Sacrament of Communion and Unity
2026 Clergy Conference 

Speech

Most Rev Timothy Costelloe SDB
Archbishop of Perth

Tuesday 14 April, 2026
Newman College, Churchlands

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Last year, when in my capacity as president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference I represented the bishops at the funeral of Pope Francis and soon after at the installation of Pope Leo XIV, I was often asked by the media, both in Australia and in other parts of the world, to offer some thoughts on the transition from one Pope to another.

I am, as you will readily understand, a little wary of dealing with the media. They have an unfortunate tendency to take things out of context and to present you as sometimes saying the very opposite of what you had intended to say! While the media at the time of the death of Pope Francis and the election of Pope Leo was generally very positive, you could nevertheless detect a desire on the part of some to highlight any divisions they thought might exist between the vision of the two Popes. I instead was more interested in highlighting the continuities.

Interviews with the media are not a very good avenue for developing complex ideas so I had to find a way of expressing things as simply as possible. This always, of course, brings with it the danger of speaking in generalities. However, I do believe that what I said at the time contains some grains of truth.

I suggested that in Pope Benedict we had a successor of Saint Peter who was very keen to focus the minds and hearts of the Church on what it is that we believe. As a renowned theologian and scholar, Benedict was well equipped to do this and he has left us an impressive legacy in his encyclicals, his homilies and in the books which were published by him or under his name during his papacy. While no Pope, beginning with Saint Peter, is perfect, Pope Benedict was, I believe, the right man for his times.

I then suggested that in Pope Francis we had a successor of Saint Peter who was very keen to focus the minds and the hearts of the Church on how we live out in practice, in in the day-to-day reality of people’s often damaged and confused lives, what it means to live out the truths of the gospel day by day. As a bishop with a vast experience of the pastoral realities of a large archdiocese in a developing country in Latin America, Pope Francis was well equipped to do this. Like Pope Benedict, Pope Francis has left us an impressive legacy in his teaching, in his writing, and in the concrete example of his humble and simple lifestyle.

Now one year into the papacy of Pope Leo XIV, it is becoming clear that he may well be the one who will help us to bring these two dimensions of our faith -  truth and life -  which many people seem to want to set against each other, into a harmony which brings peace to the Church and through the Church offers the hope of peace to the world. I say this because in my reading of things it is the central theme of communion, of unity which Pope Leo has identified as the key to this urgent need in the Church today.

In grappling with this challenge of holding together unwavering commitment to the Truth and unwavering commitment to what I would call the pastoral approach, the Way,  of Jesus it is very important to continue to reflect on what I was trying to say earlier today: Jesus is the Way and he, and only he, is the one who should be our guide in the living of our daily lives and in the way we minister God‘s grace to God‘s people. We can and should, of course, look to the saints for they are inspiring and reliable guides as to what this fidelity to the way of Jesus looks like in particular places and particular times. Many contemporary biblical scholars would say that this is also true of Jesus, and of course in certain respects it is, but we must never lose sight of the great mystery of the incarnation. The truth of who the Almighty and mysterious God is shines forth in the words and actions of Jesus and in the mind and heart of Jesus which are revealed in His words and actions, and this in a way that is simply not fully the case in the greatest of the Saints. Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Mary of the Cross McKillop, the Cure of Ars, Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, Padre Pio, Mother Teresa or any other great saint we might nominate have much to teach us about the way of Jesus, but generally only in so far as they show us in a concrete way what faithful following of Jesus looks like in Italy in the 13th century, or in Australia in the 19th century, or in the poverty-stricken parts of the world in the 20^th century.

Jesus, of course, is by far the best model for us to follow but in His case, in a very unique way, we must learn to look beyond what he says and what He does, important though these are, to the heart and mind of Jesus which become visible in His words and deeds. This, I am convinced, is one of the most important consequences of the great mystery of the incarnation: in entering into the mind and heart of Jesus we are encountering the divine.

This has very practical consequences and invites challenging questions. What is being revealed, for example, about the Will and plan of God in the words of Jesus when He says, the Sabbath was made for human beings, human beings were not made for the Sabbath (Mark 2;27)? What is being revealed when He does not stop His disciples from eating the heads of grain as they walked through the grainfields on the Sabbath?  (Cf Matt 12:1-8)?

And equally, what is being revealed when He says “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth and the truth will set you free (Jn 8:32)”? Or when he says to Pontius Pilate, “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listen to my voice” (Jn 18:37).

