May 12, 2025 • 18 mins
The Pope may seem like a distant figure. But the newest one has wasted no time making waves. It’s not just the social media posts riffing on what vibe a Pope who originally hails from the south side of Chicago might bring to the Vatican. Because, even before Pope Leo the 14th slid the Papal ring on his finger on Friday, he launched something of an attack on American vice president JD Vance, angering many within the MAGA movement.
And in Australia? Many Catholics have already begun questioning how the Pope’s personal views will impact our churches, and even school curricula. Today, chief reporter Jordan Baker on what we can expect from Pope Leo the 14th. And how he may - or may not - intervene in our local religious stoushes, as the Vatican has done, in the past.
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S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Tuesday,
May 13th. The Pope may seem like a distant figure,
but the newest one has wasted no time making waves.
It's not just the social media posts riffing on what
(00:22):
vibe a pope who originally hails from the South Side
of Chicago might bring to the Vatican. Because even before
Pope Leo the 14th slid that papal ring on his
finger on Friday, he launched something of an attack on
American Vice President J.D. Vance, angering many within the MAGA movement.
And in Australia, many Catholics have already begun questioning how
(00:44):
the pope's personal views will impact our churches and even
school curricula. Today, chief reporter Jordan Baker, on what we
can expect from Pope Leo the 14th and whether he
may or may not intervene in our local religious stashes,
as the Vatican has done in the past. So, Jordan,
(01:06):
we have a new pope. So tell me, who is
Pope Leo the 14th and why is he perhaps something
of a controversial choice?
S2 (01:14):
So he's an American, which is very interesting in and
of itself. Generally, people have thought that Americans have effectively
been out of contention because America was powerful enough already.
You know, like the president was effectively the leader of
the free world. And I think there was always a
reluctance to, you know, have that A12 act with the
(01:37):
Pope as well. And there's also there's traditionally been like
a European dominance with the Pope, particularly Italians. So this
is a highly unusual choice. But it says a lot,
I think, about some of the broader issues that the
church at the moment and some of the geopolitical issues
that the pope is going to have to navigate during
(01:59):
his time as the infallible leader of the Catholic Church.
S3 (02:02):
Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost has chosen the name.
S4 (02:10):
Con tutti voi.
S2 (02:14):
So short biography of Pope Leo the 14th. He was
born in Chicago. He is from the Order of Saint Augustine.
He's got a Bachelor of Science in mathematics, which has
led to quite a few jokes about how he's not
just interested in sin, but also cos, which is a
calculus joke. And he spent a long time in Peru
(02:39):
working as a missionary. So he has multiple languages under
his belt. He's seen as not just an American cardinal
because of his experience in Latin America.
S5 (02:50):
Clear message of peace coming from Pope Leo the 14th.
On his first address, He called for an end to
all wars across the world, and he specifically mentioned the
war in Ukraine.
S2 (03:01):
So he's seen as a sort of person who can
bridge the developing world with the developed world of the church.
And there's this sense, too, that the church is growing
most in the developing world. So it really needs to
be represented in the Vatican.
S1 (03:17):
And so tell us, what else do we know, I guess,
about Pope Leo and whether he leans progressive or whether
he leans conservative, because obviously there was so much discussion. Okay.
Is he going to follow in Pope Francis's footsteps? He
was considered, I think, you know, significantly progressive in many ways.
So just tell me a bit about where he stands
on other issues, whether it's same sex marriage or abortion.
S2 (03:38):
So when you look at where the Cardinal Robert Francis
Prevost stood before he was elected pope, we can see
that he is against ordaining female deacons. Cons. It's not
really clear on what he thinks of blessing same sex couples,
but he's in favor of promoting a synodal church. And effectively,
(04:02):
what that means is it's this sense of how the
church interacts with the rest of the world. And this
was a big progressive Conservative split. And again, the thing
about progressive and conservative in the Catholic Church, I mean,
the teaching is the teaching, right? Like, you know, the
sanctity of life is the teaching. So when people are
(04:25):
perceived as progressive or conservative, it's often about what they
the issues that they see as a priority within that
particular topic area. So some people are very much see
the priority is to fight abortion. Others might say the
priority is, you know, human dignity for people like refugees, etc., etc., etc..
S6 (04:44):
Now he has used his social media to share views
on immigration and racism, and he has also been critical
of Vice President JD Vance Online. The new Pope reposted
an article titled J.D. Vance is Wrong. Jesus doesn't ask
us to rank our love for others.
