Bishop Pat Power has died at the age of 83. Photo: The Catholic Voice.
Catholic auxiliary Bishop Pat Power, beloved for his compassion, humility and deep love for his community, has died at the age of 83 after a long illness.
A local to his bootstraps, his focus was always on elevating human dignity and combating human suffering through love and practical action.
He had been a priest for 60 years, working consistently with people struggling at the margins, from refugees to Indigenous Australians and those living in poverty in the national capital.
Of his time working with the Causeway community, he told the archdiocesan newspaper, The Catholic Voice, “Most of them wouldn’t have gone to Mass, but they had a great heart for each other. That’s what being a Christian and a Catholic is all about — looking out for one another”.
Bishop Power offered strong and consistent support to those he believed had been marginalised by the actions of our own and other governments, including the East Timorese and Palestinian people.
In 2000, Bishop Power chaired a major ACT Government enquiry into poverty in Canberra and also worked consistently on dialogue across Christian and interfaith communities.
In 2012, he retired early from his role as an auxiliary Bishop, deeply troubled by clerical sex abuse, which he called ”a terrible stain on the church”.
He said the Vatican’s habit of secrecy provided conditions for abuse to thrive, creating the gravest crisis faced by the Church since the 16th-century Reformation.
Criticising the Church’s tendency towards ”tinkering around the edges”, Bishop Power called for the Catholic hierarchy to address the authoritarian nature of the Church, the participation of women, clergy celibacy and teaching on sexuality. The leadership must hear the voices of the faithful, he said.
He believed – and said publicly – much of the promise held out by the reforming Vatican II Council of the 1960s had been lost beneath attempts to reclaim hierarchical authority.
His belief in innate human dignity and the importance of widespread participation in the Church’s mission was fundamental to his life, and he was particularly impressed by the late Pope Francis’s humble approach to the pontificate.
Bishop Power’s willingness to make his criticism of church leadership public was a rarity, matched as it was by a deep and faithful commitment to service. It was a courageous approach to leadership that did not always appeal to the institution’s upper echelons but won him deep admiration from many in the pews and clergy who agreed with him.
His advocacy wasn’t limited to church matters, however. He also had time for the profound matters of state, including the South Sydney Rabbitohs’ return to the NRL competition.
Patrick Percival Power, always known simply as Father Pat, was born in Cooma but raised in Queanbeyan. He always identified himself as a son of ‘Struggle Town’, where some of his happiest years were spent as the parish priest, including welcoming Mother Teresa to a packed St Raphael’s in 1981.
He was educated at St Christopher’s School, St Edmund’s College in Canberra and Chevalier College Bowral before training for the priesthood at St Columba’s College in Springwood and St Patrick’s College in Manly.
He was ordained in Queanbeyan on 17 July 1965 and said of his call to the priesthood that he had never regretted a day. Priesthood for him was a “two-way street,” where he learned from his congregations, including time spent in Braidwood, Canberra and Goulburn.
In 1972, he went to Rome to study for his doctorate in canon law, returning to roles in Canberra as the archbishop’s secretary and director of the marriage tribunal, bringing with him great compassion for human relationships and their struggles.
In 1986, he was consecrated bishop by Archbishop Francis Carroll in St Christopher’s Cathedral, Canberra, becoming the fifth Auxiliary Bishop of Canberra–Goulburn and the first to be born in the archdiocese.
During his time as bishop, he travelled across the archdiocese to churches like my own, St Brigid’s at Quandialla, a long way from the centres of power in Canberra.
In a statement, Catholic Archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn Christopher Prowse said Bishop Power died at Southern Cross Campbell Residential Care in Canberra.
“Bishop Pat, a quintessential Canberran, was a priest for 60 years and a bishop for 39 years. He was loved and revered as an outspoken supporter of the poor and marginalised,” he wrote.
“Funeral arrangements will be announced later. May he rest in peace.”
Bishop Pat will be missed by many whose lives he touched with his generous spirit, his warmth and his deep love for his fellow human beings, whoever they were and wherever they came from.
Original Article published by Genevieve Jacobs on Region Canberra.
