Father Bob

by Sue Williams

  Father Bob accepted the award and thanked everyone involved. But, privately, he was bemused at the irony of receiving an honour for, among other things, founding the organisation Open Family when he’d lost the chairmanship under such fraught circumstances. And he wondered if yet another award, the public acknowledgement and his rising visibility would help his cause, or simply make him a bigger target.

  Suddenly, Father Bob seemed to be everywhere. Outside the Church he was being called upon to comment on everything under the sun, and he did so with a humour and plain language that appealed to the religious and the secular alike. ‘As long as you don’t mention God, you’re all right with most Aussies,’ he says. ‘If you do, they run for the hills.’

  At his church, where he felt much freer to talk about God and Jesus, his enthusiasm, irreverence and determination to include everyone seemed to know no bounds. A few years before, he’d copped criticism for conducting the funeral of career criminal Victor Peirce, shot dead in nearby Port Melbourne in what was widely suspected to be a drug-related killing. Victor’s mother Kath Pettingill, at one time the most influential woman in Melbourne’s underworld, had always predicted a violent death for him, and asked Father Bob to bury him. The priest agreed, farewelling him in a service in which he studiously concentrated on Peirce’s finer qualities. When people asked what he was doing, burying such a villain, Father Bob replied simply, ‘He’s dead! Do we need a second opinion?’ Later, he explained, ‘It’s our duty as priests. We’re bound, without fear or favour, and the last thing we should do is judge other human beings. We’re about all human life, the good, the bad and the ugly, and it’s hard to say who’s who as often the ugly are the most lovely inside.’

  Now, Father Bob was introducing a range of ever-more daring events, including inviting Aboriginal people to come and perform a smoking ceremony in St Peter and Paul’s and talk about their customs, and locals of every faith and creed, including Jews and Muslims, to take part in inter-faith services, with a Muslim imam – organised by Mem River – calling worshippers to prayer in the church. He also provided premises for a language school for the local Greek Orthodox church. ‘He’s a man of great depth,’ says the church’s Father Chris Dimolianis. One Christmas mass, a couple of rappers came along to perform a psalm from the Old Testament while a photograph of a mother and father and their baby on a life-support machine – a child baptised by the priest shortly before she died – was projected onto a screen in the background as a modern version of the ‘Holy family’.

  All of them, however, retained his informal, chatty, stream-of-consciousness approach, something he himself called ‘Bobbywaffle’. His sermons covered an ever-expanding number of topics and contemporary references, all designed to bring the point he was making home to his congregation. Some days he’d talk about the situation in Darfur in Sudan, South Africa and Haiti all in one breath; other days he’d bring in news stories about bushfires, AIDS, sudden infant death syndrome and an earthquake in Japan. He never prepared notes, either. He’d read up the night before, have a think about the events of the week, sort out what he wanted to say, and then just wing it from the pulpit. ‘Don’t panic!’ he was fond of saying. ‘I’m a priest!’

  He’d often interrupt a sermon, too, by asking if anyone was still awake or, spotting someone he knew in the congregation, asking them by name how they were. He once even had a long chat with a parishioner from the pulpit about his problems in the middle of a service. He’d offer toys to restless children to play with and regularly invite youngsters who were trying to raise money for a good cause up to speak, sing or play an instrument, and encouraged everyone to support them. Another day, a tennis ball bounced in from the court nearby and Father Bob stepped down from the altar, picked up the ball and went off in search of the boys who’d lost it.

  When the Sydney Swans won the Grand Final in 2005, breaking the league’s longest premiership drought since they’d last won as South Melbourne in 1933, he allowed the team’s flag to be draped over the altar and their song to be sung by the congregation. At mass, he’d often give communion to an elderly woman he knew to be a fellow Collingwood supporter and, together with the wafer and sip of wine, he’d stealthily pass her a videotape of the last game, courtesy of his suppliers at Channel 7. When she later died, he tried to get permission to release a flock of magpies at her funeral, but he was told it wasn’t possible. He released some doves, with black-and-white ribbons, instead.

