Father Bob

by Sue Williams

  The priest who coined the description these days declines to comment further on Father Bob, but it wasn’t the last time anyone attributed Father Bob with a healthy ego.

  But then again, he’d always give you a choice, says one of his critics, drily. He can be good like that. It’s either his way or the highway.

  15

  Keeping Hope Alive

  Costas was still causing havoc for everyone around him. He was a big man with a loud voice and while sometimes he could be gentle and sweet, generally he was strident and irrational and could be aggressive.

  Father Bob tried every avenue he could think of to help. He’d place him in rental accommodation and pay the rent in advance, but Costas would invariably be asked to leave as his behaviour would upset the neighbours. He’d sign him up for adult education courses but Costas would then drop out, or be kicked out, within weeks. He constantly asked social services, the health department, the federal MP, the local council, the police, for assistance for him, but it always seemed just too hard; they didn’t know what they could do. Instead, it was left to the priest, as almost the last resort, to stop him slipping through the cracks in the system, to try to keep Costas going as best he could.

  ‘At first, I couldn’t understand why he shouted all the time,’ Father Bob says. ‘He’d shriek and scream and it would be terrible. Then I met some of his family and they all did that. That’s the volume at which they conducted their lives. But he’d be a liability in the neighbourhood. He was almost beyond our ability to help.’ But while Costas at fifteen had been a handful, he very soon became much worse. ‘Bloody heroin took over from the age of eighteen. His drug use was covert. He’d never do it in front of me. I tried to help him, even though it was expensive creating a financial biosphere around him, but the main thing became just keeping him alive, and making sure he wasn’t being taken advantage of, in the hope he’d improve. But even worse was speed amphetamines. I think that drove him mad over the years. It was acquired madness syndrome. They were very dark, torrid times.’

  Costas was often in trouble, and Father Bob would always come to his aid, asking favours from his network of friends and supporters of his work. His good mate, lawyer Tony Joyce, was one. Tony first encountered Costas when Father Bob asked him to help find a barrister to represent the young man in court. Tony arranged for his friend, legendary crim­inal barrister Brian Bourke, to appear for him, and for no fee. ‘Costas didn’t even turn up,’ says Tony. ‘He was a real pain in the arse. I have the greatest respect for Bob, but Costas became a millstone around his neck, one of his great problems. And he was never able to say to him, “Off you go!” He didn’t have that kind of hard love.’

  There were constantly dramas around Costas. He broke a window at the presbytery once, and threatened Father Bob. He menaced Father Hal Ranger with a knife. Another time, he overdosed and had to be rushed to hospital. But in 1990, things took a distinct turn for the worse. Costas was driving a car that aquaplaned in torrential rain along the tram tracks in St Kilda and into another car. The two passengers in the second car, the parents of the driver, were taken to hospital and later died. Costas, then twenty-eight, ended up spending a year in prison, first at the old H M Pentridge Prison and then at H M Ararat Prison, just over 200 kilometres north-west of Melbourne, for culpable driving.

  ‘That buggered him,’ says Father Bob. ‘It was too early in his life. Things changed in his head after that. His behaviour became more bizarre. I wanted the authorities to intervene as they had the power, but they’d always say, “Thank you for your letter but …” It was hopeless. But when he was in Pentridge, I remember him saying once in the remand yard, he’d pray to God that someone would stick by him for life. He didn’t have anyone else. I felt as if I had no choice.’

  Soon after Costas’s imprisonment, Father Bob had his own personal brush with the law. He’d been late for a Collingwood match, and arrived to find the car park was full. As was the habit of many of the team’s followers, he parked on a nearby street in a ‘No Parking’ area. He’d just climbed out of his car, however, when the police arrived and told him to move his car. The priest argued that he didn’t have to. The police officer said he did, and he’d be arrested if he refused to do so. Father Bob stuck to his guns, insisting loftily that a recent paper by Mr Barry Beach, QC had reported that citizens had a right to discuss with public servants whatever they were being told to do.

