St Mary of the Cross MacKillop Oration
Keynote Speech

Speech

Most Rev Timothy Costelloe SDB
Archbishop of Perth

Thursday 12 June, 2025
Duxton Hotel, Perth

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Those of you who are old enough will remember 1978 as the year of the three popes. Pope Paul, 6 August 1978; Pope John Paul I elected 26 August 1978 and died 28 September 1978 and John Paul II elected 14 October, 1978.

Although 2025 is the year of two popes rather than three, I decided to take inspiration from 1978 for this presentation this evening by recalling to mind not just the two popes of 2025 but the three popes of our recent experience: Pope Benedict who retired in 28 February 2013 and died in 31 December, 2022, Pope Francis who was elected on 13 March 2013 and whose papacy came to an end when he died on Easter Monday of this year, and now Pope Leo whose ministry as the Bishop of Rome and pastor of the Universal Church, and therefore of the Church here in Western Australia., has only just begun.

As many of you would be aware, I attended, in my capacity as President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, the funeral of Pope Francis and the Installation Mass of Pope Leo. This led, inevitably, to a large number of media requests for comment, both here in Australia and also in Rome. In responding to many of these requests, some of which wanted to focus on what I thought might be the main differences between Pope Francis and Pope Leo, I found myself reflecting not on the differences but rather on the continuity between Leo and Francis, and on their immediate predecessor, Pope Benedict. 

Media interviews can be dangerous things, because you are encouraged, and indeed sometimes pressured, into oversimplifying things which are often quite complex. It is all too easy to fall into the trap of making broad generalisations which can be easily misinterpreted.

Notwithstanding that danger I think there is some truth in the way in which I expressed to the media what I believe may well turn out to be a helpful way of discerning the work of the Holy Spirit in the emergence of the papal leadership which we have witnessed over the last twenty or so years. What I want to suggest tonight is that this reflection has something important to offer us as we celebrate the work of Catholic Social Services Western Australia and as we look forward with enthusiasm, creativity and boldness to the future which stretches out before us.

When Pope Benedict was elected after the death of Pope Saint John Paul II many people saw him as a safe pair of hands who would continue the work of his predecessor. Subsequent events showed that there was a great deal of truth in this, even though in background and temperament Karol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger could hardly have been more different. What was striking about Pope Benedict’s papacy, however, was the depth of scholarship Benedict brought to the teaching dimension of the papal ministry. While it would be completely unfair to suggest that Benedict neglected the social aspect of the Church’s life and mission - he did, after all, leave us the extraordinary Encyclical Deus Caritas est - he can rightly be spoken of as the Pope who invited us to reflect very deeply on the what of our Christian faith. He also, as Pope Saint John Paul II before him had done, focused on the who of our Christian faith. The what and the who of our faith focus our attention, in a very significant way, on the content of our faith. They help us to fill out and delve into the Creed which we profess when we gather each week for our Sunday Eucharist.

The importance of getting the what and the who right can hardly be exaggerated. The story of Saint Peter’s profession of faith in Matthew’s Gospel underlines this. Jesus wants to know what people think about him - who they think he is - and when the answers, while not being completely wrong, are also very far from the complete truth, Jesus wants to know what His closest followers say. It is important to Jesus that they get Him right - and it should be important to us that we also get Him right. And indeed, when even Peter in the end shows that he has not fully understood the full truth about Jesus, Jesus is quite harsh with him. “Get behind me Satan”, He says, “for you are an obstacle in my path”. I presume none of us would want to hear Jesus say those words to us.

Pope Benedict, then, brought something special and essential to the forefront of his ministry as the successor of Saint Peter, and the challenge he put before us remains: it matters that we believe rightly. To put it another way, it matters that we are orthodox - that we follow correct teaching - as we seek to live out our Christian lives and faith.

When Pope Francis was elected much was made of the need for him to do something about the dreadful failures of the Church in relation to sexual abuse, to do something about the perceived extent of financial corruption in the Vatican, and about the need to renew and reform the governance structures of the Church at the highest level. These, according to those who claimed to know what the cardinals had discussed in the meetings before the conclave which elected Francis, were the main themes which emerged and the central expectations which the cardinals believed Francis was best placed to grapple with.

It is certainly true that in his 13 years as Bishop of Rome Francis did devote a great deal of attention to these three areas. But as the years went by it became clear that Francis wanted to turn the eyes of the Church to the “how” of our Christian faith. With the what and the who more solidly grounded, thanks to the work of Pope Benedict and indeed of his immediate predecessors, Francis invited us, very powerfully by his words and even more powerfully by his actions, to reflect on what it means to live out what we believe in the concrete reality of our daily lives, and in our engagement with others in the challenges, complexities and limitations of their own lives. Over time, so much of Pope Francis’s teaching, by word and example, came to be encapsulated in the word accompaniment. This is a word which has a particular resonance for those of us who work in the area of social outreach to those in difficulty or need. We are to meet people where they are and make room for them in our lives, in our hearts, in our communities and in the Church, inviting them to join us as we continue to walk together into the future to which God is leading us.