S2 (04:59):
And with a sense of how the church interacts in
the world, there is this debate between sort of sitting
there and going, well, this is what we think. Like
us or love, you know, lump us, you know, a
more kind of outreach perspective going, you know, we we
welcome the, you know, fallen and the sinners. And, you know,
we're not going to sit here and judge you. Please
(05:20):
come in and join us. So it seems according to
this anyway, that that Cardinal Provost before he became pope,
was a strong supporter of synodality, which is a process
that Francis began. So it looks like he will continue
Francis's work there.
S1 (05:37):
And I really want to ask you about, I guess,
what impact this new pope might have on us here
in Australia, because, you know, we've all just seen the
pomp and ceremony in Rome. It seems an absolute world
away from our lives here on the streets of our cities.
But the Pope does actually have a fair bit of
influence here. So tell us about that.
S2 (05:56):
I mean, the thing about the Catholic Church is that
it's not like a parliament or even the Anglicans. The
Anglicans actually publish a lot of information about from their
various kind of meetings and that sort of stuff. And
the Catholics are just not like that at all. So
everything is very secretive, you know, very kind of. It's
a lot of reading the tea leaves about where the,
(06:17):
the Vatican kind of reaches into the Australian world. But
there's a couple of elements where the Pope is quite important.
One of them is the choice of bishops and cardinals.
But the other thing that the Vatican does is it
keeps a very close eye on our schools and universities. Now,
(06:40):
Australia is an absolute world outlier in the way that
it publicly Funds, religious schools and universities. So basically the
Australian Catholic University students are publicly funded. But, you know,
the government is paying a lot of their fees. Similarly,
with the Catholic diocesan schools, these are schools that are
(07:02):
run by the various dioceses, but also the Catholic congregational schools.
And these are schools that are run by the various
orders like the Marists, the Augustines, Pope Leo and Augustine.
They get a significant amount of public funding. So the
Vatican loves this. It really sees this as a, you know,
a global plan for what they would love to see
in other countries, but they also keep a very close
(07:25):
eye on it to make sure that everything's going well
and that that, you know, that, that what is being
taught in these publicly funded Catholic schools is very much what,
you know, the Catholic Church would want to teach. So
occasionally we have had situations in which there have been
complaints to the Vatican Him dicastery for education over what
(07:47):
is going on in Australian schools and universities. In the
last few years, we've had two quite controversial examples of those.
S1 (07:55):
I mean, I'll never forget the article you wrote about
the the walkout, the very scandalous walkout that took place
at Australian Catholic University. This was last year, and I
think there was some intervention from the Vatican. So tell
us what happened there.
S2 (08:09):
Late last year, there was a gentleman called Joe de Bruyn,
who was a former Australian MP and former a very
significant union leader in the shop workers union, who basically
gave a resoundingly pro-life speech at the end of a
graduation at ACU.
S7 (08:26):
So as to endorse same sex marriage.
S2 (08:30):
Now, remember that ACU is a Catholic university, but it
is publicly funded, and a lot of the students who
go there do not go there because it's Catholic or
that they're Catholic. They go there because it's a publicly
funded university at which they can get a degree. And
I see you as very big, particularly on teaching and
nursing degrees. So there's a lot of women. So this
(08:51):
speech did not go down well with a lot of
people who were graduating that day and their families. And
there was a one.
S8 (08:56):
By one students and staff rose to their feet filing
out of their graduation ceremony hijacked by an anti-abortion speech.
S9 (09:05):
This was meant to be a celebration and that was
taken away.
S2 (09:07):
Now, this set the cat among the pigeons. You know,
you then had a situation in which it created a
sort of momentum and lots of, you know, people sort
of saying, well, is is the Australian Catholic University Catholic enough?
And then you had the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher,
write to the Dicastery of Education in the Vatican saying, look,
(09:27):
we think you guys should investigate this. Me and my
Melbourne counterpart think that, you know, it's time for the
dicastery to have a look at what's going on at
ACU because we're concerned there were some very senior Catholic
lawyers who put out a joint letter saying that, you know,
perhaps they should consider taking the Catholic designation out of
(09:49):
the Australian Catholic University if it wasn't Catholic enough. But
of course, the dicastery from the Vatican does not put
out a press release saying that it is investigating Aicu.
