Sydney Archbishop: Pope Francis had confidence in Australians
Pope Francis appointed Anthony Fisher to lead the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney in 2014. An emotional Archbishop has described Francis as “encouraging” and “positive”. Read his full statement.
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With the clock chiming at 8.15pm on Monday at St Mary’s Cathedral House, an emotional Anthony Fisher emerged to take questions from the media.
To his right was a photo of the late Pope Francis, the man who selected him as Sydney’s Archbishop in 2014.
“I met Pope Francis probably a dozen times, at least once a year. He was very easy to talk to. He was informal, rather like an Australian in that respect,” he said.
The Archbishop recalled a story from a few years ago, when he had been called to Rome for a meeting shortly after his mother’s funeral.
“When I went to shake Pope Francis’ hand in the line of people meeting him, he immediately said to me ‘my condolences for the death of your mum’.
“The fact he knew that she had died, when he meets thousands of people a day... it was very moving to me” he said.
The Daily Telegraph asked Archbishop Fisher to reflect on when Pope Francis chose him to lead the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney 11 years ago.
“He was very friendly. He said to me he thought I looked very young. I have aged in the job.
“He was encouraging, very positive. When I think about it now, only last week I got a letter from him, reappointing me to a job in Rome for another five years. It’s kind of a sign of confidence from that great man in Australians, and in this Australian,” Archbishop Fisher said.
Pope Francis never visited Australia, although it was once hoped he would be able to attend the 2028 International Eucharistic Congress.
“It was on his mind that he would make that trip to Australia,” Archbishop Fisher said.
A small group of mourners gathered at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney on Monday night, laying flowers at the entrance.
The church will hold masses for the Pope at 6.45am, 1.10pm and 5.30pm on Tuesday.
When asked to reflect on Pope Francis’ legacy, Archbishop Fisher said “there will be grief and gratitude. We had him until the age of 88. People thought he would die a month or two ago. We got a bit of extra time with him, in the end, as it were. He even got to give his last Easter message yesterday.
“In picking the name Francis, that is a real signal to us of what he was going to stand for. Francis was this man who loved God, who loved the poor, who loved creation. His concern for refugees, for the people who felt marginalised from the community. Different kinds of poverty. A real heart for those people and determination to open up the church for everybody” the Archbishop said.
FRANCIS - POPE OF THE PERIPHERIES
A STATEMENT FROM THE CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY:
The Church in Sydney and Australia joins with people throughout the world in mourning the passing of the Holy Father, Pope Francis. As priest, bishop and pope, he embodied Christ’s command to care for all people, especially the most vulnerable. He was a Pope of many firsts.
He was the first to take the name ‘Francis,’ the first Jesuit pope, the first pope from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first non-European pontiff in more than a millennium. Yet for all those firsts, he will be remembered foremost as the ‘pope of the peripheries’, determined to lead the Church in reaching out to those on the margins—the poor, elderly, disabled, unborn, refugees and prisoners.
He demonstrated this in the way he carried out the Petrine ministry, making pastoral visits to many parts of the developing world or to prisons and detention centres in the developed world, using his global profile to give voice to those too often forgotten.
His care for those on the peripheries was animated by his belief in the transformative power of God’s mercy. His motto, taken from St Bede’s homily on the call of St Matthew, was “Miserando atque eligendo’ (‘by having mercy and by choosing Mercy’), reflected the importance of Divine Mercy to his own faith and vocation, to what he taught and to how he treated others. We will always remember the moving images of Pope Francis stopping his vehicle to embrace those with severe disabilities, joyfully greeting young children who broke through security barriers to reach him, and washing and kissing the feet of prisoners on Holy Thursday.
Pope Francis passionately decried views and actions contrary to human dignity and flourishing. He condemned what he described as ‘the globalisation of indifference’ when it came to refugees and the poor, ‘the ideological colonisation’ of the developing world by secularising Western forces, and ‘the throwaway culture’ that treats everything and everyone deemed no longer useful, including the unborn and elderly, as disposable.
He cared deeply for all of God’s creation, especially our common home the earth, and his celebrated encyclical, Laudato Si’ called for an integral ecology and reinforced the teaching that Christians must be good stewards of the natural world. Francis was also ‘the pope of synodality’, inviting all members of the Church to journey together as pilgrims, listening to each other and to the voice of the Holy Spirit, in order better to carry out the mission of evangelisation and outreach.
Pope Francis died on Easter Monday only hours after giving his Easter Sunday “Urbi et Orbi” blessing to the city and the world. He said “From the empty tomb in Jerusalem, we hear unexpected good news: ‘Jesus, who was crucified, is not here, he has risen’. Jesus is not in the tomb, he is alive! Love has triumphed over hatred, light over darkness, and truth over falsehood. Forgiveness has triumphed over revenge.
Evil no longer has the upper hand; it no longer has power over those who accept the grace of this day.” Now Pope Francis has himself entered into the triumphant truth, goodness, mercy and love of the Risen Lord he served so well. Whilst saddened by his death, we are grateful for the blessing of his long life, spent in service of Christ and His people. Pope Francis began his papacy and ended his every Sunday Angelus by asking those gathered to pray for him. Let us all heed this request now, offering our prayers for the Holy Father, that he will now receive the merciful embrace of the Lord he preached and served so well.
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