Saying farewell to Bishop Geoff Robinson as we did when he died on December 29, 2020, is saying goodbye to one of the few Australian Catholic bishops with his integrity and reputation for honesty and championing the defence of the weak and the abused still intact.
He was outstandingly intelligent and compassionate. He lent his considerable knowledge of Church law to ease the burden of those who suffered the effects of failed marriages. He focused on what is essential in Christianity by his very accessible, popular commentaries on the Synoptic Gospels. His commentaries were well appreciated by preachers and believers of all denominational allegiance
While our paths overlapped from time to time, it is what he will be best remembered for most – caring for and promoting the rights of children abused by Catholic officials, including priests – that brought about a very significant intersection of our paths in 1997.
I vividly recall the day I was in Melbourne in 1997 and I got a phone call from Sydney on my recently acquired mobile phone from Geoff. He was then the assistant Catholic bishop of Sydney and champion of justice for victims of clerical sexual abuse.
He was ringing me to get advice on how to settle a score with a journalist and have a record corrected. He was furious with a young reporter from Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian over a report Geoff had presented the previous day on his work with victims of abuse.
It was the first of what became annual reports on what Church authorities were doing to improve management procedures, supervise the processing of complaints and remove pedophiles from its workforce.
But Geoff was responsible for the care of victims and seeing they got some justice from Church authorities, not supervising miscreant clerics, disciplining them or seeing to their removal from the workforce.
His was a report on what he and his team were doing to assist victims. He had nothing to do with abusers. But the reporter persisted, believing Geoff was being deliberately evasive on the number of Catholic clerics guilty of child sex abuse.
Geoff told the reporter that his work was serving victims in different ways and not with those abusing people. That he said was a matter for the police and the reporter would be best advised to press her questions there.
But that didn’t deter the reporter and despite Geoff’s telling her repeatedly that he didn’t know how many clerics had been charged, he appeared on the front page of the paper the next day saying it could be between 50 and 100.
As anyone who’s ever had anything to do with newspapers in particular and news media in general knows, these things happen. Geoff was in high dudgeon and wanted to take the paper and the reporter to the Press Council to get a retraction and a correction.
I told Geoff that move was a waste of time, that the Press Council was a toothless tiger and that there was a better way forward. That better way was to approach the editor in chief of the paper, put the case and then leave it to him and his colleagues to sort out.
It was a high-risk strategy because the editor was well within his rights to just ignore our complaint. But I had known the editor for over a decade then and I believed him to be a good, ethical and intelligent man who would respond well to a reasoned argument.
We made an appointment to meet the editor, David Armstrong. He, of course, told me he stood by his reporter, had examined her notes but would listen to our complaints.
Geoff and I met the day before our appointment to see how we would handle the meeting. I told Geoff that I didn’t think the reporter would be there, that the editor would have some of his colleagues there and that we should be ready for vigorous cross-examination.
Then came the atomic bomb! I asked Geoff if he wanted to lead ”our side” in the presentation or would he prefer me to do that. He replied:
“I should warn you that if I’m met with any level of denial of just how bad the situation of abuse in the church is, I won’t be responsible for my behaviour. This happened at the bishops’ conference when Ted Clancy (then archbishop of Sydney and President of the bishops’ conference) made light of what I was saying and I just exploded.
“I haven’t spoken to Ted since then.”
Geoff had a reputation for losing his block at times. I never understood why he did that and why the issue just pressed his buttons. Now that he’s passed away, the verbatim story can be told:
“When I was a student in Rome in the early 1960s, I got sick and was hospitalized. I was regularly visited by the spiritual director of students at the seminary (Propaganda Fide College) and when he’d come, he’d move his hand under the sheet, up my thigh and start to masturbate me.
“I just froze. And I didn’t start to address the experience till many years later with the help of a therapist.”
Geoff carried this baggage all through his decades’ long tenure as leader of the bishops’ committees – constantly reconfigured and refocused – with responsibility for the care of the abused and making the church accountable.
As the years passed, I came to appreciate more about Geoff that made him an outsider in the Church. But he only discovered that long after he had been appropriated by the clerical system, rewarded and promoted by it, made a bishop very young and on track to be archbishop of Sydney.
Geoff died at the age of 83 on December 29, 2020. I’ve met a lot of bishops in my life. I’m absolutely certain that Geoff is one of the holiest among them I have ever met.
Chris Geraghty. Michael, we are indebted to you for recording your memories of Geoff as a dedicated supporter of the victims of clerical abuse, as a firebrand in their cause and as a painful burr under the episcopal saddles of the nation. I want to thank you and register my admiration for a man who fought so long and hard (usque ad mortem) in a battle in which he was surrounded by wimps and white feather men. He was truly a gift from on high in our time of need. He was loved, admired and reverenced – and he’ll be missed by you and me, by the little people in the pews of the nation, but especially by the many wounded victims of crime. I am hoping he still has something to say to his brother bishops and to the world of clerics. Perhaps there is a manuscript somewhere among his worldly possessions, another little book waiting to be published far and wide, with a message from beyond the grave. One can hope.