So we don't really know if it has or not.
Some people say that the vice chancellor of ACU was
brought over to Rome in November for some meetings. The
(10:10):
ACU management says that that just happens all the time.
They routinely meet the people from the dicastery a few
times a year.
S1 (10:17):
We'll be right back. Now, I know you have reported
a lot in the education space. And also, you know,
in the space of the Catholic Church, are many parents
sort of upset that what their children are being taught
really is, you know, it is so changeable and so
opaque in terms of what's being done, I guess, about
(10:37):
the curricula. It's sort of so out of their hands. Like,
is this something that parents express frustration about?
S2 (10:42):
I mean, the thing is, the thing about parents is
that there's never one view.
S1 (10:47):
Yes.
S2 (10:48):
And oftentimes, particularly in independent Catholic schools, a lot of
people choose independent high schools for their children, be they
Catholic or Anglican, on the prestige of the school and
the educational offerings it has, and kind of don't quite
think about the fact that these are religious schools, and
they get a bit of a shock when these religious
(11:09):
schools start asserting their religious viewpoints. This was particularly an
issue in the Anglican churches a few years ago where
the Anglican, the Anglican Synod basically said that they wanted
the principals of these schools and the chairs of the
board to affirm that they believe that marriage was between
a man and a woman and a lot of parents like, well,
wait a minute. What? You know, we don't believe that.
(11:31):
And it's like, well, yeah, you might not, but this
isn't Anglican school effectively run by the Anglican Church.
S1 (11:38):
You might want.
S2 (11:39):
To.
S1 (11:39):
Read the fine print. The not so fine print.
S2 (11:41):
Buyer beware when you're sending your kid to a religious school.
S1 (11:44):
And I believe the Vatican also got involved in something
of a small town matter at a Parramatta religious school
in Sydney. Right?
S2 (11:52):
There was a complaint to the Vatican by some parents.
Now Parramatta is a huge melting pot, as we know
in Sydney. Right. You've got. And that is no different
in terms of religion. So you've got some Maronite Catholics
who are quite sort of conservative Catholics. You've got, you know,
(12:12):
quite progressive Catholics. Vincent Long is quite a progressive bishop.
He was appointed by Pope Francis. He himself is a
refugee from Vietnam. He himself was a victim of clergy
abuse as an adult. So, you know, he very much
understands some of these issues from a personal perspective. So
you've got a very, very wide range of viewpoints there.
(12:33):
And a few years ago there were two things that
came up as issues, which kind of got conflated in
terms of the complaints to the Vatican. One was Mark Latham,
who was then a One Nation MP in the New
South Wales upper house, put forward a bill to prohibit
the promotion of gender fluidity in schools. And this went
(12:54):
to a committee, but the Parramatta Education Office opposed the
bill in a submission, basically saying look, this is going
to subject LGBTQ students to harassment and it's going to
be an unacceptable incursion into the schools professional judgement. Now,
that upset a lot of much more conservative Catholics in
the Parramatta district. The other issue was a religious education curriculum,
(13:21):
which was unveiled in mid 2020 and basically said it
would teach students about different sexual identities, it would teach
them about atheism and would teach them about social media relationships.
And again, some parents in the Catholic dioceses got upset
about that, and they were like, why send our kids
to a Catholic school to be, you know, catechized in
the Catholic religion? You know, we don't want all this
namby pamby stuff. Also in the religious education curriculum. So
(13:45):
my understanding is that the Vatican did get involved and
they were involved in a rewriting of the religious education
curriculum in Parramatta, which is now only gone into operation
this year. So this is now very much a Vatican
approved religious education curriculum.
S1 (14:02):
And Jordan, I want to ask you what Catholics here
are thinking about. You know, how much the new pope,
Pope Leo, will be representing their own concerns and their
own issues, or how much he might not be doing so,
because you've written that there was some concern that perhaps
the Australian perspective was not represented in the conclave that
actually chose this new pope. So can you tell us
(14:23):
a bit about that?
S2 (14:24):
So everyone expected that if Australia got a new cardinal,
that new cardinal would most likely be Anthony Fisher, who
is the Archbishop of Sydney. but it wasn't so late
last year. Cardinal Francis appointed Mykola Bitok. So he is
a Ukrainian from the Ukrainian church. He came to Melbourne
in 2021 and has a Ukrainian church parish in Melbourne.
