The Interview: Father Morgan Batt talks to Ann Wason Moore
HE’S helped the homeless, earned 14 university degrees and healed others after the horrifying Port Arthur massacre — and yet he’s been spat on, vilified and abused. All because of his profession.
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THE moment I hear Father Morgan Batt’s voice on the phone, it triggers my subconscious Catholic guilt.
The next thing I know, I start spontaneously confessing.
All I actually need to do is organise an interview time, but instead I find myself seeking forgiveness for not attending church since … well, a long time.
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I know he doesn’t care. I know I don’t care. But there’s something about priests that elicits an extreme response.
And nobody knows that better than Fr Morgan.
The Burleigh Heads Catholic Parish priest may be a relatively new arrival to this city, but he’s been wearing the collar for almost 30 years, in roles as varied as army chaplain (in fact, he prefers the military title of Padre), vocations director for the archdiocese of Brisbane, head of the House of Discernment (where men go to think about becoming a priest), and Professor of Pastoral Theology at the seminary.
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He was the parish priest at Port Arthur, Tasmania, at the time of the horrific massacre in 1996, he’s been posted overseas multiple times and earned 14 university degrees.
But while the devotion to his faith has remained the same, reactions do not.
“I’ve been spat at, vilified and abused — physically and verbally — because of what I am … a priest,” he says, speaking calmly.
“I feel vulnerable. I have been made to feel demeaned and belittled. But in the name of remorse and shame for what some clergy have done, I cop it.
“Let’s just say it’s tough. But I will keep going and enabling others to get through this and hope justice is served. May all people, especially those who have been abused, be enabled to move forward. This is my daily prayer.
“The sexual abuse tragedy has been devastating. First and foremost for the victims and their families. But also for Catholics who are reviled for their faith. They consider the crimes just as repugnant, but still believe in the Church.
“As priests, we are the most obvious targets. I was wearing my collar in a cafe here just the other day when a person came up to me and said ‘Oh you’re a Catholic priest … are you a paedophile?’
“I said, ‘I’ll just make one comment to that: I’ve never abused anyone, but you’ve just abused me’.
“People think it’s OK to abuse.
“Some clergy have done some really disgusting things but there are other clergy who are doing it really tough because of it. Teachers are frightened too, it’s hard work. But I think we are slowly moving forward.”
In fact, despite the trying times — or perhaps because of them — Fr Morgan says Catholic churches in the city are recording a big increase in numbers.
He says up to 3000 people attend Mass in the Burleigh parish every weekend.
He says across the Gold Coast, more people seem to be attending a religious service of some description.
“I think that religion in society is cyclic. There was a huge upturn in the ’50s, a downturn in the ’60s and ’70s, an upturn in the ’80s and down again in the ’90s and noughties … now we’re in another upturn.
“There was an article saying that Hillsong church on the Gold Coast gets 1500 every weekend — we get at least 700 more every Sunday, and that’s just in Burleigh.
“We’ve just registered 150 families for our sacramental program as well.
“At Christmas, our children’s Mass alone had 1700 people there. I know a lot of kids who want to come to Mass but the parents don’t. It’s a generational shift.
“There was a dad here recently, his child was going through the First Communion, and he was feeling a little awkward. He was a surfie kind of dad, he hadn’t been to Mass since he was 17 and a student at Marymount. He came up to me after the service on Sunday and said, ‘Father, I didn’t know church had changed that much. I feel like I’ve come home’.
“My message is that the door is always open. There’s no judgment, no admonishment. Life is busy, I get that. If I can get people in church 12 times a year — weddings, funerals, first sacraments, Christmas, Easter — then amen and alleluia.”
Perhaps part of the draw is Father Morgan himself. He’s a self-confessed people person, or people priest. As one parishioner put it, he’s “user-friendly”.
In detailing the crazy life that is being a parish priest, Fr Morgan says he’s often thought his life’s work would make a great reality television show — Big Father rather than Big Brother (full credit: that was the Father’s line).
This is actually a great idea. I’m only sorry I work in print not TV or else I would be all over this.
But it’s not just his sense of humour but his resilience that resonates with his flock. It’s a resilience born from a life of profound experience, including helping his Port Arthur parish put back the pieces post-massacre.
“I was the priest for Tasmania’s Richmond parish at that time, which covered a large area, including Port Arthur. I was driving there that Sunday to say mass when I dropped in to see some parishioners on the way,” he says.
“When I got there, they said ‘have you heard there’s a gunman shooting up Port Arthur?’. I managed to get down there and the police blocked me, saying, ‘Father, what are you doing here?’
