and then it turns out that head office had already taken absolute, total control! It was something that had also been done in complete secrecy. We asked the Capuchins, “Don’t you think it would have been worthwhile to have actually spoken to the parish first?” They got a bit embarrassed at that stage, and the conversation ended and we parted company.’
At that point, the trio went public. Tony in particular didn’t hold back, blasting the Archdiocese’s signing up of the Capuchins without a word to the parish as ‘contemptible’, ‘tawdry’ and ‘distressing’. He said ‘vacuuming Bob out’ was like sending people who don’t precisely conform ‘to the gulag’.
Behind the scenes, Father Bob, now seventy-seven, was distraught. He claims he later found out that other priests had been offered his parish, but had turned it down out of respect for him. ‘The Capuchins should have done the same,’ he says, bluntly. ‘Hart put the key in the ignition, but the Capuchins turned it.’ He put the Church’s treatment of him down to Cardinal George Pell’s highly conservative Roman doctrine, and resultant disdain for his own Vatican II approach. Cardinal Pell used to work for the theologically hardline Pope Benedict XVI when the former Pope was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Pope Benedict had, in the past, dismissed dissenters as ‘cafeteria Catholics’, then the Cardinal, just before the Capuchins were signed up, gave a talk over in Ireland on ‘authentic’ Catholicism versus ‘cafeteria’ Catholicism.
‘So I suppose that’s what he saw me as practising, “cafeteria” or “bogan” Catholicism,’ says Father Bob. ‘I was about a populist approach, taking the faith to the people, having them involved in a real expression of their faith, and ministering to them, and spending money on caring for them. The founder of the firm said it is better to feed the poor than install new statues in church. Jesus of Nazareth would say, “There’s too much bloody ceremony around here!” But that approach wasn’t in favour anymore. The current model is to be in the church and say prayers and be no bloody good to anyone. To think I was told off for spending money on the poor!
‘It’s all about the growing conservatism of the Church, with George spearheading a move to the right, starting this division. We’re on different sides. We’re split down the middle between traditionalists and modernists and we don’t have much to do with each other. That’s what did me in. I like to tell the truth. Like John the Baptist, he didn’t give a bugger. He went on and on until they cut his head off.’
When approached through his representative, Cardinal Pell declined to comment for this book.
‘I think it was just frightful,’ says his old mate Les Twentyman. ‘It was spiteful. Bob was part of the fabric of South Melbourne, he was popular, whereas Pell isn’t popular and I think he’s intent on taking the Church back to the stone ages. Bob does fall out with people, and people love him and hate him with a passion. But you don’t become a leader unless you’ve got that. Try to please everyone, and you please no-one.’
Meetings took place with Archbishop Hart, looking for some compromise solution, where Father Bob could stay on in some capacity or other, even if just for an orderly transition between the regimes. He still desperately wanted to stay on, but for the first time, suddenly it seemed he might be fighting a losing battle. Yet he was still determined not to give up and likened his stand, just a tad over-dramatically, to the lone protester facing down a tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989. ‘I’ll keep going till I drop,’ he vowed. ‘You couldn’t ask Field Marshall Montgomery when he’d retire. The job doesn’t finish until the battle is over.’
From the wider community beyond the Church, the protests and the accolades continued to come. Father Bob’s supporters urged the public to bombard the Archdiocese with letters, emails and tweets asking for the priest to stay, there was a full front page photo in the local Port Phillip Leader newspaper with the caption “Save Father Bob” and a sub-heading saying “display this page in your window and let the Archdiocese know you support Father Bob”, and a Facebook page, Save Father Bob Maguire, was set up. Father Bob’s own Facebook page was sitting right on its limit of 5000 Facebook friends and his Twitter feed chalked up over 85 380 followers. In October, in the middle of talks with the Archbishop, Monash University presented Father Bob with an honorary fellowship for his services to the community. He made a joke about hoping his swollen head – from receiving so many awards – might still fit the cap, but that luckily his meeting with Denis Hart had shrunk it to size.
The former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett even waded into the battle, saying age simply meant more experience and that he was convinced Father Bob wouldn’t retire. ‘For to retire is to prepare for death.’ John Safran watched on, bemused. He couldn’t understand why the Church objected to a few old properties being sold off, when they plainly had so many. But he privately doubted that the protests would have any effect. ‘The Church authorities can be quite impervious as they don’t actually need any more money, and they don’t even seem to need a congregation anymore,’ he says. ‘They’re not like Nike or McDonald’s, who are careful of their reputation. They clearly don’t care about bad publicity. But Father Bob is a great asset to them, and he’s inspirational, passionate and very funny, coming at things from weird angles. It’s unfortunate that he seems to have picked the one sector where he’s not rewarded for having a great sense of humour.’
In the media, he had plenty of fans. Influential 3AW radio personality Neil Mitchell, who regularly had him on the show, regards him as a treasure. ‘Certainly his pews overflow,’ he said at the time. ‘His services have been described as a combination of community meeting, religious worship and stand-up comedy. They hum along. How’s that bad, when most churches think a full house is two confused old ladies and a wandering drunk looking for somewhere to sleep?’