Among the many initiatives of Pope Francis, aimed at helping us to be a truly welcoming community of disciples, the Jubilee Year of Mercy which Pope Francis inaugurated on 8 December 2015 is, at least to my mind, one of the most significant contributions he has made to the renewal of the Church. In reminding us that Jesus is the face of the Father’s mercy, Pope Francis shows the continuity between himself and Pope Benedict, and points us to what must be at the heart of our social outreach efforts. In this beautiful phrase, the what and who of our faith are united inseparably with the how of our faith. Another way of saying this is that two of the three aspects of Jesus’s description of Himself in John’s gospel - I am the Way, the Truth and the Life - are now revealed in all their depth and beauty. Benedict has helped us to understand what it means to say that Jesus is the Truth. And Francis has helped us to understand what it means to say that Jesus is the Way. 

With these two pillars of our Christian faith more firmly established because of the ministry of these two popes, now, perhaps, it will be the mission of Pope Leo to help us understand more clearly the importance of building the future of the Church’s life and mission on the solid rock of these two foundations. If we only focus on the what we run the risk of repeating the mistake of Saint Peter who after all got the what right - you are the Christ, the Son of the living God - but who got the how completely wrong.  “This must not happen to you,” Peter said when Jesus explained to him in graphic terms how He would fulfil his task as the Christ in obedience to His Father‘s will – by being prepared to suffer and to die. Peter got the what right but wanted to be the one who determined the how; he wanted to tell Jesus how to fulfil His mission rather than have Jesus tell him how that mission must play itself out. Though Peter’s reaction to Jesus’s announcement of His forthcoming suffering was born of love - this must not happen to you - it was also born of a profound misunderstanding at best and, at worst, a terrible arrogance. 

There is a danger, of course, in going in the other direction: only focusing on the how to the extent that we forget the reasons for the how. When this happens, we run the risk of becoming just another NGO. This is something to which Pope Francis alerted us on a number of occasions. 

In the Mass with the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel on the morning after his election Pope Francis said this: "If we do not confess to Christ, what would we be? We would end up a compassionate NGO. We would be like children who build sandcastles only to watch them collapse”. A year later, in an address to the bishops of Switzerland, he said this: Without a living faith in the risen Christ, your beautiful churches and monasteries will gradually become museums; all the commendable works and institutions will lose their soul, leaving behind only empty spaces and abandoned people”. The Church, he went on to say is “the Body of Christ and the People of God, and not only a beautiful organization, another NGO."

He repeated this thought in the 2018 Apostolic Exhortation, “Gaudete et Exsultate,” where he warned against a Christianity that “becomes a sort of NGO, stripped of the luminous mysticism so evident in the lives of Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Vincent de Paul, Saint Teresa of Calcutta, and many others.”

Another great Saint, Mary of the Cross MacKillop, was very aware of this. We are all very familiar with her famous advice to her sisters: Never see a need without doing something about it. This is simply the logic of the gospels and of our Christian discipleship.  But Mary also offered another piece of important advice to her sisters: Never forget who it is you are following. It is only when these two aspects of our life come together that we can truly claim the name “Christian” - or at least only when we are really tyring to bring these two things together. 

What this means is that when we see a need and try to respond to it, we must ask ourselves what responding according to the mind and heart of Jesus looks like. And as the gospel shows us so clearly, it will look different for every person because every person’s situation and needs will be particular to them. We have to respond to them in ways that touch their concrete reality, their needs and their hearts, and in such a way that their dignity as beloved children of God, made in God’s image, is respected.  In other words, we must respond in a way that manifests the mind and heart of Christ, as Saint Paul reminds us in his letter to the Philippians.

What does all this mean for those who, in so many diverse ways, play a role in the social service outreach of the Catholic Church in this state? In my mind, it means that the how of what we do, the who of the one in whose name we do what we do, and the why of what we do, are as important and as essential as the what. We need to have them all together in mutual harmony and creative, faith-filled dialogue.

The legacy of Popes Francis and Benedict invites us, as we review what we are doing and what we hope to be able to continue to do for those most in need in our society, to commit ourselves to bringing together the twin dimensions of Jesus as the Way and Jesus as the Truth: I believe that it is only in the holding together of these two realities that we will be able to allow Jesus to be the Life of his people that he seeks to be.

In the end this calls us, and especially those of us in any form of leadership in the Church (which includes all of you) to commit ourselves to an ongoing journey of formation as to who Jesus really is and what it means to say that he reveals the face of the Father’s mercy. This is what we hope to bring, and are called to bring, to every single person to whom we reach out.