(14:47):
So his appointment late last year ruffled a lot of
feathers because there was this sense that, well, Australia has
one cardinal's hat. It's gone to a guy who's just
come here and will probably return to the Ukraine at
some point, perhaps in the not too distant future, and
that it wasn't really an Australian red hat. It was
(15:07):
Ukrainian red hat by a guy who just happened to
be living here. Now, I'm sure Mykola, you know, absolutely
represented Australian Catholics in good faith. The complaint was a
that it was a a kind of, um, snub of
Archbishop Fisher. Some people say it was even punishment for,
(15:28):
for Pell, although Francis was quite a supporter of Pell
during the allegations that George Pell faced.
S1 (15:35):
We are, of course, talking about the former Australian archbishop,
George Pell.
S2 (15:39):
Yes. So George Pell, of course, was a very high
profile cardinal in Australia who from 2002 faced a lot of, uh,
recurring accusations of sexual abuse against two victims, although his
conviction was then quashed on appeal to the High Court.
He was also quite involved and quite senior in the
(16:02):
Vatican in a lot of like the sort of Vatican bureaucracy.
But Francis was quite supportive of George Pell, so it's
unlikely that he was doing it in any way to
kind of punish Australia for Pell. Uh, but there was
this expectation that Australia would have a home grown cardinal
in the sense somebody who had had spent significant amount
(16:24):
of time in Australia understood the issues facing the Australian church,
including some of those, you know, social tensions that we
have here, particularly around, uh, differing views on how the
church should conduct itself. A differing views on what sort
of issues the church should prioritise. And, you know, some,
(16:45):
some of the issues that are very much at play
in the sort of developed world churches such as pushes
for women to be more involved, even to become priests.
And the issues in terms of losing a lot of
Catholics to, as we know from various censuses, you know,
the number of people who subscribe to our various churches
is dropping quite significantly between every census. So these are
(17:09):
some of the issues that are particularly facing the Australian church.
And there was this view that, well, you know, while
Cardinal BioShock, great cardinal, you know, a very beloved man
of the cloth would be more representing Ukraine's interests in
the conclave rather than Australia's.
S1 (17:28):
Well, thank you so much, Jordan, for your time.
S10 (17:32):
My pleasure.
S1 (17:37):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Julia
Carcasole with technical assistance by Josh towers. Our executive producer
is Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio.
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(17:59):
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in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. Thanks for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Tuesday,
May 13th. The Pope may seem like a distant figure,
but the newest one has wasted no time making waves.
It's not just the social media posts riffing on what
(00:22):
vibe a pope who originally hails from the South Side
of Chicago might bring to the Vatican. Because even before
Pope Leo the 14th slid that papal ring on his
finger on Friday, he launched something of an attack on
American Vice President J.D. Vance, angering many within the MAGA movement.
And in Australia, many Catholics have already begun questioning how
(00:44):
the pope's personal views will impact our churches and even
school curricula. Today, chief reporter Jordan Baker, on what we
can expect from Pope Leo the 14th and whether he
may or may not intervene in our local religious stashes,
as the Vatican has done in the past. So, Jordan,
(01:06):
we have a new pope. So tell me, who is
Pope Leo the 14th and why is he perhaps something
of a controversial choice?
S2 (01:14):
So he's an American, which is very interesting in and
of itself. Generally, people have thought that Americans have effectively
been out of contention because America was powerful enough already.
You know, like the president was effectively the leader of
the free world. And I think there was always a
reluctance to, you know, have that A12 act with the
(01:37):
Pope as well. And there's also there's traditionally been like
a European dominance with the Pope, particularly Italians. So this
is a highly unusual choice. But it says a lot,
I think, about some of the broader issues that the
church at the moment and some of the geopolitical issues
that the pope is going to have to navigate during
(01:59):
his time as the infallible leader of the Catholic Church.
S3 (02:02):
Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost has chosen the name.
S4 (02:10):
Con tutti voi.
S2 (02:14):
So short biography of Pope Leo the 14th. He was
born in Chicago. He is from the Order of Saint Augustine.
He's got a Bachelor of Science in mathematics, which has
led to quite a few jokes about how he's not
just interested in sin, but also cos, which is a
calculus joke. And he spent a long time in Peru
(02:39):
working as a missionary. So he has multiple languages under
his belt. He's seen as not just an American cardinal
because of his experience in Latin America.
