Father Bob

by Sue Williams

  The ‘futile care’, or ‘triage’, support for old associates continues as well as the pastoral work, the ceremonies Father Bob is still allowed to conduct back at his old church, the masses and services he’s invited to hold elsewhere, and the scholarships for both boys and girls. His major financial supporter for those scholarships, businessman Pat Lohan, got to know Father Bob during the early years, while working as the local bank manager, with the priest a regular visitor trying to raise funds for his various projects. Their friendships endured even despite one of Father Bob’s ‘unfortunates’ holding him up at gunpoint at his bank. ‘I just belted him, grabbed the gun and took out the bullets,’ says Pat. ‘I still have those bullets as a memento in my briefcase today. But we’re old mates. I’m happy to help support Bob’s work. You have to be Christian and be charitable, and I believe in what he’s doing. He’d give anyone the shirt off his back. I don’t always agree with the way he does things, and I do think he gets taken in sometimes, but if that’s a fault, is it a bad one?’

  Ideas for new schemes are constantly coming up and being debated, too. Father Bob played himself in an independent movie, Palio, and took the role of God in a comedy debate at Melbourne Zoo about conservation. ‘I put in an appropriate performance,’ he says, modestly. Meanwhile, Chris Apostolidis is working on his own idea for a TV show to broadcast on YouTube, connected to the priest’s 86 000-plus Twitter followers. ‘My personal belief is that the world needs his insight,’ says Chris. ‘I think he’s such a unique human being, his opinion on things will help shape the future.’ With Father Bob’s interest in new technology and futuristic ways of doing things, the priest also loves the idea of a ‘pop-up church’ where he can say mass any time, anywhere he likes. In addition, he tweets constantly to his massive following as his own ‘parish church without borders’. ‘Twitter is perfect for him,’ says his radio partner John Safran. ‘He can sit alone but still connect with the world and let the world know he’s there.’ With his film In Bob We Trust due to premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival, he’s also embraced an online religious service, Church.tv, through which he live-streams sermons on a Sunday via a computer and webcam to a huge audience all over the world. ‘He may not have his own church or pulpit to stand behind anymore, but this gives him a much greater presence and reach,’ says CEO Mark Crosling. ‘He’s a natural on the screen. He makes a lot of these Hollywood gods look second-rate.’

  He’s attracted some unusual allies along the way too. As well as Mem, who’s able to liaise directly with the Muslim community, he’s also forged a strong link with a young Buddhist, Freeman Trebilcock, who started the multi-faith youth network InterAction, of which he’s the patron. InterAction now borrows the Foundation’s food van once a week to deliver food from a food rescue charity and a Hare Krishna temple under the banner The Fast Supper. Freeman’s now also helping Father Bob in his bid to set up an inter-faith centre, catering for all denominations and beliefs, in Melbourne’s Docklands. Their rival bidders for the space include the Hillsong Church and, ironically, the Catholic Church.

  ‘I absolutely love working with Bob,’ says Freeman, twenty-four, who’s organised for Father Bob to have a meeting with the Dalai Lama in June 2013. ‘I think of him as what we in Buddhist terminology call the bodhisattva, which is an enlightened or heroic, wise one or, in my favourite translation, “an ambassador of love”. The Christian equivalent would be a saint. Some people just love him for his larrikinism and his no-bullshit matter-of-factness but there’s a profundity behind what he says, a meaning and a wisdom and knowledge. Being around Bob is like you’re in a slipstream; you catch a ride on his energy and enthusiasm.’

  Another partnership is with Justin Dickinson, the founder of The Big Umbrella, a not-for-profit organisation that helps marginalised children and young people, both locally and internationally. One of its biggest schemes is a refuge, partly funded by Father Bob’s Foundation, set up in Nepal for kids who’ve been the victims of people-traffickers and who now live on the streets. The pair also set up the Father Bob Maguire’s 4-Life Academy together, providing a community leadership program, vocational training and a mentoring system for schoolkids in Melbourne, with the support of the National Australia Bank, who provide premises and corporate volunteers to help train the children in finance, governance, marketing and public speaking. With the Academy’s encouragement, one group of children at a local school managed to raise $6000 in just three months for the Nepalese street kids. ‘When I think about it, this program goes all the way back to the kind of character-training programs we did in the army in the old days,’ says Father Bob. ‘It’s incredibly effective, and it seems the children really respond well.’

