Have Your Say

PRESS CONFERENCE, DOMUS AUSTRALIA, ROME, 26 APRIL 2025.

26 April 2025

E&OE

STARTS: 2:15 PM (IN ROME)

ENDS: 2:45 PM (IN ROME)

DON FARRELL:
Thank you very much and thank you to everyone who has come here today to Domus House in Rome. I am very pleased to be here with the former Deputy Prime Minister, Michael McCormack, and for both of us I can say it is a very great honour to represent Prime Minister Albanese and the Australian Government at the Requiem Mass at Saint Peter’s Basilica tomorrow morning. I think it is worth noting that Prime Minister Albanese is the first Australian Prime Minister of Italian heritage. Our delegation tomorrow morning will be led by the Governor-General (Sam Mostyn); she attended the Dawn Service at Gallipoli at ANZAC Cove this morning and will be joining us tomorrow morning for the Requiem Mass. Australia and ourselves express our deepest condolences on both branches of passing. Yesterday afternoon I attended the apostolic agnoscito and I signed the condolence on behalf of the Australian Government.

As a young man, I grew up in Adelaide in the 1960s and I was inspired by the social justice teachings of the Catholic Church to enter public life. Of course, it was these values that Pope Francis lived by. He was the first Pope of the New World; he was the first Jesuit Pope; more importantly, he lived humbly and frugally right with stride as the People’s Pope. Through this example, he gave hope and inspiration around the world to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. I am pleased to be here to witness his Requiem Mass tomorrow morning and pay our last respects to a very fine and holy man. May Pope Francis rest in peace. Michael, would you like to say a few words?

MICHAEL McCORMACK:
Thank you, it is great to be here with my Parliamentary colleague Don Farrell. This is a sombre time for the millions of Catholics around the world and the nearly six million Catholics in Australia. And certainly, for somebody from Wagga Wagga in the Riverina, I’m very humbled to have been asked by the Parliament, by the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader, to be here. At this momentous occasion, it is a sad occasion, however, and as I say, to see the Pope lying in state at Saint Peter’s Basilica, I was struck by how serene he looked, how at peace he looked and how humble by his wooden casket, and that is how, as Senator Farrell said, he lived his life. He was a humble man with frugal means. And he brought that to his acts.

He made sure that the church evolved with modern times. He made sure that it also kept its great traditions. He was very much a Pope of the people, very much a Pope of firsts. The first Jesuit Pope, first from the Americas, and even the fact that, when he met with the Cardinals, he did so standing up informally – not sitting in the Papal chair with them kneeling or whatever in front of you, he did very much as one with them, as one with the church. He was very much as one with the people, and not just of the Catholic faith, but indeed people from all around the world. He was a man of great humility, a man who brought compassion, kindness and peace. And certainly, the message of forgiveness. I am very humbled to be here, it’s a great honour. My very Catholic mother Eileen would be very, very proud. She was raised by the Presentation Sisters at Wagga Wagga, having been orphaned as a nine-year-old. Her sister Ellen (Sister Mary Denise Margosis) was a Nun. So, I do have very much a Catholic tradition. Growing up, we were always made to go to Mass every Sunday, and I was raised, of course, in the Catholic Church, and certainly educated at Catholic school where the Christian Brothers were very much at the front and centre of my education. So, I am very humbled to be here.

ROB HARRIS:
Mr McCormack, I know you have a big passion around Pacific development and Australia’s ties to the Pacific. I am just interested in your views of the affinity with the Catholic Church and how Australia can leverage, and how they are working with the Catholic Church to keep this unity?

MICHAEL McCORMACK:
Well, thank you, thank you Robin, and certainly Pope Francis was very much mindful of Indigenous peoples and certainly the role that indeed the Pacific Islanders can play given their faith. The thing Australia has in common with our Pacific friends is faith and family, and that is certainly how Pope Francis lived his life. Anything we can do to facilitate closer ties with faith and family with the Pacific and with Oceania I think would be a very good thing to do. I think Pope Francis’s death will bring the Catholic Church even closer together. And I think it will also, hopefully, spread an enduring place in the world. We live in a troubled world, and certainly the Pacific is no different – it’s very volatile at the moment. But if we can all reflect on how Pope Francis lived his entire life for others and we can spread that message of goodwill, peace, hope and humanity, certainly in the Pacific as a nation which has very close ties, I think that will be a very good thing.

ROB HARRIS:
Mr McCormack, what would it be like to have an AustralianUkrainian Pope today?

MICHAEL McCORMACK:
Well, you never know. I mean, Pope Francis was the first Pope from the Americas and from the Southern Hemisphere indeed. He was the first non-European Pope since Gregory III who died in 741 AD. Anything is possible, and Cardinal Bychok (Mykola) is young, he is aspiring, and he is humble. But that is up to the Cardinals, obviously, that’s up to the Catholic Church. He’s nearer god than me and good luck to him! (Laughter)

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