  ‘I was indulging myself in an intellectual exercise,’ he now admits, sheepishly. ‘The constable arresting me had the name of Huckoff – fancy being arrested by someone of that name! – and I ended up being marched by four officers to the secretary’s room until the police van arrived and I was tossed into that and taken to Richmond police station. I think I’d just been elected to the Chair of the national priests’ senate and I had tickets on myself.’

  Father Bob was eventually freed in time to race back to the ground and watch the last quarter of the match. He was charged with refusing to obey a legitimate instruction but was then advised by a friend in the force to apologise and, as it was a first offence, he might not have to go to court. So he did, and he didn’t end up in court. ‘That’s the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me!’ he says today. ‘But I do feel embarrassed by it now.’

  In those days, he always seemed to have boundless energy for everything, and was never short on ideas for keeping his parishioners engaged, challenged and, usually at the same time, dazed and amused. He’d regularly open his masses by reassuring the congregation he wouldn’t go over an hour, and he’d stop in time for a sporting event, a sports TV program or for the children to get home to watch a cartoon show.

  At other services, he could also behave in quite unexpected ways. Once, at a funeral, he leant down to the coffin and rapped on it sharply with his knuckles, calling out, ‘Is there anybody there?’ As the service halted in stunned silence, he smiled. ‘See!’ he said. ‘There’s no-one there!’ As a lesson in explaining how the soul had departed the body, and illustrating how ‘the man is still with us, but in a new way’, it was startlingly effective. There were a few nervous laughs, until everyone finally joined in.

  He was also asked to conduct a funeral service for the brother-in-law of an old friend, General Jim Barry from his army days. The bereaved was a jazz musician and Father Bob conducted a lively service full of jazz music and jazz talk, which had parishioners also flocking into the church to join in. ‘Don’t worry about those old folk on your right,’ Father Bob instructed the mourners. ‘They’re only my parishioners!’ Those parishioners shrugged and smiled back at him.

  Another time at a funeral, he berated everyone for looking so solemn and sad. ‘Cheer up!’ he ordered. ‘I don’t know why you’re crying – he’s the one who’s dead, not you! You should be happy and celebrate his life and remember him as he was!’ Through their tears, everyone smiled. Afterwards, some of the mourners said it was the most upbeat, and best, funeral they’d ever had the misfortune to attend.

  By contrast, many of the clients of the Emerald Hill Mission were being kept very much alive. They now had access to an ever-growing range of services, not only the 150 meals cooked each week, the forty food parcels given out and the barbecues that were later added, but also family mediation; counselling for drug, alcohol, problem gambling and mental health issues; assistance with job seeking; and a full program of sports and recreational outings. In addition, voluntary outreach workers provided financial support, furniture and accommodation to families, and there were school scholarships available. Another program even helped women who worked or had worked in the sex industry, set up opposite a brothel and called – ironically – Mary’s Wayside Chapel, with the idea of Mother Mary keeping a reassuring eye on the welfare of the women, and as a respectful nod to Ted Knoff’s Wayside Chapel in Sydney.

  When General Barry called in at the presbytery a few days after his late brother-in-law’s funeral service to drop off his clothes for Father Bob to distribute, he was
startled by the people he met there. ‘The place was full of derelicts and dropouts that he was feeding and looking after,’ he says. ‘But I sat down with a few of them and had a cup of tea. They thought Bob was God, and I could understand why!’

  The vast majority would tend to stay a few days when they were at their lowest, pick themselves up again with Father Bob’s help, then get back out on their way again. The only ones Father Bob kept a closer eye on were the drug addicts, understanding he couldn’t trust them while they were in the grip of their addictions. The others all respected him and his few possessions, and would protect him with their lives.