“I explained that this was my parish, I was meant to be saying Mass. From that moment I began to work with police, the parishioners and all of the people of Port Arthur to bring healing.
“I lost numerous parishioners that day … and numerous parishioners after that day, from suicide, family breakdown and mental illness.
“There are still parts of that day that I will not talk about.”
It’s a day Australians, and many around the world, will never forget. So how, being on the frontline, did he cope?
“I didn’t,” he says simply. “And then I did.
“At first I just didn’t know what to do. For goodness sake, I was 32 years of age.
“The parish priest from Dunblane in Scotland rang me, they’d had an awful massacre just six weeks earlier, and he said to me, ‘Just know that God will protect you and get on with it’. So I did.
“I gathered around me an army of supportive people, we answered phones, dealt with the media, processed letters. We received 42,000 letters from people around the world.
“We became the healing industry of Port Arthur. In the end, it was amazing.
“When I left, I didn’t return until two years ago, when I attended the 20th anniversary commemoration.
“It was good to go but I probably didn’t need to. I thought it would do something for me. I wasn’t part of the official ceremony, I didn’t speak to anyone. I just wanted to go for me. I walked around afterwards and thought, ‘This is OK now’, and left.
“There’s the saying to forgive and forget — but I think that’s crap. You forgive but never forget. You forgive and try to remember in a new way. You remember your pain in a new way so that it doesn’t weigh you down but gives you new life. You reclaim it for yourself. That’s what I was doing.”
There’s another saying, too. That priests are not men of the world. That they retreat from it.
But far from being shut off from the world, Fr Morgan is fully immersed. He’s travelled to more than 190 countries and, as a keen mountaineer, has climbed 217 of the world’s highest mountains. He even said Mass at the top of Everest.
As an obvious over-achiever, however, he finds this number a little disappointing. He actually has a list of 259 peaks — the tallest points of every country and major territory in the world. He’s still climbing, he concedes that he won’t make it to the top of K2.
“I’ve made a deal with myself. I’m allowed to not make it to the top of five per cent on that list. So if I get up to base camp on K2, that will have to do. I’m at an age now where I have to accept the reality of what my body can and can’t do.”
Facing reality is something Fr Morgan seems unafraid of.
His path to priesthood is a perfect illustration.
“I was walking to work one day when the parish priest yelled out to me across the road, ‘Morgan! Come talk to me tonight’.
“My mother made me go talk to him and I had the most wonderful conversation with this priest. My father died when I was quite young so I hadn’t talked to an adult man about my life.
“At the end of it he said, ‘I’d like you to think about becoming a priest’. And I said, ‘Well, I need to talk my girlfriend’.”
But wait, the story gets better.
“So I saw Madge the next day and I said, ‘What do you think about me becoming a priest?’
“She just said: ‘Yep’. I said ‘What? Don’t you love me anymore?’
“She said, ‘Look, I love you heaps but you have too much love for one woman. Every time we go out, you’re helping the homeless or you’re talking to people in the street. Go and become a priest would you?’
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“And here I am. I do believe that I was born to serve people.”
Funnily enough, Fr Morgan was also born to be on the Gold Coast.
Not only did his great aunt own the former dairy farm on Hope Island but his father, Ewan McDermott Batt, was the engineer responsible for the planning and development of Paradise Waters. If you visit Admiralty Drive in that suburb, you’ll see a park named in his honour.
While Fr Morgan grew up in Brisbane, by the time he was 18 he was a regular on Cavill Avenue. Although not quite like the rest of us.
“I was employed as a street youth worker on the Gold Coast in the early ’80s. Myself and two brothers, we all lived in this little two-bedroom 1960s unit on Cavill Ave.
“We had an open-house policy where homeless people would come see us every day. We had a stack of blankets in the corner and they’d take one for the night and drop it back the next day.”
To be honest, I can see where Madge was coming from.
While children and marriage are not regrets for Fr Morgan, he says it does take a singular person to give that up for a life of faith.
“Things are changing within the Catholic Church, but I can’t imagine doing this job with a wife or children — it would be so unfair on them.
“The divorce rate for clergy who can marry is surprisingly high. It’s not an easy life.
Fortunately for Fr Morgan, his decision to choose this life was. While his passion for the job hasn’t changed, he says the church has.
“We’re not black and white, we welcome all of the shades of grey.
“We welcome everyone. My door is always open.”
Although he does have one, small confession.
“Well, sometimes I’m down at the beach or climbing Burleigh Headland.”
Hey, it’s not easy living in (Surfers) Paradise on earth.
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