New Bishop of Broken Bay Anthony Randazzo installed
The new Bishop of Broken Bay has landed in the job at a time of unprecedented distrust towards the Catholic Church, but he comes well credentialled and he’s had help right from the top.
Central Coast
Don't miss out on the headlines from Central Coast. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Newly installed Bishop of Broken Bay Anthony Randazzo wants to get “the smell of the sheep”.
It’s a phrase an old mentor and cardinal used to encourage in his priests.
Bishop Randazzo said the phrase did not refer the smell of farm animals but rather get to know the “warmth of a community” symbolised by a sheep’s thick wool and rich lanolin oil.
The mentor was none other than Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio — better known to most parishioners by his current name Pope Francis.
After 16 months without a designated spiritual shepherd following Bishop Peter Comensoli’s appointment as Archbishop of Melbourne, Bishop Randazzo was installed as the Diocese of Broken Bay’s fourth Bishop at a special Mass on Monday.
In one of his first interviews since he learned from Rome of his new posting, Bishop Randazzo reveals he has no initial plans to shake the Diocese up with changes.
“That is not the starting point,” he said.
Instead he wants to “get around as much as I can” from Manly to Toukley and from Pittwater to Acadia to meet people in the Diocese and get an understanding of their needs.
To continue the shepherd analogy, Bishop Randazzo said “you cannot care for them if you don’t know them”.
Having been an Auxiliary Bishop in charge of western Sydney, getting around and meeting people is something Bishop Randazzo is used to.
Having spent two stints in Rome, Bishop Randazzo has also personally known the last three Popes, and was working in the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith in the final year of St John Paul II’s pontificate and the first few years of the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI.
“He still is for me one of the most amazing humans that have walked the Earth,” Bishop Randazzo said of St John Paul II.
He described Pope Benedict as “the most intelligent human being I have ever met” and Pope Francis — who used to stay in the same clergy house as him during his visits to Rome while still a cardinal — as having “a humanity about him that is inspirational”.
But it could have been a very different story for the only son of a working class family of fruiterers from Bankstown who moved to the Gold Coast a year after he was born.
“I thought I might be a teacher but then I decided being at school was enough, I didn’t want to do it for the rest of my life,” he said.
His next choice was accounting, which wasn’t going to work out once he realised “maths was not my strong suit”.
A love of design and buildings saw him eyeing off a career as an architect but all the while he had “priest pop up” in his mind.
“I thought you can’t get rich, have a big house and get married doing that so I kept pushing that aside,” he said
The call was ultimately too strong and he was ordained in 1991.
Five things you never knew about Bishop Randazzo
1. Supports the Canterbury Bulldogs. Despite spending most of his formative years in Queensland the Bishop backs the Doggies
2. Seen Billy Joel live in concert. While he enjoys classical music, Bishop Randazzo is partial to a bit of Piano Man or The Beatles.
3. Favourite book is Wilbur Smith’s trilogy When The Lion Feeds, which he credits at age 14 for instilling a lifelong love of reading.
4. Drives a Mazda CX5
5. Was a handy sprinter in his youth.