S5 (02:50):
Clear message of peace coming from Pope Leo the 14th.
On his first address, He called for an end to
all wars across the world, and he specifically mentioned the
war in Ukraine.
S2 (03:01):
So he's seen as a sort of person who can
bridge the developing world with the developed world of the church.
And there's this sense, too, that the church is growing
most in the developing world. So it really needs to
be represented in the Vatican.
S1 (03:17):
And so tell us, what else do we know, I guess,
about Pope Leo and whether he leans progressive or whether
he leans conservative, because obviously there was so much discussion. Okay.
Is he going to follow in Pope Francis's footsteps? He
was considered, I think, you know, significantly progressive in many ways.
So just tell me a bit about where he stands
on other issues, whether it's same sex marriage or abortion.
S2 (03:38):
So when you look at where the Cardinal Robert Francis
Prevost stood before he was elected pope, we can see
that he is against ordaining female deacons. Cons. It's not
really clear on what he thinks of blessing same sex couples,
but he's in favor of promoting a synodal church. And effectively,
(04:02):
what that means is it's this sense of how the
church interacts with the rest of the world. And this
was a big progressive Conservative split. And again, the thing
about progressive and conservative in the Catholic Church, I mean,
the teaching is the teaching, right? Like, you know, the
sanctity of life is the teaching. So when people are
(04:25):
perceived as progressive or conservative, it's often about what they
the issues that they see as a priority within that
particular topic area. So some people are very much see
the priority is to fight abortion. Others might say the
priority is, you know, human dignity for people like refugees, etc., etc., etc..
S6 (04:44):
Now he has used his social media to share views
on immigration and racism, and he has also been critical
of Vice President JD Vance Online. The new Pope reposted
an article titled J.D. Vance is Wrong. Jesus doesn't ask
us to rank our love for others.
S2 (04:59):
And with a sense of how the church interacts in
the world, there is this debate between sort of sitting
there and going, well, this is what we think. Like
us or love, you know, lump us, you know, a
more kind of outreach perspective going, you know, we we
welcome the, you know, fallen and the sinners. And, you know,
we're not going to sit here and judge you. Please
(05:20):
come in and join us. So it seems according to
this anyway, that that Cardinal Provost before he became pope,
was a strong supporter of synodality, which is a process
that Francis began. So it looks like he will continue
Francis's work there.
S1 (05:37):
And I really want to ask you about, I guess,
what impact this new pope might have on us here
in Australia, because, you know, we've all just seen the
pomp and ceremony in Rome. It seems an absolute world
away from our lives here on the streets of our cities.
But the Pope does actually have a fair bit of
influence here. So tell us about that.
S2 (05:56):
I mean, the thing about the Catholic Church is that
it's not like a parliament or even the Anglicans. The
Anglicans actually publish a lot of information about from their
various kind of meetings and that sort of stuff. And
the Catholics are just not like that at all. So
everything is very secretive, you know, very kind of. It's
a lot of reading the tea leaves about where the,
(06:17):
the Vatican kind of reaches into the Australian world. But
there's a couple of elements where the Pope is quite important.
One of them is the choice of bishops and cardinals.
But the other thing that the Vatican does is it
keeps a very close eye on our schools and universities. Now,
(06:40):
Australia is an absolute world outlier in the way that
it publicly Funds, religious schools and universities. So basically the
Australian Catholic University students are publicly funded. But, you know,
the government is paying a lot of their fees. Similarly,
with the Catholic diocesan schools, these are schools that are
(07:02):
run by the various dioceses, but also the Catholic congregational schools.
And these are schools that are run by the various
orders like the Marists, the Augustines, Pope Leo and Augustine.
They get a significant amount of public funding. So the
Vatican loves this. It really sees this as a, you know,
a global plan for what they would love to see
in other countries, but they also keep a very close
(07:25):
eye on it to make sure that everything's going well
and that that, you know, that, that what is being
taught in these publicly funded Catholic schools is very much what,
you know, the Catholic Church would want to teach. So
occasionally we have had situations in which there have been
complaints to the Vatican Him dicastery for education over what
(07:47):
is going on in Australian schools and universities. In the
last few years, we've had two quite controversial examples of those.
S1 (07:55):
I mean, I'll never forget the article you wrote about
the the walkout, the very scandalous walkout that took place
at Australian Catholic University. This was last year, and I
think there was some intervention from the Vatican. So tell
us what happened there.