  He never minded a touch of controversy to get his opinions across, either. One day, he talked about the amount of discrimination that young people faced in their daily lives and the need to have a much more open mind when dealing with them. If that didn’t happen, he warned, ‘we’ll create a generation of Amrozis’. There was a sharp intake of breath with that reference to the Bali bomber, but he carried on regardless. He said David Hicks, detained by the US in Guantanamo Bay on terrorism charges, should be brought home to Australia; that allied troops should withdraw from Iraq and pay the locals compensation; and that detention centres should be closed down. He bemoaned the increase in the number of poker machines.

  Occasionally, he’d suggest having a service for a homosexual man or women, or a single mother, saying everyone should be afforded the same solicitude. ‘We shouldn’t lock Jesus into history,’ he’d advise. He said sex before marriage wasn’t allowed in theory but, in practice, people should make up their own minds. Another time, he spoke publicly about his doubt that Mother Mary was a virgin. ‘I don’t give a bugger whether she was or not,’ he said. ‘The Hebrew word means “a young woman of marriageable age”. Then the Greek comes in and uses the word for virgin.’

  That was still small fry, however, in contrast with his view on the vexed subject of contraception. ‘I don’t mind the Vatican,’ he says. ‘Every institution needs a bureaucracy. But we should butt out of the debate about it, leave it to the experts.’

  He was also outspoken about drugs, and not just that they were a scourge of the modern age. ‘Bloody drugs are the trouble. I hate them. We alleged disciples of Jesus of Nazareth fell asleep when drugs came in and claimed forty of our locals. I still feel responsible for that.’ He also believed that drugs should be decriminalised, an attitude completely at odds with the Church’s much more conservative stand. ‘It’s too easy to say we’re going to wage war on drugs, we’re going to cut off the supply and tell people not to use. We’ve tried that for years, and can you see any evidence we’re winning the war? No? The only answer is to decriminalise drugs. That would stop people having to mix with the dealers and getting trapped, and committing crimes to get the money to buy drugs.’

  His experiences with Costas had hardened his attitude to drug dealers. He’d seen how much Costas and most of the rest of his band of ‘survivors’ had suffered as a result of drugs, as well as a number of those who’d died, and desperately wanted the situation improved. Of course, he could never be sure when or if Costas was still using, but he was certainly exhibiting the type of psychotic behaviour consistent with drug-taking. Sometimes he’d be good, and would ask Father Bob what had been in his sermon that day, and the pair would talk quietly together about God and the gospels. These were times the priest came to treasure.

  Costas also had moments of perception about his own situation and would apologise for not turning out a success like Chris Apostolidis, Mem River or John Cindric. ‘If you put up with ranting and raving, you often ended up with a startling spiritual insight,’ says Father Bob. ‘It was worth waiting for. But as Costas and many of the other survivors got older, the more problems they had – health, mental health and legal – and they didn’t want to leave the area. For them it was their sacred site.’

  From time to time, Frank O’Connor would also call around to play chess with Costas. ‘He had his ups and downs, and on some of the downs he hit the absolute depths,’ Frank says. ‘On some of the ups, he was a very personable, engaging young man and you could enjoy his company. But over the years the depths got de
eper and lasted longer, and the ups were less frequent and less visible. But Bob never gave up on him. I remember Bob being constantly challenged by people asking, “Why are you still pouring money into him? He’s got no future, he’s got no hope.”

  ‘But Bob used to dismiss that. He said to me one day that at least when Costas is dying, he won’t be able to say nobody was there to help. But I think eventually the cost to Bob, in terms of friction with Open Family and the Archdiocese, was huge.’

  Predictably, with so many flirtations with danger, trouble would inevitably follow. Some parishioners complained to the Archbishop about Father Bob’s support of Costas, some of the views he expressed, and the increasingly informal nature of his liturgy. Some of his TV viewers and radio listeners also voiced their disapproval. One of the biggest storms was when he became a regular guest of John Safran on the TV personality’s new radio show ‘Sunday Night Safran’ on youth station Triple J in 2005, with its motto ‘Everyone offended equally’. ‘Most shows on a youth network would make fun of an old guy, but having a seventy year old who can really hold his own is great, and exactly what you wouldn’t expect to have on a show on Triple J,’ says John. ‘That’s appealing, and young people react so well to him! He’s a great personality and I think a lot of young people see him as the grandfather they wish they’d had.’