  With the organisation growing fast, Justin sees Father Bob as having a big future with it. ‘Father Bob is everything, he’s our mentor, everything,’ he says. ‘If I get stuck on something, I ask myself, “What would Father Bob do?” Or I just ring him. He has a way of making things so logical and straightforward. But I especially love it when I’m tired of fighting the never-ending losing battle that comes with running a charity and he pats me on the back and says, “Now get back out there, they need us.” And, as usual, he’s right. It’s not about us. It’s about them. I hope that one day our academy will run all year round, and his name will be immortalised forever for every generation; the next Fred Hollows.’

  Father Bob on the motorbike of Justin Dickinson, the founder of The Big Umbrella.

  Yet there have been setbacks along the way. The idea of appealing to the Pope in Rome over the loss of his church was an attractive one, until he discovered the cost of hiring experts in canon law to take on the case. Going to Rome to appeal in person also wasn’t so attractive to someone who’d never before been overseas. ‘It sounded good, but I don’t think that was ever going to happen,’ he says sadly. ‘It’d need a miracle now to persuade people that South Melbourne wasn’t terra nullius when the Capuchins came.’

  Then there was the loan of the mobile home, with the notion that he might become a roaming priest, wandering up and down the highways and byways of Australia to minister to people wherever he found them. ‘It was a nice idea of a nomadic priest on the road, but I personally never subscribed to going up and down the highway having cups of tea,’ he says. Besides, for someone who hadn’t had a single day’s holiday since he was ordained in 1960, and whose only day off lasted forty-five minutes before he rushed off to deal with an emergency, he was never much of a one for travel.

  The need for funds remains a constant in his life. A planned major injection of cash into his Foundation vanished when a special-edition solid aluminium gnome donated by the team on the TV show ‘The Block’ (who had been working close to his church) raised over $45 000 in an eBay auction but the winner was found to be a hoax bid by a fourteen-year-old boy. Later, Nine Network CEO David Gyngell donated $10 000, the amount of the highest legitimate bid, and gave him the gnome to auction himself. Father Bob suggested it was a heist worthy of a Batman movie itself – The Return of the Dark Gnome – after a kidnap by the Joker. A limited-edition bobble-head doll of the priest, with one of his favourite slogans, ‘Who Cares Wins’, underneath, raised a small sum, at least.

  There were also the daily irritations and indignities of living without his parish: having to organise everything for himself after so many years of having a large institution behind him; managing with all his papers, books and tapes in boxes since moving out; and often having to rely on parishioners’ generosity even to eat. ‘What the hell’s this?’ is a regular cry in the office when he looks in the fridge to see what a parishioner may have brought him in for lunch or dinner. ‘Moroccan soup? What the hell’s that? What’s wrong with a simple sandwich? You don’t want gourmet meals when you’re an ex-pauper, you just want square meals.’

  There’s the people constantly phoning him with offers of old clothes, shoes and donations of food, all of which he no longer has the space for. ‘Sorry, comrade,’ is his regu
lar refrain. ‘I’m the mad priest and I’ve been thrown out of my church, you see. I don’t have the room anymore, even the dog’s going mad, staring at all the spots on the carpet in the new place. Try the Salvos?’ Another caller who wants to volunteer to help with his Foundation, but can only spare 6.30 a.m. to 8.30 a.m. on weekdays, is also turned away. ‘What on earth can we find him to do at that time? We just don’t have anywhere to put him!’ On a single day recently, 20kg of powdered soup was delivered, only to be discovered it was past its use-by date so had to be disposed of, and then came the donation of a coffin. It was the first time anyone could remember Father Bob lost for words until he regathered his thoughts in time to ponder whether someone was wishing him dead.