Neil says now, ‘He’s magnificent, unpredictable, passionate, entertaining, and a little dangerous. The audience loves him and they will do anything for him and there are only a few of what I would call the old-fashioned Catholics who are critical. In my view he was treated differently to some other priests [by the Church], probably because he was seen as an embarrassment. The Church has been battered lately. Bob was one of the good things it had going for it and they trashed him. Absurd and inconsistent. In the first battle to save him we all turned up at the church on Easter Sunday. The place was packed. My audience had donated hot cross buns and chances are every other church in Melbourne was half full. Bob’s was standing room only. I thought, It is madness to drive him out! I remember him breaking down on air one day in his final days at the parish, and that was rare. After that, a listener who had heard the discussion and was in the area drove to the church, hopped out and gave Bob a big hug and drove off. That is what Bob provokes.’
Ben Fordham of 2GB in Sydney is another big fan. ‘I find every word he says absolutely enthralling. He steals my show every week. I�
��m attracted to rebels, particularly within such conservative institutions like the Catholic Church. The Church is sailing towards danger and the leadership is too rigid to see the rocks but there’s Bob yelling from the back: “Beware!” He breaks down the bullshit and tells it exactly as it is. I can’t believe how they’re ready to let go one of their marquee players, a man who really puts bums on seats.’
Union leaders also queued up to sing Father Bob’s praises. He’d always supported them – ‘True Christianity is about union, solidarity, love for your fellow man, the same principles as unions,’ he said – and now they saw it as their turn to help him. ‘The Painters and Dockers think the sun shines out of his backside,’ says his brother Jim.
Atheist and popular weekly Age blogger Dick Gross came to the party too, damning the Church hierarchy. ‘The challenges of Catholicism are patent – eroding congregations, disappearing candidates for priesthood and scandals that would test the patience of Job,’ he wrote in his column ‘Godless Gross’. ‘In the face of a major success story that is Father Bob, rather than build on that success, a demoralised organisation is tearing itself to bits. It is tragic to behold.’ The priest’s old helper, TV star Tony Barber, was similarly baffled. ‘He has a wonderful profile and is more active than ever,’ he says. ‘I can’t fathom why they’d be prepared to lose him. But the Church’s loss is the public’s gain.’
Of course, not everyone was on his side. ‘Father Bob Maguire is not an employee of the Catholic Church but a priest subject to obedience of his bishop; obedience he swore at his ordination,’ said one newspaper letter-writer. ‘In my view he is an egotistical eccentric who is adept at preaching social justice but divorced from the rest of the body of Catholic teaching.’
But then on 4 November 2011, the final verdict was delivered. Archbishop Hart confirmed the now 77-year-old Father Bob would be leaving his church on 1 February 2012; there had been no stay of execution granted. Instead, the priest would be given the title of ‘Pastor Emeritus’, which would give him more freedom, and allow him to continue his community work and still say masses in parishes around Melbourne. ‘I am deeply conscious of the day-to-day grinding demands which are there [for a parish priest] and I think that we can best use Bob and his wonderful abilities by providing him with a broader canvas, a bit of freedom, and a broader scope,’ said Denis Hart.
If the Church hoped that would persuade the priest to make a dignified exit stage left, they were to be sadly mistaken. Instead, it was like a red rag to a bull. Father Bob blasted his new title as ‘bullshit’ and ‘the kiss of death’, and said he and his parish felt ‘dishonoured’ and that the Church was being ‘bloody-minded’. ‘Once they train that red dot on your forehead,’ he said, ‘you know you’re gone. The Romans are ruthless.’ What’s more, he said he would seek canon legal advice before considering an appeal to the Vatican to overturn the Archbishop’s decision.
But those who knew Father Bob well noted something change in him from the moment he learned his fate was sealed. From that moment on, he saw the clock as ticking down on his time as parish priest of South Melbourne, and barely said a mass without reference to that clock and his fate.
‘That didn’t exactly endear him to the Church, and gave them every chance to retaliate,’ says Tony Joyce. ‘Those kind of “Collingwood backhanders” didn’t help when he was looking for an extension. He knows how to press the right buttons, and the wrong ones.’
It was just that he couldn’t quite believe what was happening to him, believes Tony Long. ‘For the rest of us, if an event was coming up, maybe we’d say we’d face it when it came, or make a Plan B, but not him. Some of us would try to get him used to the idea of the cut-off day and say, “Look, you can still do your work, you won’t be in the position of parish priest, but you can still be effective. It could be an opportunity.” But he’d just say “No!” in that definite way he has. In essence, he was saying he still needed the religious elements of his job. He felt that very, very strongly.
‘He was very hurt. He said he was going to sleep in his chair as he couldn’t face going to bed and then he’d wake up and be all crooked, which affected him badly.’
But then came an event no-one had predicted.