  But on one of his first appearances, the priest took part in a call-in confession segment, where listeners phoned, confessed on air to their sins and were given penance by the priest. One woman called to say she used the F-word too often, and Father Bob said the only sinful swearing was taking the name of the Lord in vain and told her to recite one ‘Our Father’ to atone. Another said he had used satanic powers to will to death someone in an internet chat room. Father Bob banned him from using chat rooms for twenty-four hours. The backlash from the Church was swift. Radio confessions were inappropriate, said one high-up clergy member, because a priest could never break the seal of the confessional, which included broadcasting it on radio. The punishment in extreme cases could even be defrocking or excommunication.

  Father Bob’s old schoolteacher Brother Leo Griffin observed his former pupil’s progress with absolute horror. ‘I couldn’t believe what I was seeing!’ he says. ‘I thought, This can’t be the same person! I was embarrassed by him. But I know he was very sincere, and when my brother was dying, he came to him straightaway, for which I was always grateful. But I didn’t like the way he enjoyed the shock value of what he said. I didn’t admire his foibles.’

  Yet with all the extra TV and radio airtime he was getting, Father Bob was rapidly becoming better known to a wider audience all the time. On ‘Sunday Night Safran’, he was winning a devoted younger audience for the way he seemed to connect with everyone on air, no matter how different they were from himself. Psychic John Edwards, a guest interviewee one week, was so impressed, he sent Father Bob a personal family rosary as a gift; the world’s most famous atheist, Richard Dawkins, came away from a debate full of praise for him; and both controversial US comedian Sarah Silverman and director Tim Burton refused their publicists’ pleas to finish their star turns, so rapt were they by Father Bob’s company.

  ‘Everybody just seems to love him,’ says show producer Serpil Senelmis. ‘No subject is off limits, from porn stars to sex books, racism to homosexuality. He connects so well to a younger audience because he’s so non-judgemental and is so energetic. One time when someone was talking about a gay club, he asked if there was such a thing as a celibates-only club, but we told him that kind of defeats the purpose of a nightclub! But he’s irrepressible. When John and he engaged in a Twitter war to see who could get the most followers, he won hands down!’

  Another breakthrough was his appearance on Andrew Denton’s highly rating ‘Enough Rope’ show on ABC TV. In July 2005, Father Bob appeared alongside two other priests, Anglican ‘boxing’ minister Father Dave Smith and Aboriginal Uniting Church minister the Reverend Sealin Garlett. At one stage, Andrew persuaded the three to play ‘Soul of the Century’, in which they were asked various questions about the Bible. Father Bob’s first on-air question to the host was a plaintive, ‘Are there prizes?’ The answer: ‘There are, of an eternal nature.’

  It didn’t quite all go according to plan. Father Bob protested that he wasn’t used to trying to beat anyone at pushing the buzzer first. ‘Because we’re humble, see, we usually let the other one go first.’ Later in the game, he even accused one of the ministers of interfering with his buzzer, by pulling out its wires so it didn’t work. But when he was asked how he continued to believe in God, even though so many young people died around South Melbourne from drink and drugs, he snapped to attention. ‘It’s you and me that let kids die,’ he said. ‘They died while we were sleeping. It’s got nothing to do with God. I mean, once He got up onto that cross and was executed, that’s good enough for me. His father got a hell of a fright because he thought this son was going to be a success.’

  Things seemed to be finally sorting themselves out back in the parish, too. The Church authorities at last agreed to sell off Emerald Hall, which Father Bob had proposed to settle all the financial problems of the parish, as well as to enable him to continue with other work. The priest petitioned the Archdiocese to allow him to sell it to Chris Apostolidis for his Dance World but they refused at first. When it failed to sell to anyone else, however, they at last allowed Chris to buy it, a sale that netted the parish the funds Father Bob had always said it would. The parish accounts continued to be administered, however, by a business manager the Diocese had installed.

