Remarks at Reception hosted by Ambassador John McCarthy

Remarks at Reception hosted by Ambassador John McCarthy
Palazzo Bonadies, Via San Pantaleo, Rome 26 June

Thank you Ambassador McCarthy and Christine for your welcome and kind words, and for hosting us all at this reception in honour of my appointment as the Ninth Metropolitan Archbishop of Sydney and of my forthcoming reception of the pallium from Pope Francis.

When John McCarthy, Queen's Counsel, Knight Commander of the Order of St Gregory the Great, et cetera, was announced Australia's Ambassador to the Holy See in 2012, it was predicted that he would become one of the Roman 'characters' as he stormed across St Peter's Square in paraphernalia such as a Canterbury Bulldogs scarf or a Sydney Swans cap. 

Whether His Excellency has yet been converted to that other football code by the soccer-mad Italians is unclear, but I'm yet to see him in the Roma team colours: perhaps he is saving that for his return to our shores. However, his passion for sport has played out in his role here as Ambassador. If Vatican II wasn't shock enough for the Church's system with some hoping to turn the Marriage Synod into a Vatican III, Ambassador McCarthy has instigated the Vatican XI, under the auspices of the St Peter's Cricket Club.  Already the Vatican XI has toured England, hosted cricket matches in the Eternal City, been blessed by our sports-loving Pope Francis and even received signed cricket bats from him, though he had to be shown how to hold the bat himself. I'm told he's been using it ever since in the curia! The St Peter's Cricket Club Facebook page, which features the Pope dressed in ecclesiastical cricket whites, with a team dominated by sub-continentals and a sprinkling from elsewhere in the British empire, reports result of the recent McCarthy Cup.

Historically, cricket was supposed to be the gentleman's game. Players were genteel and would abide by the 'spirit of the game'. But from the time of colonial contests between the dominions and the motherland, through the infamous Bodyline series, to the days of the boycotts of apartheid South Africa, cricket has however been entangled with politics and vice-versa; so too sport has often been entangled in various ways with religion, with some claiming cricket and football are the real religions of Australians. Certainly there are few countries who can brag that their Cardinal, now No. 3 in the Church hierarchy, was selected for a professional football club! So the appointment to the Vatican has allowed Mr McCarthy to unite his passions for sport, politics and religion – the favourite topics at any Aussie barbecue – and call it work!

Now the Vatican is very good at this sort of thing. I remember back in the Great Year of Jubilee 2000 that St John Paul II managed to have jubilee events for all sorts of people, including gypsies, sanitori (in Aussie parlance garbos) and sportsplayers. The Pontifical Council for Culture has dubbed the purpose of the Vatican XI to break down barriers and improve relations between states and cultures: I guess they've never witnessed the Ashes tests between Old Blimey and the colonials!

Nonetheless, Mr McCathy's match between the Vatican XI and the Anglicans furthered the Church's ecumenical goals by us letting the Anglicans win! The Holy Father, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Islamic leaders all favour such sporting connections and Mr McCarthy joined prominent Australians such as 'Twiggy' Forest and Antonia Stampalija in facilitating this in order to raise funds and prominence for the Global Freedom Network. This admirable organisation aims to combat the slavery and trafficking of between 12 and 27 million people today in forced labour or sexual exploitation. These evils have been the subject of passionate denunciation by the Holy Father and it was a very Australian thought that religion, sport and politics might be united on the green to help. I salute the Ambassador's role in facilitating the establishment of this network, a truly worthy enterprise which will, God willing, bring about much good.  As he comes to the end of his term there are many achievements of which he can be proud and not all of them would have been as pleasurable as watching the cricket!

Next Monday, it will be my privilege to receive my own team gear, a football scarf called the pallium, in the black-and-white colours of the Magpies, Collingwood, Juventus and the Dominicans, from the hands of the Pope. On 25 July, the Apostolic Nuncio to Australia – Mr McCarthy's opposite number – will formally impose this garment on me, not for wearing to the football but for that other religion, Catholicism, and its liturgical action. It is a sign of the communion between the Holy Father and myself, between the See of Peter and the See of Sydney, and between the eleven Australian dioceses over which Sydney is Metropolitan. Many of my family, friends and work colleagues have come to witness this and to take part in a spiritual pilgrimage as well. You are amongst my chief supports in the task of leading the ecclesial flock of Sydney and beyond. I love Sydney: its people, its history going back through my eight predecessors as the Ambassador listed them, its natural beauty, life and ideals. It is, as Mr McCarthy said, one of the world's great cities: and it could, by God's grace and a deeper conversion to the Gospel be an even greater city for its people and beyond. I recommit myself and my Church to playing our part in bringing that about.

I thank His Excellency, John McCarthy, for hosting this reception tonight as a sign of the esteem of the Commonwealth of Australia for the Catholic Church and the Archbishop of Sydney, and through him I thank our Federal Government.

The relationship between church and state in Australia, while not perfect and needing always to be worked at, is I believe just about the best in the world. In many parts of the world those with spiritual authority seek to dictate every aspect of life to those who govern civil society; in other parts of the world those in civil authority seek to keep religion under their thumb or coopt it for their purposes. Even amongst friendly nations that do not formally hate religion, it is often the case that prayer or symbols of religion are forbidden in state institutions or that state contracts or funding are denied to church organisations in areas such as education, healthcare and welfare. In Australia, however, there is a clear sense of the different spheres of operation and responsibilities of church and state, while also allowing for considerable cooperation on many levels. In education, healthcare and welfare, for instance, church and state collaborate to their mutual benefit and for the sake of the common good our our citizens. When World Youth Day was celebrated in Australia, the whole community – and not just the relatively small Catholic community – got behind it, including those of various faiths and none, including other churches and religions, business leaders and including our commonwealth and state governments.  That would have been impossible in many countries, but in Australia it was straightforward that anything so good should have the support of both church and state.

Last year we celebrated 40 years of formal diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the Commonwealth of Australia and a century of the Holy See's Apostolic Delegation in Australia. There were of course events to mark those anniversaries both in Australia and here in Rome and I thank the Ambassador for his part in these, including the presentation of Jiawei Shen's portrait of the Holy Father to him.  In celebrating these anniversaries, we recognised that statecraft and diplomacy are deeply embedded human activities, essential for promoting the common good. St Augustine thought politics a necessary evil, necessary because human beings are inclined to fighting and crime, and so need governing, but evil because this constrains human freedom, is a result of sin and requires the use of coercive force. I prefer St Thomas Aquinas' view, and not just because I normally wear the same team colours as him, that statecraft is a necessary good: necessary because even the most virtuous human beings need coordinating and good because human beings are political animals who commonly achieve their goals in concert with each other. Without civic-minded people, like Ambassador McCarthy, willing to sacrifice the pursuit of wealth and private interests for the sake of our common good achieved in politics and diplomacy, our social capital would be much diminished and, put simply, we'd be less happy.

So I thank you, Ambassador, and through you our political leaders, for your selfless leadership, your collaboration with the Church for the common good, and your sporting sense of good play! God bless you all.
 
1.https://www.sydneycatholic.org/news/latest_news/2012/2012823_609.shtml
2.https://www.sydneycatholic.org/news/latest_news/2014/2014910_135.shtml
3.https://www.facebook.com/vaticancricketclub
4.http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/5413/watch-anglican-xi-beat-vatican-in-historic-cricket-match; http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/5262/archbishop-justin-and-pope-francis-back-anglican-catholic-anti-slavery-and-human-trafficking-initiat
5.http://holysee.embassy.gov.au/hyse/home.html