  ‘I think a lot of people liked the feeling that they had Father Bob’s support,’ says Colleen Miller, one of the new breed of volunteers, a woman who’d just moved into the area with her family and, with time on her hands, had been looking for some charity work. She’d ended up helping with the Friday barbecues and the Mondays handing out food parcels. ‘On Fridays, around twenty to thirty people would sit down with us every week and, after a while, they learned to trust you and some would pour their hearts out. We’d just sit around and drink coffee and some would smoke and some would talk and a few would whinge. Father Bob would often call by to see how things were going. He could be warm and sometimes a bit aloof, but he always gave you good advice. Sometimes he’d tell you to back off and be a bit careful with some of the people, and not be too naive. But he’d always be there for you. He really does care, even though he often doesn’t show it, and never in a warm, loving, fuzzy way. He’s much more gruff.’

  When fellow newcomer Henri Ser first met Father Bob in 1993, he also found him extremely brusque. He’d gone along to an orientation evening for Open Family volunteers and at about 8.25 p.m. the priest appeared in a blue Hawaiian shirt and made a short speech about how important it was to help people. ‘Then he just stopped!’ says Henri. ‘He looked at his watch and said, “Shit! I’ve got to go. ‘Law and Order’ starts in two minutes.” Then he just walked out. It was, What the hell was that?’

  Henri had nearly lost his daughter to cancer when she was young, and had made a pact with God to give back in some way. A private investigator with defence solicitors, he volunteered to help with the food bus in 1993 and started working for Father Bob full time in 1999. ‘We argue all the time, we have a lot of disagreements, but always make up,’ he says. ‘I think he likes my Jewishness. The head of the Jewish Burial Society asked to meet Bob one day and they started talking about the price of burying people. When Bob heard it only cost about $1200 to bury Jewish people, he said, “What! Can you sneak me in?”’

  Over the years, they’ve got to know many of the people they’ve helped extremely well. One man lived on the streets for thirty-eight years and loved the lifestyle. Father Bob would give Henri a food parcel every day to drop off to him. Another man was once the vice-president of a big bank but when his marriage began to break down, he started drinking heavily. He lost everything and ended up sleeping in boarding houses, and then on the streets. One young man was shunned by his family after getting a job; his parents had never worked, and disapproved of him for doing so. Father Bob supported him for years. Still another lost his business, a pizza shop, when his marriage also failed, and he slept for an astonishing three years in his car. ‘Father Bob paid for him to do graphic arts at TAFE and he passed,’ says Henri. ‘Then we helped get him an apartment but for the first three weeks he was too scared to go inside, and he slept still in his car. But now he stays in the apartment, is doing a bit of graphic arts work and runs bushwalking trips for the homeless.

  ‘You get all sorts of people on the streets, from ex-killers who’ve been institutionalised by their time in jail and go back to jail to a man who was living in America but didn’t renew his green card and was dumped back here with nothing. Unfortunately a lot of the people we feed, and who I see on a day-to-day basis, have mental health problems, and the mental health system is crap. They often start to self-medicate and they get a bit crazy. I call it ill-at-ease. They can be drug addicts or alcoholics … The average would be about ten deaths a year. A lot of them commit suicide in their forties. I think maybe they’ve had enough and they can’t keep going and it all gets too much for them.’

  There was still a critical need for more money for Open Family and throughout the 1990s, there were a number of appeals for funds. These took many forms, from the Irish folk group The Fureys on St Patrick’s Day suggesting everyone forego a Guinness and give the cash instead to Open Family, to Australian rocker Angry Anderson urging everyone to ‘chuck a buck’ to Father Bob for National Homeless Week. Melbourne’s eight radio stations combined forces to launch one appeal, and a direct mail campaign to 500 000 Victorian households was undertaken, while Father Bob himself implored companies to donate the money they would have paid to government under the new Training Levy Guarantee Fund legislation to him instead. ‘Getting kids off the street, out of their sick environments, is often their last chance,’ he said. ‘The cost to society of these kids ending up on the scrapheap in the long term is far greater than the 1 per cent levy!’