  That daily grind he can’t resist using for comic purposes. ‘Thanks, Denis!’ he regularly cries, citing the Archbishop at any new annoyance. ‘Thank you very much!’ It is never an expression, or indication, of any kind of grudge, though, he insists. Just like Hamlet, so often quoted by his dad throughout his childhood, he likes to think of it more as a continuous running monologue, partly shared with his ‘audience’ for their interest, but tinged with a dark humour.

  Naturally, others can hold grudges against him. Father Bob’s old adversary Derryn Hinch returned to the scene shortly after his liver transplant to blast the priest yet again for his association with Vincent Kiss. This time, Father Bob hit back, accusing the former radio broadcaster of hating priests, and demanding an apology. ‘It’s a pain in the arse,’ said Father Bob. ‘You can’t defend yourself against mischief.’ Radio supporter Neil Mitchell joined his call for an apology.

  Derryn now says Father Bob has done a lot of good stuff over the years but ‘he’s a media whore. He knows how to play the media. He got thrown out of the parish, but it was time for him to go. He tried to justify money laundering. But I don’t dislike him. He’s an engaging old coot but I wonder how much is performance.’

  However, when it is put to Derryn that while Father Bob did accept money, then write cheques for Kiss’s ultimately non-existent Vanuatu charity, so did many more people – and people much wiser and higher up in respectable financial institutions – he backs down a little. ‘Maybe I accept that,’ he says. ‘But he didn’t defend himself very well at the time. But, yes, I can be like a dog with a bone, that’s true. It’s probably true too that I’ve kept on attacking him over the same thing. But I’m not trying to paint him as the devil incarnate. Anyone who had anything to do with Vincent Kiss gets tainted. He was one of the smoothest operators I’ve ever seen …’

  Yet it’s not been unknown for Father Bob to hold a grudge, either. ‘He’s extremely non-judgemental and takes people genuinely as they are but with one tiny qualification: he can hold a small grudge if he thinks you’ve been disloyal,’ says Tony Long. ‘He hopped into one person at a meeting who wasn’t there, which makes me want to come to every meeting … He can say it exactly as he sees it.’ He also tends not to put much effort into keeping up friendships with his peers. A number of his old Vatican II mates bemoan the fact they’ve lost touch with him, and he’s so hard to drag along to any kind of social gathering. Father Bob concedes that, but has his defence ready. ‘Well, what can you expect from me?’ he asks. ‘I’m a priest, I’m psycho-socially challenged.’

  It’s a line that came in handy again when the Comancheros outlaw motorcycle gang put a banner up on the Hopemobile food van he was using after a group of tradesmen updated the van for free, and the priest invited them to put their advertising materials on it in return. When the van’s owner discovered the ‘Support Your Local Comancheros’ sticker, he was ropeable. Father Bob started off defending the gang – he’d tangled with them once before when Mem had the misfortune to bump his car into that of a gang leader’s wife – then looked them up on the computer. ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ he said. ‘Shootings … drugs … It doesn’t look so good, does it? But I suppose you could argue that there’s always an opportunity for redemption, and you don’t want to mess with a bikie gang …’ The owner ended up taking the van back, and the priest appealed to supporters to help him buy one. They quickly obliged.

  The announcement of the Royal Commission into child abuse by the Church and other public institutions Father Bob saw as a positive move. After years of apologising on behalf of the Church for past ills done in its name, and subsequent failures to investigate claims fully, he hopes this might mean a more open, accountable and democratic Church into the future. ‘This could even be Vatican III!’ he declares.