During all the dramas with the Church, Father Bob had enjoyed one success at least. After years of trying to get Costas – one of his first street kids turned now more-or-less-permanent troublesome case – professional help, the authorities had finally relented. With Costas up on a charge of making a public nuisance of himself, helper Henri Ser had intervened and managed to get him onto a diversion program through the magistrate’s court, to be treated as someone with a mental health issue rather than as an offender.
Everyone was relieved that he’d be getting some skilled treatment at last. Many of the priest’s supporters and parishioners admired Father Bob’s determination never to give up on Costas, even though the man was given to violent outbursts, often appeared terribly psychologically and emotionally damaged, and had undoubtedly given both the Archdiocese and the priest’s critics plenty of ammunition to use against him. Most, however, longed for Father Bob to be tougher on him, and saw Costas as an expensive problem they wished would become someone else’s.
‘I think Bob could have done things differently to support him, perhaps without incurring the costs that he did,’ says Frank O’Connor. ‘But then Bob would say, “Why should he go without compared to anybody else? What right have we got to say he shouldn’t have access to a car, and why shouldn’t he live normally with all the regular comforts?” Bob always had a good answer, and he’d never give up on any young person who needed help. I think Costas not only cost Bob a lot of money over the years, but he probably also cost him Open Family and some of the support he would otherwise have had in the parish. But then if it hadn’t been Costas, someone else would have come along. Bob would have found another cause, another reason, another person. He never wanted anyone to be able to say that there was nobody to help them when they needed it.’
Tony Long says it was always impossible to ask Father Bob simply to cut the difficult people loose. ‘We might say, “Ignore those people because there would be a benefit to your core group in concentrating your energies elsewhere,”’ he says. ‘But that’s never going to be him. He comes with a package of beliefs, whether it’s helpful to him or not. He wanted to help whoever was in need.’
Father Bob frequently said how much he regretted not being able to ‘exorcise’ his father of his demons; at least now he was working to do that for others. For his mantra was always that old cry from the World War I battlefields of France: ‘Don’t forget me, cobber!’ ‘Jesus of Nazareth was about inclusion, about the family of humanity,’ he says. ‘It’s about making sure no-one gets left behind, everyone gets help when they need it. I may be a pain in the arse, but at least I’m a productive pain in the arse. I’ve done things for others, I’ve invested in social capital, which a lot of clergymen haven’t. It’s not their style. Costas deserved a chance at life, just like anybody else, even though he was getting madder all the time, with a great sense of injustice in his life and yelling about people who’d done him wrong.’
After a further eviction, Costas had come to stay for another short period in the back room of the presbytery, while the priest tried to arrange somewhere else for him to stay. He’d wake up early in the morning, then roam the streets, drinking coffee and collecting trinkets either to hoard in his room, or to present as gifts for people.
‘He’d put little tokens of love on Father Bob’s desk or on [secretary] Judy’s desk or in the hall or kitchen,’ says Lynn-Maree of Ghost Pictures. ‘Many people saw beyond the gruff voice, the loud outbursts, the strange behaviour, and shared moments of beauty and love.’
Father Bob says Costas liked sharing, and he liked people sharing with him. ‘By 2011, I think a lot of people had got used to him and his ways. The locals would be protective of him and make sure others didn’t pick on him. Everyone knew, for bett
er or for worse, richer or poorer, that I supported Costas. As the parish priest, I had to look after others, many of whom didn’t want me to look after Costas, so there was always that conflict of interest. But to those who told me to get rid of him, I wanted to ask, “What if your child went off the rails? What would you do?” It’s important that everyone is looked after. But he knew I was getting kicked out, and he knew he was partly responsible for that, and he felt bad and blamed himself.’
But on the afternoon of Saturday November 19 2011, in between preparing for a wedding, Father Bob went to check on Costas across the courtyard in the back room as he hadn’t seen him all day. There, a shocking sight awaited him: Costas lying, dead, on the floor. The priest fell to his knees beside the body, and felt a great wave of grief envelop him. This was somehow worse, much worse, than anything else he’d ever been through. He’d buried forty of the people he’d tried to look after over the years, but he never thought he’d be burying Costas in his lifetime.
Distressingly, he didn’t even have time to cover Costas’s body. The bride was just about to arrive, and Father Bob didn’t want to ruin her day too. ‘Instead, I had to go straight into damage control,’ he says. ‘I called the police and an ambulance then had to go and do the wedding. But I really hated the thought of the poor bugger lying there on the floor. He deserved more respect than that.’
Talking about him afterwards was one of the rare times anyone had ever seen Father Bob with tears in his eyes.
The Victorian coroner ruled that Costas died at the age of forty-nine of heart failure, while others were insistent he died of a drug overdose, either accidental or deliberate.
Father Bob, however, was firmly on the side of the coroner. ‘It does him an injustice to say he died of a drug overdose,’ he says. ‘Others might say they know he was using drugs. I don’t know. But it’s like an old drunk dying of alcoholism; he had health problems I presume had accumulated over the years and he just laid down and died. He was caught short, laid down and died. [Radio host] Neil Mitchell rang up and said, “You must be very sad.” But it was so sad because all these people suffered so much. We couldn’t save them.’