  Sometimes, shock tactics were used. In 1993, a TV commercial ‘Roo Cull’ featured vigilante death squads hunting street kids; it was banned by the main TV networks and criticised by the Federal Government. In 1994, another showing wolves chasing terrified street kids down laneways – said to symbolise the problems threatening the youngsters like homelessness, violence, drugs and prostitution – was banished until later than 9 p.m. Father Bob was outraged. ‘We show the horrors of the massacres in Rwanda on our prime-time news and this is only a parable, it isn’t even realism,’ he protested. ‘If you were seeing adults prowling the public lavatories in Victoria looking for kids for sex, then we might talk about restricting the material to mature audiences only.’

  Open Family’s national profile was rising sharply, and the organisation was given an even greater boost with the United Nations naming it as operating the most advanced management system of street kids in the world. In 1992, the UN had held a World Summit for Children, with the largest group of world leaders ever convened to discuss their responsibilities to children and their future, ending up making their landmark World Declaration on the Survival, Development and Protection of Children. Open Family’s work was studied and praised.

  But still Father Bob saw keeping public attention on the needs of homeless young people as crucial. He had a side of a church building painted with a colourful mural by an artist who’d been helped by Open Family when he was in trouble for spraying graffiti, and spoke at every event he could on the discovery of a number of street kids who’d been buried in unmarked graves at a cemetery in northern Melbourne. He was particularly concerned too that more and more middle-class kids were joining those already on the streets or sleeping at friends’ homes and squatting at overcrowded flats. Among Melbourne’s estimated 1500 homeless teenagers, he’d seen kids as young as ten running away from home, being lured into drinking and using drugs, sniffing paint, glue and butane, and ending up being preyed on by paedophiles and involved in vandalism, theft and robberies. He also put a photo on his ‘children’s altar’ of smiling two-year-old Daniel Valerio, the child who was battered to death by his mother’s boyfriend in 1990, to remind everyone of what can happen when good people do nothing.

  The appeals were successful to some extent. A hospital in Albert Park donated a large house to be used to provide crisis accommodation and Visy chairman Richard Pratt, whose wife Jeanne had once been such a big fan of Father Vincent Kiss, gave $50 000 and urged other businesses to help too. TV personality Geraldine Doogue also came to interview him again when she started at ‘Compass’ in 1998. ‘He was just remarkable,’ she says. ‘I thought he had a deep faith and I think he’s an entrepreneur of religion, a backbone of the Australian Catholic Church. I thought his values were right; there was depth to them. He’s as sharp as a tack. He made quite an impact on me, as he does on a lot of people. I’ve never been fond of people who
tilt at absurd windmills and keep tilting, but he’s not one of them. There’s a lot of rebel in him, and I wouldn’t like dealing with him in the hierarchy, but he’s pragmatic. I know two people on the crew said he was a living saint.’

  All in all, the late 1990s was a time of great blessings – and curses. When Father Bob publicly blessed the new $1.8 billion Crown casino complex, sprinkling holy water in its direction, he was slammed by Baptist Minister the Reverend Tim Costello, the head of the Interchurch Gambling Taskforce. ‘The God of Jesus would have nothing to do with that,’ thundered the Reverend Costello. ‘Whatever tribal god Bob is using is the god of greed, the god of monopoly … Most certainly it should not be blessed. The glitz and glamour is to hide the fact it is built upon shattered hopes and greed.’

  Father Bob, never one to shy away from a scrap, defended his corner with just as much passion. ‘It’s a special place in Melbourne and a lot of people are working and coming through here,’ he said. ‘They handed over a bus to our parish. They’ve been good to us. And just because we bless soldiers, it doesn’t mean we’re endorsing destruction.’

  Also receiving a blessing was St Peter and Paul’s church itself, when George Pell, then the Archbishop of Melbourne, visited to bless the building at the end of the renovations Father Bob had overseen. Afterwards, he met parishioners, with Father Bob, over supper. It was the third time the two men had met. The Archbishop had served for a short time on the board of Open Family, and had even been out on the food bus. At the blessing, they greeted each other like old friends. It was a cordiality, however, that wasn’t to last.