  But his own personal major difficulty hit in the middle of December 2012, when he suddenly began losing feeling in his hands, arms and legs, and then lost the use of them completely, forcing him to cancel his Christmas Eve liturgy, a big blow for him. After three weeks, he was reduced to spending days and nights sitting in his chair in the back room, unable even to manoeuvre himself into bed. It reached the point in January 2013 where he believed he might be dying. ‘I can’t do anything!’ he complained. ‘The doctors don’t know what’s wrong with me. I started off shuffling like a penguin and then I couldn’t move at all. I had an MRI the other day. I thought, “Jesus! They’re putting me in a shredder!” I was sure the doctor would say I was a goner. Someone suggested it was the stress and grief of everything that’s happened catching up with me. I don’t know. I’m only a priest … I’m meant to be running a battleship here, but it’s looking like a hospital ship …’

  He finally agreed to go into respite care, from where he was transferred a day later to hospital. There, he was diagnosed with the rare illness chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), in which the immune system attacks itself. Stress can indeed be a factor. Father Bob was put on an immediate series of blood protein injections to treat the condition. But lying in hospital, with a constant stream of visitors of friends, parishioners, supporters and media, he still couldn’t help himself using the setback as a way to focus public attention on other, worthier, causes.

  ‘I thought I should try to spin it for blood donations,’ he says. ‘I wanted to say, “Don’t cry for me, Argentina”, but let’s see if we can use this to persuade more people in Australia to give blood. There’s a huge shortage. So I came up with the idea of giving to Bob’s Blood Bank, because I was worried about depriving other people of blood just to keep the fat priest alive.’

  A number of Father Bob’s supporters would love him to be content with just doing good works, but at that, he rolls his eyes. ‘I can’t!’ he protests. ‘I’m a priest. I need a church. It’s part of who I am.’ Losing his home was hard enough, but losing his church was perhaps even harder. ‘I do miss the church. I miss opening the doors at 7 a.m. in the morning and closing them at 7 p.m. I miss the sun rising in the east through those beautiful windows installed in 1912, and the sun shining through the rose window in the evening. I miss meeting the people there and sharing in the life of the church …’

  He’s retained a toehold at St Peter and Paul’s, however, being allowed to say an informal mass at 6 p.m. at the back of the church on a Sunday for a small congregation and – somewhat incongruously, given his Vatican II approach – holding a highly formal traditional Latin mass at the altar at 7 p.m., with his back to the congregation as was the historical way. ‘He’s the only priest here who can do it,’ says parishioner Helena Bieletsky, one of a group of people who travel from all over Victoria to attend. ‘When we asked him, he began holding a Latin mass for us in 2011. Even though he hadn’t done it for forty years, he remembered it perfectly. He has an incredible mind.’ Unfortunately for other devout traditionalists, he’s not been allowed to advertise his weekly celebration of the Latin mass.

  Most of those who come along revere the priest, but there are some who would love to see a return to Church values of old. ‘He does lead with his chin and is deliberately provocative,’ says one, Michael. ‘He’s a thorn in the side of the Archdiocese but his role should be to sacrifice himself for the Church and the faithful, not to man the barricades an
d throw grenades at the establishment. He says it’s all about the poor, the destitute and homeless children, but it’s not. His role should be to defend the Catholic faith in society. I think this Latin mass will be his salvation; through that he should see the shallowness of much of the rest of his advocacy.’

  Father Bob does also conduct occasional weddings, baptisms and funerals at the church when specially asked, but lives in constant fear of that option being closed off to him by his successors, the Capuchin friars. Their principal, the new South Melbourne parish priest Father Julian Messina, says that may well be the case at some point.

  ‘There’s still a little group of people who need time to bring closure to what was before,’ he says. ‘It’s not going to hurt us to accommodate them and not disrupt things too much. But that’s always up for review. If it comes to the point where it’s dividing the parish because a substantial number of people were isolating themselves from the main community, I would have to review that. Quite obviously, we don’t want to have little exclusive groups of people … A number of them are fond of Father Bob and have known him for many years, and were married by him, and their parents were married by him, and we have to take into account his special situation. But it is under review.’

  The friars, a branch of the Franciscan order that broke off in the sixteenth century seeking a simpler style, dressed in medieval brown tunics and sandals, say it was difficult taking over, but the Catholic Church is a hierarchical organisation and they were acting under orders. After the initial troubles, they say, the parishioners have generally welcomed them. They have continued Father Bob’s initiative of feeding people out the back of the church, but will not be renewing the Friends of the Earth’s lease of the South Melbourne Commons community hub, a move against which Father Bob immediately declared his opposition, on moral and environmental grounds.