  Encouraged by the success of the scheme to sell off the hall, Father Bob then worked with members of the parish council and his supporters to work out a vision for the parish ‘block’. Next door to the church, on the corner of Bank and Montague streets, stood the Galilee Primary School, with a large part of the big old building still empty. Father Bob had the idea it should become an environmentally friendly community hub, and began talking to Friends of the Earth about what could be done in the space.

  The rest of the vision for the future was more ambitious still. This involved converting the parish house to some form of aged-care facility, with a fully independent apartment for the parish priest; developing the original school buildings into residential apartments and the newer ones into supported accommodation; installing some kind of childcare facility along the eastern boundary; and continuing the meals service from the back of the church. These, Father Bob reasoned, would provide a continuous flow of rental income from the aged-care and childcare projects, a large capital injection from the sale of land for the apartments and an extension of the parish’s work to help with supported accommodation.

  The steering committee for this plan included Gerry Vaughan, the Emerald Hill Mission treasurer, Frank O’Connor from the parish and the lawyer Tony Joyce to handle the legal work, as well as a real estate agent and a financial expert. ‘Potentially, even the present presbytery building could be turned into independent units for the elderly,’ says Frank. ‘There were a range of things. Father Bob liked the ideas, so he pursued that notion, particularly of the community housing units. He got frustrated a bit because he didn’t understand that he couldn’t just get on and get it done but there were always so many permissions and permits to get and any objections from neighbours to get over. The community housing project meant the land would be leased from the church, with that money going into a trust and the income going into the parish to make the parish viable, which is pretty far-sighted. There’s another parish at South Yarra who have been building a smaller project, probably half a dozen units on some land at the back of their church, so we’re probably not the first, but it’s a fairly substantial example of what can be done.

  ‘I think the lesson for Bob in all of that was always that there are people around who can manage these projects perhaps better than he can. He’s great at having the ideas but then he should sometimes just let others actually go and make the thing happen! B
ut he was always so impatient and anxious because he knew it would be a good outcome for the parish, so he wanted it to happen sooner rather than later.’

  With all these plans well underway, Father Bob felt he could finally begin to relax a little. There were still issues around Open Family but at least he felt the parish was now headed in the right direction. He could afford to spend a bit more time broadcasting his message about the importance of looking after kids and combatting poverty, without worrying so much about events back at the barracks.

  John Safran’s much-anticipated new show ‘Speaking in Tongues’ debuted on SBS TV on 7 November 2005, after a blaze of publicity in which John and Father Bob were dubbed Australian TV’s newest, and oddest of, odd couples. No-one could quite believe the regular pairing of two people quite so different – a 33-year-old gonzo TV ratbag and his 71-year-old increasingly cranky gonzo priest sidekick – but the chemistry seemed to work a charm. Father Bob was eager to give it a go.

  ‘Joy is increasingly rare in our culture and what I think we’ll be trying to do is add a bit of joy to people’s lives,’ he said. ‘An essential ingredient of joy is humour. Safran’s good at a twisted sort of humour, and I’m a bit of a bloody fool meself. This show is a great opportunity for me to jump on the media bandwagon. It’s a great way to market religion in a funny way of being serious. We’re rescuing God from religion. Even if people get interested in the cause in an indirect way, I can die happy.

  ‘Safran is insightful and entertaining and I’m deep and meaningful as well as being vaudeville. I don’t mind having a pie flung in my face.’

  Billed as a current affairs–chat show ‘with a spiritual twist’, the weekly Monday-evening ‘Speaking in Tongues’ comprised the two men sitting at a desk before a background of stained-glass windows, talking over the topics of the day, interspersed with interviewing a variety of guests. ‘So, say there’s cannibalism in the news that week, I’ll ask Bob what the Catholic perspective is on eating people,’ John explained before the show went to air. Responded Father Bob: ‘And I’ll say it’s all right in a desperate situation, as long as you don’t do the killing. Just helpful hints, see, for everyday living!’ On air, John enjoyed goading Father Bob on a huge variety of topics to see just how far he could push the priest. Father Bob usually managed to artfully duck for cover when he felt the need, or turn to humour to deflect the questions. When John pressed him on sexuality, for instance, he replied, ‘I think celibate. I’m a retrosexual.’