One of the most outstanding priests the West has given to Australia passed to eternal life in Melbourne on June 27, 2012. Born just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Peter Steele grew up in the Perth suburb of Victoria Park, the eldest in a family of three boys.
His parents, Fred (who became a Catholic on marrying his mother) and Jessie, nurtured in him a strong faith which produced in Peter a desire from his early years to become a priest.
Peter also grew up a voracious reader, delighted to receive each year as a Christian present a subscription to the Central Catholic Library.
The works of GK Chesterton in particular, left an indelible imprint upon his imagination and literary style.
Peter was educated by the Christian Brothers at what is now Trinity College, then ‘Terrace’. One of the brothers, aware of Peter’s intellectual gifts, encouraged him to think of joining the Jesuits. A subsequent interview with the Rector of St
Thomas More College, Father Con Finn, SJ, an Irishman of infectious wit and literary appreciation, put flesh upon this notion.
So, just out of secondary school at the age of 17, Peter boarded the train for the long journey to Melbourne and the Jesuit novitiate at Watsonia.
Five years later, after the prescribed period of noviceship and scholastic philosophy, Peter began what was to be a lifelong association with the English Department at Melbourne University.
As an undergraduate, he came under the spell of the renowned poet and teacher, Vincent Buckley, who soon became a close friend. Graduating with First Class honours, Peter went on to tutor in the English Department.
He continued his close association with the university during his years of theology, leading up to ordination as a priest in Perth in December 1970.
Along with his intellectual ability, Peter’s personal qualities marked him out for leadership. Soon after ordination, he was named Rector of Campion College, Kew, the residence for young Jesuits studying at universities.
During this time he gained a doctorate, subsequently published as Jonathan Swift: Preacher and Jester (Clarendon: 1978) and continued to teach in the English Department at Melbourne, becoming, in time, Head of Department.
In 1985, on the cusp of receiving a professorship, Peter was appointed Provincial of the Australian Jesuits.
As such, he enjoyed not only the respect but also the lasting affection of his brother Jesuits for the kindness, humility, and unfailing patience he displayed in the role, along with a notable capacity to articulate and implement an imaginative, apostolic vision.
A measure of the university’s esteem for Peter was the fact that an academic position was held over for him to which he could return at the end of his provincialate, culminating in his appointment to a personal Chair in English in 1993.
From this time until his death, Peter was Scholar in Residence at Newman College, within the University of Melbourne.
The sermons that he preached in the college chapel will remain in the memory of students and others who flocked to hear them Sunday after Sunday for over twenty years.
Never more than five minutes in length, they shed light on central issues of life and faith through literary allusion, anecdote and recondite fact, fruit of Peter’s prodigious knowledge and memory.
Many have been published in the collections, Bread for the Journey (2002) and A Local Habitation: Poems and Homilies (2010).
Peter wrote poetry from his earliest years and continued to do so right up to the final weeks before his death.
He published several volumes of poetry, along with multiple literary essays and studies of poets both Australian and overseas.
His poems are to be found in all the notable anthologies of Australian poetry, along with those of Vincent Buckley, Gwen Harwood and Chris Wallace-Crabbe, each of whom were lifelong friends.
On the international scene, he enjoyed close relations with expatriate poet Peter Porter and Irish Nobel Prize Laureate Seamus Heaney.
Peter saw his vocation as poet and priest as indivisible. He explained that what priesthood has in common with poetry is that each has to do with celebration.
If for him the Incarnation was the central mystery of the faith, every poem that he wrote celebrated the Word becoming flesh.
He looked out at the world and acquired from his voracious reading an incredible knowledge of anecdotes and facts—quaint, technical, arcane — most of them remote from anything overtly religious or theological, and found in them a spark of the divine glory.
He maintained that God could never be thanked enough for sending his Son to assume and transform our human nature; there is no end to the amount of celebration which this warrants.
A lifelong devotee of the United States and its literature, especially recent American poetry, Peter held visiting professorships at Georgetown University (Washington DC) and Loyola University (Chicago).
The Martin D’Arcy lectures, which he gave at Oxford University, were later published as The Autobiographical Passion: Studies in the Self on Show (1989).
On his retirement, the University of Melbourne named him Emeritus Professor of English and Honorary Professorial Fellow in 2006, and in 2008 conferred upon him the high award of an honorary Doctorate of Letters (DLitt).
He was a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and just before his death became a member of the Order of Australia (AM) in recognition of his services to teaching, literature and religion.
Peter was diagnosed with liver cancer while teaching in the United States in 2006.
Over the remaining years, he faced constant medical procedures with great courage, realism and good humour. He continued to write, teach, preach, and celebrate up till the last weeks.
He had an unshakeable faith in eternal life, constantly avowing that he believed the best was yet to come.
A great company of colleagues and friends assembled at Newman on June 12 for a launch of Peter’s last book, Braiding the Voices: Essays in Poetry.
Too weak to speak publicly, he presided in a wheelchair, receiving the heartfelt greetings of all who, one by one, went up to greet him on this very moving occasion.
Two weeks later, on June 27, he died peacefully at Caritas Christi Hospice, Kew, in the presence of his sole surviving brother, Jack.
The Chapel of Newman College was packed for the Requiem Mass on July 2, celebrated by the Australian Jesuit Provincial, Fr Steve Curtin, the homily being preached by myself as both Jesuit contemporary and friend, with tributes from Peter’s brother, Jack, writer and academic, Morag Fraser, and physician and friend, Dr John McEncroe.
In conclusion, fellow poet and friend, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, read two poems of this remarkably talented and devoted priest who had touched the lives of so many and whose poems, sermons, essays and other works will remain an inspiring legacy.