S2 (08:09):
Late last year, there was a gentleman called Joe de Bruyn,
who was a former Australian MP and former a very
significant union leader in the shop workers union, who basically
gave a resoundingly pro-life speech at the end of a
graduation at ACU.
S7 (08:26):
So as to endorse same sex marriage.
S2 (08:30):
Now, remember that ACU is a Catholic university, but it
is publicly funded, and a lot of the students who
go there do not go there because it's Catholic or
that they're Catholic. They go there because it's a publicly
funded university at which they can get a degree. And
I see you as very big, particularly on teaching and
nursing degrees. So there's a lot of women. So this
(08:51):
speech did not go down well with a lot of
people who were graduating that day and their families. And
there was a one.
S8 (08:56):
By one students and staff rose to their feet filing
out of their graduation ceremony hijacked by an anti-abortion speech.
S9 (09:05):
This was meant to be a celebration and that was
taken away.
S2 (09:07):
Now, this set the cat among the pigeons. You know,
you then had a situation in which it created a
sort of momentum and lots of, you know, people sort
of saying, well, is is the Australian Catholic University Catholic enough?
And then you had the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher,
write to the Dicastery of Education in the Vatican saying, look,
(09:27):
we think you guys should investigate this. Me and my
Melbourne counterpart think that, you know, it's time for the
dicastery to have a look at what's going on at
ACU because we're concerned there were some very senior Catholic
lawyers who put out a joint letter saying that, you know,
perhaps they should consider taking the Catholic designation out of
(09:49):
the Australian Catholic University if it wasn't Catholic enough. But
of course, the dicastery from the Vatican does not put
out a press release saying that it is investigating Aicu.
So we don't really know if it has or not.
Some people say that the vice chancellor of ACU was
brought over to Rome in November for some meetings. The
(10:10):
ACU management says that that just happens all the time.
They routinely meet the people from the dicastery a few
times a year.
S1 (10:17):
We'll be right back. Now, I know you have reported
a lot in the education space. And also, you know,
in the space of the Catholic Church, are many parents
sort of upset that what their children are being taught
really is, you know, it is so changeable and so
opaque in terms of what's being done, I guess, about
(10:37):
the curricula. It's sort of so out of their hands. Like,
is this something that parents express frustration about?
S2 (10:42):
I mean, the thing is, the thing about parents is
that there's never one view.
S1 (10:47):
Yes.
S2 (10:48):
And oftentimes, particularly in independent Catholic schools, a lot of
people choose independent high schools for their children, be they
Catholic or Anglican, on the prestige of the school and
the educational offerings it has, and kind of don't quite
think about the fact that these are religious schools, and
they get a bit of a shock when these religious
(11:09):
schools start asserting their religious viewpoints. This was particularly an
issue in the Anglican churches a few years ago where
the Anglican, the Anglican Synod basically said that they wanted
the principals of these schools and the chairs of the
board to affirm that they believe that marriage was between
a man and a woman and a lot of parents like, well,
wait a minute. What? You know, we don't believe that.
(11:31):
And it's like, well, yeah, you might not, but this
isn't Anglican school effectively run by the Anglican Church.
S1 (11:38):
You might want.
S2 (11:39):
To.
S1 (11:39):
Read the fine print. The not so fine print.
S2 (11:41):
Buyer beware when you're sending your kid to a religious school.
S1 (11:44):
And I believe the Vatican also got involved in something
of a small town matter at a Parramatta religious school
in Sydney. Right?
S2 (11:52):
There was a complaint to the Vatican by some parents.
Now Parramatta is a huge melting pot, as we know
in Sydney. Right. You've got. And that is no different
in terms of religion. So you've got some Maronite Catholics
who are quite sort of conservative Catholics. You've got, you know,
(12:12):
quite progressive Catholics. Vincent Long is quite a progressive bishop.
He was appointed by Pope Francis. He himself is a
refugee from Vietnam. He himself was a victim of clergy
abuse as an adult. So, you know, he very much
understands some of these issues from a personal perspective. So
you've got a very, very wide range of viewpoints there.