I too have a memory of Geoff – aged fourteen in third year of the junior seminary at Springwood. A good tennis player – a gifted student – an angelic male soprano voice – soutane and surplice – learning obedience and custody of the eyes, though in those distant days of 1951 it was inconceivable that the virtue of obedience would lead any of us away from Pius XII’s perfect institution. He left Springwood aged I think about eighteen, to study in Rome, to complete his training for the priesthood where he was exposed to the pastoral care of another weak and needy spiritual director. They seem to have been everywhere. From my experience here in Australia (and given one or two notable exceptions), seminary spiritual directors as a professional class have much to answer for. It has proved to be a very dangerous job. So Geoff had more than one reason for the outbursts of anger from a most gentle, thoughtful man. Good on you, Michael. Let’s hope someone of class is commissioned to speak of our friend at his funeral.
Father Michael Kelly is an Australian Jesuit who directed the Catholic Church’s news feature and commentary service, UCA News, 2008-2018. He is the publisher of the English editions of La Croix International and La Civilta Cattolica, the 170 year old Jesuit publication of the Italian Jesuits.
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7 responses to “Obituary for Bishop Geoff Robinson”
As I read Michael Kelly’s obituary for Bishop Geoff Robinson, I found myself asking two questions:
1. Which of us clergy does not have a memory of being falsely reported in the media?
Is it that a bishop deserved a more profound ‘mea culpa’?
2. Which of us, in Seminary years, did not hear about sexual abuse in some form on the part of a trusted member of staff?
Why wash dirty linen in public? Especially, why do so in the context of an obituary for a greatly-loved bishop?
Apart from my own admiration for Geoffrey Robinson’s “magnum opus” – the title of which I have never been able to remember – my only experience of his brilliance and compassion was when he was invited to address
parish priests and school principals of Wollongong diocese.
It seems that a well-known parish priest in another diocese had dismissed the school principal who was in an irregular marriage. The local bishop found in favour of the school principal who was reinstated. The parish
priest resigned.
In his address to us that day, Bishop Robinson spelt out the mutual responsibilities/limitations of parish priest/school principal.
His presentation was good news.
I was very sad to read that Bishop Geoffrey has now passed to his Creator. The abused have lost a great champion . While I was a Pastoral Associate in North Queensland, I became aware of the looming sexual crisis revelations with mounting concern .Even as a school student at two Marist Colleges in the 1960’s, I was aware of sexual abuse allegations against three Marist Brothers in the College Community’s. What could we do? Who would believe us? Now in horror I have learnt the true extent of the issue and the cover ups by those in authority whom we trusted, listened to and obeyed. Three teachers I taught with years ago , two of them Christian Brothers are now convicted abusers . I had absolutely no idea at the time!
I read Geoffrey’s book whilst in North Queensland. I admired and still admire his honesty and integrity.Bishop Geoffrey along with Bishops Barry Morris and Pat Power are the only Bishops in the Australian Church who, in my humble opinion, are truly pastoral in their concern for their flock. As Pat admitted to my wife and myself , I have rocked the Boat of Peter too many times by being outspoken. Soon after he resigned as the Auxiliary Bishop of Canberra – Goulburn .What a huge shame that our church leaders must ‘consult’ Rome first before advising the Australian Church. Now we have three great leadership losses to the Australian Catholic lay community in two decades. It seems to me that only “yes men”with good connections in the unethical Halls of the Vatican are allowed to lead Christ’s flock. What must Jesus be thinking? God only knows.
Thanks Mick, I didn’t know he had died. He was a man not only of integrity but of enormous courage, working against massive opposition in the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, one of the few bishops – and there were a few – whom no one could doubt had the interests of victims at heart. I found him honest and forthright. If he couldn’t answer a question he would say so directly, not dissemble, and he deeply loved the Church. RIP, Geoff.
It was a privilege to meet and talk with Geoff – a real “Christian man” – who had a deep love for the church to which he’d committed his life, yet above all, lived the commandment – “Love one another ….” so that all issues of obedience to canonical laws were carefully observed respecting the priority of that fundamental rule “Love one another..”
I, for one, will always remember his clear, gentle, yet definitive voice, so, if he recounted occasions where he raised his voice then I’m sure that those nearby could have reasonably expected that he might readily have emulated his master and seized appropriate weapons to cleanse the Lord’s temple courtyard and drive out those who were defiling the Lord’s house. He did the very best he could in the difficult environment of the ACBC.
Rest in peace – good and very faithful servant!
The late Bishop Barry Collins, when I asked him years ago who’d be Archbishop of Sydney after Clancy said, “Geoff Robinson. He’s the only possible choice.” Barry didn’t count the manoeuvrings of other bishops and archbishops nor the cynicism of Rome. Had Geoff been archbishop it would have been a very different church in Sydney. The church politicians were too clever by half though. He told me he resigned as assistant bishop because there were things he needed to say. And so he carried on being a sign of hope. May he rest in peace.
Geoff was not only one of the holiest, Mick, but one of the brightest, most intelligent, most knowledgeable and best. That’s why he resigned with disgust and dismay as assistant bishop of Sydney, all those years ago. A great man who was not permitted to do what needed to be done in a fallen church.
What is it with our Hierarchy, past and present – with very few exceptions – that they seem to be more business managers, CEOs, accountants, administrators than good holy men and , most importantly, another Christ! Canon Law 378.1 dictates that episcopal candidates MUST be – inter alia – outstanding in strong faith, good morals, piety, zeal for souls, wisdom, prudence and human virtues. Bishop Geoffrey was all of these and more. What a pity he was not elevated to be Archbishop. Vale and RIP, thou good and faithful servant.