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THE RECORD
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Brady coming home, 140 years later An historic moment for the Church in Perth is set to take place in March BY BRIDGET SPINKS PERTH’S first Bishop is coming home, 140 years after he left in controversial circumstances, it has been confirmed. Perth priest Fr Robert Cross, who is Executive Assistant to Archbishop Hickey and also a trained archaeologist, met with relatives of Bishop John Brady in Ireland in January and gained their permission to bring the remains of the Bishop home from a French provincial graveyard in the village of Amélie-Les-Bains in southern France. He has actively been pursuing the return of Bishop Brady’s remains to Perth for the last six months. Among the relatives Fr Cross met were a priest, Fr Eddie Brady, 82, a member of the Missionaries of Africa Order. Fr Brady is a great grand-nephew of Bishop Brady. Fr Cross also met Bishop Brady’s great-great-grand-niece, Lorna Lavelle, her husband Paddy and two of their sons in Dublin, Ireland. The family gave its permission for Bishop Brady’s remains to be exhumed and re-interred in Perth, the diocese he founded. Family members were also delighted that Archbishop Hickey wants this to happen, Fr Cross told The Record. After the meeting, Fr Robert Cross travelled to France and visited the gravesite adjacent to the parish church of Amelie-Les-Baines. The Record has established that Bishop Brady’s grave has also been visited on at least two other occasions, once by Bunbury priest Fr Noel Fitzsimons and on another by Vincentian priest Fr Denis Bourke CM, who wrote The History of the Catholic Church in Western Australia. Archbishop Hickey and Mr and Mrs Lavelle joined Fr Cross on 20 January to visit the grave in southern France where they prayed three decades of the Rosary; one in Gaelic, one in French and one in
Archbishop Barry Hickey contemplates the grave of his predecessor, the first Bishop of Perth, John Brady in the parish graveyard of Amelie-Les-Baines in southern France, above. He photographs it, below, with local parish priest Pere Elie PHOTOS: COURTESY FR ROBERT CROSS Raubert, at right and relatives of Bishop Brady, Paddy and Lorna Lavelle.
English. The family told Fr Cross and the Archbishop that Bishop Brady, believed to have been born in 1788, would have spoken Irish, also known as Gaelic, rather than English. When he came
to Australia, he would have been more fluent in French, given that he studied for the priesthood in France and spent his early years on French-speaking Bourbon Island (now called Réunion Island).
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When Lorna and Paddy saw the grave for the first time, they were quite moved, Fr Cross said. “There was a poignant, almost reverential silence,” he said. The parish priest of Amelie-LesBaines, Pere Elie Raubert, who was unaware that Bishop Brady was buried there, was extremely cooperative and hospitable, Fr Cross said. He hosted the visitors for lunch, showed them around the town and took them to meet with the civic authorities and funeral director. Neither the civic authorities nor the funeral director could foresee any difficulties in exhuming the remains and, likewise, Bowra and O’Dea, funeral directors in Perth, have said there should be no complications at this end either, Fr Cross said. There is no certainty that there will be any remains after 140 years since Bishop Brady’s burial, Fr Cross said. Amelie-Les-Baines, which lies within sight of the Pyrenees, is a spa town with high concentrations of groundwater. It is possible any human remains may have effectively been dissolved by chemicals in the groundwater. “Given that, it is necessary for the exhumation to be conducted by an archaeological method to ensure that any human skeletal material and other funerary items are recovered,” Fr Cross said. When whatever remains of Perth’s first Bishop is exhumed in March and reinterred later in the year in St Mary’s Cathedral Crypt, all but one of Perth’s previous Bishops and Archbishops will be together. In 2006, Bishops Martin Griver and Matthew Gibney were exhumed from the 1865 section of the Cathedral ready to be reinterred in the new Crypt. Archbishops Redmond Please turn to Page 9
PRAY TO END ABORTION
ince abortion was legalised in Western Australia in 1998, over 100,000 babies have been aborted in this State. This year another 8,000 children will die unless Christians pray and act now. A child at 8 weeks 40 Days for Life is a focussed pro-life effort that aims to mobilise Christians to fast and pray for an end to abortion. The emphasis is on the power and compassion of God to overturn evil and heal broken lives. In just four years of 40 Days for Life campaigns worldwide, 3,599 lives have been saved, 43 abortion workers converted and nine abortion clinics permanently closed. All because ‘ordinary’ Christians heard the call and took a stand. To find out how you can play a role in the abolition of abortion in Australia, please go to www.40daysforlife/perthwa
PERTH CAMPAIGN 9th March – 17th April 2011 www.40daysforlife/perthwa