(12:33):
And a few years ago there were two things that
came up as issues, which kind of got conflated in
terms of the complaints to the Vatican. One was Mark Latham,
who was then a One Nation MP in the New
South Wales upper house, put forward a bill to prohibit
the promotion of gender fluidity in schools. And this went
(12:54):
to a committee, but the Parramatta Education Office opposed the
bill in a submission, basically saying look, this is going
to subject LGBTQ students to harassment and it's going to
be an unacceptable incursion into the schools professional judgement. Now,
that upset a lot of much more conservative Catholics in
the Parramatta district. The other issue was a religious education curriculum,
(13:21):
which was unveiled in mid 2020 and basically said it
would teach students about different sexual identities, it would teach
them about atheism and would teach them about social media relationships.
And again, some parents in the Catholic dioceses got upset
about that, and they were like, why send our kids
to a Catholic school to be, you know, catechized in
the Catholic religion? You know, we don't want all this
namby pamby stuff. Also in the religious education curriculum. So
(13:45):
my understanding is that the Vatican did get involved and
they were involved in a rewriting of the religious education
curriculum in Parramatta, which is now only gone into operation
this year. So this is now very much a Vatican
approved religious education curriculum.
S1 (14:02):
And Jordan, I want to ask you what Catholics here
are thinking about. You know, how much the new pope,
Pope Leo, will be representing their own concerns and their
own issues, or how much he might not be doing so,
because you've written that there was some concern that perhaps
the Australian perspective was not represented in the conclave that
actually chose this new pope. So can you tell us
(14:23):
a bit about that?
S2 (14:24):
So everyone expected that if Australia got a new cardinal,
that new cardinal would most likely be Anthony Fisher, who
is the Archbishop of Sydney. but it wasn't so late
last year. Cardinal Francis appointed Mykola Bitok. So he is
a Ukrainian from the Ukrainian church. He came to Melbourne
in 2021 and has a Ukrainian church parish in Melbourne.
(14:47):
So his appointment late last year ruffled a lot of
feathers because there was this sense that, well, Australia has
one cardinal's hat. It's gone to a guy who's just
come here and will probably return to the Ukraine at
some point, perhaps in the not too distant future, and
that it wasn't really an Australian red hat. It was
(15:07):
Ukrainian red hat by a guy who just happened to
be living here. Now, I'm sure Mykola, you know, absolutely
represented Australian Catholics in good faith. The complaint was a
that it was a a kind of, um, snub of
Archbishop Fisher. Some people say it was even punishment for,
(15:28):
for Pell, although Francis was quite a supporter of Pell
during the allegations that George Pell faced.
S1 (15:35):
We are, of course, talking about the former Australian archbishop,
George Pell.
S2 (15:39):
Yes. So George Pell, of course, was a very high
profile cardinal in Australia who from 2002 faced a lot of, uh,
recurring accusations of sexual abuse against two victims, although his
conviction was then quashed on appeal to the High Court.
He was also quite involved and quite senior in the
(16:02):
Vatican in a lot of like the sort of Vatican bureaucracy.
But Francis was quite supportive of George Pell, so it's
unlikely that he was doing it in any way to
kind of punish Australia for Pell. Uh, but there was
this expectation that Australia would have a home grown cardinal
in the sense somebody who had had spent significant amount
(16:24):
of time in Australia understood the issues facing the Australian church,
including some of those, you know, social tensions that we
have here, particularly around, uh, differing views on how the
church should conduct itself. A differing views on what sort
of issues the church should prioritise. And, you know, some,
(16:45):
some of the issues that are very much at play
in the sort of developed world churches such as pushes
for women to be more involved, even to become priests.
And the issues in terms of losing a lot of
Catholics to, as we know from various censuses, you know,
the number of people who subscribe to our various churches
is dropping quite significantly between every census. So these are
(17:09):
some of the issues that are particularly facing the Australian church.
And there was this view that, well, you know, while
Cardinal BioShock, great cardinal, you know, a very beloved man
of the cloth would be more representing Ukraine's interests in
the conclave rather than Australia's.
S1 (17:28):
Well, thank you so much, Jordan, for your time.
S10 (17:32):
My pleasure.
S1 (17:37):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Julia
Carcasole with technical assistance by Josh towers. Our executive producer
is Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio.
To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop,
follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. Our newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so
(17:59):
to support independent journalism, visit The Age or smh.com.au. Subscribe
and to stay up to date, sign up to our
Morning Edition newsletter to receive a summary of the day's
most important news in your inbox every morning. Links are
in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. Thanks for listening.
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