And lastly, we might ask ourselves what Saint Paul is really getting it when he tells us that we must speak the truth in love because this is how we will grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ (Eph 4:15).

Jesus proclaimed Himself to be both the Way and the Truth. It seems to be very important that we recognise that the truth about Jesus and the truth of Jesus is revealed, is made manifest, is unveiled for us as He walks the way He calls us to follow. Walking along the way of the one who is truth leads to life. This is true for every Christian and therefore, in a particularly significant way, for us who by our vocation are called to be living images of the presence of Jesus among his people as their servant leader.

It is my strong hope that in Pope Leo XIV we have a man who understands this instinctively and who will guide us into a deeper appreciation of the communion of love and of life, that more abundant life which Jesus assures us he has come to bring (cf Jn 10:10), which is meant to be the hallmark of the community of his disciples. A communion of love, truth and life: this is not a bad description of the Church. The building up of this communion is both the gift and the task the Lord gives us.

In our Catholic tradition, of course, we recognise instinctively that this gift and task is at the very heart of the ministry of the successor of Saint Peter. This is a sound instinct. After all it was a central teaching of the Second Vatican Council that the Church itself is in the nature of a sacrament, a sign and instrument that is, of communion with God and of unity among all people (LG 2).

Precisely, because this is true of the universal Church, it is also true and necessarily so of the Catholic Church as it exists in this Archdiocese of Perth. We are called to be and need to be a sign and instrument of communion with God and of unity among all people.  The search for communion and unity, the commitment to communion and unity, the struggle against all that would work against communion and unity: this must be at the forefront of our minds and a central goal of our ministry. Here, I want to say very strongly, is another answer to the question of this Clergy Conference: What must be do brothers?

As the recent Synod on Synodality has reminded us quite forcefully, communion and unity are not the same as uniformity. We do not always have to do everything in exactly the same way, nor do we all have to think the same way. There is room for a rich diversity in the Church and this is part of being truly Catholic. But the rich diversity which can exist and should exist and does exist in the Church is absolutely dependent on unity in the things which are most fundamental. Pope Saint John XXIII understood this and expressed it in an encyclical he wrote at the beginning of his pontificate in 1959. Quoting a saying that is sometimes, mistakenly, attributed to Saint Augustine, he reminded us that there should be “in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; and in all things, charity” (Ad Petri Cathedram 73).

At the risk of repeating myself to the point of boredom the most essential thing for us is that we are called to be faithful ministers of God‘s Word, God‘s sacraments and God‘s compassionate and loving care for his people,  as we have come to know, receive and understand these, within the communion of the Catholic Church. We must always remember that we are ordained ministers and servants of, not masters in, the Church which is the Body of Christ and the Sacrament of unity in the world.

Contained in all of these diverse thoughts is or rather are some questions, some challenges and some invitations.

As leaders of faith communities in the Catholic community of faith which is the Archdiocese of Perth, how successful am I being, and are we being - how faithful in other words am I being and are we being - to the way and the truth of Jesus in the way we lead, in the way we serve, in the way we teach, in the way we speak and act?

In my way of leading am I a creator of unity or disunity, a sower of harmony or dissension, a builder of bridges or of walls? Do the people of my faith community, my parish, understand themselves as a vital part of the Archdiocese of Perth, both receiving from and contributing to the true wealth of the Church, which is its fidelity to the gospel?

And do I, as a member of the community of ordained ministers of the Church in our Archdiocese, deacons, priests and bishops, recognise my responsibility for the well-being of my brothers and their responsibility for my well-being: a responsibility for their physical, mental and spiritual health; a responsibility to bear one another’s burdens, as the letter to the Galatians (6:2) would put it: a responsibility to forgive each other not seven times but seventy-seven times (cf Matt 18:22) as Jesus instruct us to do.

Let me conclude this second Keynote address with the words of Pope Leo.

It is a great sign of hope - especially in our times traversed by so many conflicts and wars - to know that the Church is a people in which women and men of different nationalities, languages and cultures live together in faith: it is a sign placed in the very heart of humanity, a reminder and prophecy of that unity and peace to which God the Father calls all his children.

We have been ordained to be at the service of this ecclesial unity and peace. It is our great privilege and our heavy responsibility. What must we do, brothers, to transform the Archdiocese of Perth into a more effective Sacrament of Communion with God and of unity among all people?