Do you Love Me?
2026 Clergy Conference 

Speech

Most Rev Timothy Costelloe SDB
Archbishop of Perth

Tuesday 14 April, 2026
Newman College, Churchlands

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Some of you will remember that when I was appointed as Archbishop of Perth in 2012, the Church in Australia had just entered into the Year of Grace. This was an initiative of the bishops at that time who had recognised that the Church was facing a crucial moment, a crisis, which carried within it enormous challenges and, yes, even great dangers, but which also held out great opportunities.

The bishops in acknowledging this also acknowledged that notwithstanding the gravity of the moment the Church in Australia, by which of course we mean not just the leadership of the Church but the whole Church, was perhaps not as well placed as it should be to confront those challenges and make the most of those opportunities. 

The Year of Grace was an invitation for the Church to take a step back, to enter into a prolonged period of profound prayer and reflection, and gear itself up, we might say, for all that lay ahead.

At the heart of that invitation was the profound insight of Pope Saint John Paul II that the Church’s witness to the gospel was doomed to be hopelessly inadequate unless we, individually and collectively, had first contemplated his face (cf NMI 16).

Why is that true? Why did the Pope use such strong language? Precisely because Jesus Himself had unequivocally stated that He was, is, the Way, the Truth and the Life. The theme of this unique Clergy Conference in 2026 is the question “What must we do brothers?” (Acts 2:37) and if I can dare already to offer a beginning of an answer, I would say this: we must begin to take Jesus seriously, to take Him at His Word. 

As deacons, priests or bishops we are, in one sense, religious professionals. We know that Jesus is at the heart of Christianity - or at least we know it intellectually, we know it theologically. This kind of knowledge comes from reading, comes from study, comes from consulting commentaries when we have to prepare our homilies. All of this is good and necessary and an essential part of our fulfilment of our responsibilities, but it will never take us from knowing about Jesus to knowing Jesus. Knowing Jesus will come from gazing on Him, from contemplating His face.

I really want to be very clear here. As Christian disciples, and therefore and in a particular way as ordained ministers in God‘s Church, we have to know about Jesus, about who He was and what He taught, through study , through reading, through consulting scholarly commentary; then we have to gaze on the one we have come to know so much about so that through contemplative encounter He can take what we know and use it to shape and mould us into who He needs us to be. And who and what is it that He needs us to be?

A very significant thread in our theological tradition of the ordained ministry would speak of the sacrament of ordination as conforming us in a particular way to Christ. Because this idea of a sacramental seal has in the past and no doubt also for some still today been interpreted as placing the ordained on pedestals and setting us above other Christians as somehow better, holier or superior, this idea of the sacramental seal and of an ontological conforming of ourselves in a particular way to Christ is questioned or even rejected by many. It is one of the factors which was raised in the Royal Commission as contributing to what Pope Francis would come to identify as a destructive clericalism in the Church. There is no doubt in my mind that there is some truth in this, in the sense that the theological truth has been badly distorted in the minds and practice of some and perhaps many in the Church, and interpreted in a secular rather than spiritual way.

However, the misuse of a theological truth does not render the truth invalid: it renders false and unbalanced interpretations of that truth as not only invalid but also dangerous. 

As I have come to understand this theological tradition, I believe that ordination has the effect of transforming us into a kind of living sacrament. Through the grace of ordination, deacons are commissioned and empowered to be living signs among God‘s people of the presence of Christ as their servant. Priests and bishops are, always in communion with each other, our commissioned and empowered to be living signs among God‘s people of the presence of Christ as the Head, Shepherd and Spouse of His Church. We are not the head or shepherd of the Church, or the spouse of the Church which is Christ’s bride. We are living signs that through us He is present in the Church as the only Head, the only Shepherd and the only Spouse.

The point is, of course, that we are conformed to Christ. Any position of leadership or authority in the Church will ultimately only be effective to the extent that it is, as far as humanly possible, a faithful mirroring of Christ.

In saying as far as humanly possible, I am not wanting to give us a get out of jail free card. It is true, as Saint Paul reminds us, that we hold this treasure of our faith in Christ in the earthen vessels of our own frailty and weakness. We will fail, and fail often, and sometimes fail spectacularly, in reflecting the presence and love of Christ to others in what we say, in what we do and in who we are. We will need to know how to seek forgiveness, and we will need to know how to forgive, but we will also need to have the courage to recognise that when we fail, God‘s people are damaged, that we have made it harder for people to recognise and receive the gift of God‘s grace, that we have betrayed our vocation and the Lord who has given that vocation to us. Our failures may be inevitable or seem so – they are no less destructive and damaging to God’s people. We must never be complacent about them.

Even as we remember Paul’s words that we hold a precious treasure in the earthen, fragile vessels of our lives, we should also remember these words of Paul: I can do all things in Him who strengthens me (Phil 4:13).  If we fail, when we fail, it is because in one way or another we have blocked out the presence of the Christ who strengthens us, who through ordination has conformed us to Himself, and who says to us, from those to who much has been given much will be expected (Lk 12:48). Human weakness and fragility may be an explanation for our failure to be all that Christ is calling us to be, but they are not an excuse. If the prayer prayed at our ordination- may God who has begun the good work in you bring it to fulfilment - is not being fulfilled in your life or mine, this is our doing, not God’s.

As we begin, then our three days together, seeking an answer, or rather answers, to the question, What must we do, brothers? I have wanted in this first keynote address to bring us back to the basics. Just as the bishops in 2012 understood instinctively that the only way to confront the challenges ahead was first of all to return to Christ, seeking not only to know Him but equally more importantly to love Him, in this way making sure that any response to the challenges we face would be grounded in Him, so this morning, as your bishop, and deeply conscious of my own need to hear this message, I want to say that this is true for all of us. The challenges we face are many and so are the opportunities which stand before us. If our three days together are to bear fruit in a renewal of our ministry and in a renewal of the life of the Church in our Archdiocese then we must do all we can to ensure that we identify both the challenges and opportunities, and the best ways to respond to them, all in the light of the Gospel, which is to say in the light of Christ. This is what the Second Vatican Council called the Church to do in the document Gaudium et Spes (cf. G&S4). It is what we are being invited to do over these three days together.