From the time he moved into the cottage beside Cathedral House in the 1990s he accommodated homeless campers on his verandah and at the back of his house under a carport. In defiance of more middle-class sensitivities that found the presence of these people troublesome and confronting, he even seemed to encourage their staying, rising in the middle of the night to answer those seeking shelter, providing cups of tea, a sympathetic ear or an electric cord strung out his window to provide the small comforts of an electric kettle or old TV.
His concern about chronic homelessness, particularly among Aborigines, led him to set up the agency known as Daydawn Advocacy to lobby for housing. It has been an extraordinarily successful venture.
Those of us who work in offices nearby know that when someone of rough appearance wanders in off the street we have only to point to the building where Fr Hickey, for whom they are almost always seeking, can be found. Often, despite a schedule that would run the average chief executive ragged, he finds time to treat them as human beings. Where others might turn away, he sees in them the face of Christ.
Last week the archbishop found himself in a media maelstrom for conducting a prayer service at the burial of Robert Bropho, whose notoriety as a land-rights activist was surpassed only by his subsequent reputation as a sexual predator. That the archbishop should conduct a service for the convicted child molester, who died in jail serving a six-year sentence for abusing young girls, was regarded by some as highly inappropriate. High-profile radio talkback host Howard Sattler said his involvement “legitimises Robert Bropho and I don’t think that’s right”.
The story, which made the front page of the West Australian, probably seemed to fit a well-worn media narrative of a Catholic prelate not taking the horrendous crime of child sex abuse seriously enough. Probably, also, the archbishop’s initial lack of any statement to explain his involvement (that he was doing it not in his capacity as archbishop but as a priest and long-time friend of the extended Bropho family) enabled some to jump to unflattering conclusions.
Here is one of those bitter-sweet cases where a cleric’s presumed error of judgement actually marks him as a true apostle of Jesus Christ.
Those who have thought or spoken ill of the archbishop might have, in the midst of the understandable high emotion generated by the type of crimes committed by Bropho, overlooked a number of points quite fundamental to living a Christian life; namely, Christ’s commandment to love not just those who deserve it but also those who deserve it not at all; and to forgive those who do wrong.
There could be few needing the prayers of an archbishop more than Robert Bropho; though in this case the prayers of a humble priest were what he and his family got. Those tortured by the lack of any real justice for Bropho’s victims in this life might take some comfort in the Christian idea that death is not the end of the matter, and that in the greater scheme of things the person hurt most by Robert Bropho was Robert Bropho. Fr Hickey’s prayers for the repose of his soul in the next life was an act of charity for Bropho and his family.
Those who do not know Archbishop Hickey might not be aware that even his more ardent theological critics acknowledge him as a man of deep compassion; someone committed to his religious duty to provide pastoral care not just to the victims of injustice but also to those who perpetrate it. They might not understand this compassion has nothing to do with bleeding-heart naivety. They might presume his cloistered life has sheltered him from a true understanding of the depth of suffering that led one of Bropho’s victims, his 16-year-old niece, to hang herself. They might not know the archbishop has faced very directly the consequences of such desolation, such as when one troubled young woman hanged herself on his back doorstep.
Just days after the death of Robert Bropho, summoned by shouts of “Fr Hickey!” from outside his quarters, the archbishop attended the hospital bedside of another Noongar, a woman in her twenties whose life was cut short by the psychological and physical ravages of domestic violence and self-medication. She was pregnant at the time. Surrounded by her mourning relatives, he prayed over the dead young woman before placing a crucifix on the pillow beside her head.
Latoya’s death did not make the headlines. In her community it was not that unusual and, therefore, for the media, unremarkable. Yet it is the type of story that deserves the telling, and the retelling, until our respectable consciences are pricked. This archbishop has buried too many Aboriginal Australians well before their time. Their deaths, and their lives, might not excite the media; but, thanks be to God, they did not escape the attention of Fr Hickey.