A KNOCKABOUT PRIEST
Peter Norden SJ

The bluestone walls of Pentridge Prison were designed to break the spirit of the strongest and most violent members of our community. But one man who walked the corridors there for thirty years was made the stronger and the wiser for it: Father John Brosnan, the knockabout priest.

View the tribute to Father Brosnan on the Jesuit Social Services web site

In turn, many of the most notorious inmates of the ‘College of Knowledge’ in Sydney Road, Coburg, were touched by this man’s presence among them. As one said this week: ‘He was a very devout man, and when you meet someone of his capacity, you think there must be something to this’.

Before prison ministry, the first ten years of his priestly life were spent as pastor to the boys in the Geelong Orphanage and then to the families and young people of one of the toughest neighbourhoods around at that time: Collingwood. He spoke about ‘kids’ futures being written on their faces before they were born’. When he reached Pentridge in 1956, he remarked that he was greeted by many of these familiar faces.

Father Brosnan later admitted observing how the physical and psychological brutality of Pentridge’s H-Division had turned bike thieves into murderers.

Shared memories following his death told of his presence not only in the prison setting but also on the racetrack or the dogs, at Hardimans Pub, watching football at Geelong, or at Parliament House. He seemed to be equally at home in such contrasting situations and able to move with people of such different values, beliefs and political persuasions. When asked how he survived thirty years living in that world, the Bros would ask in reply ‘Which world do you mean?’

Father Brosnan, 83, died peacefully on 26 March. Although he often quoted Henry Lawson, he readily conceded that he relied for his way of living on four books: the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

So how do such foundational documents, so central to Christian life and values, find their expression in Pentridge, when confronted with such physical and social isolation, where physical power, and at time the abuse of institutional authority, could bring about so much suffering and lead many to despair?

Perhaps the clearest evidence of how Father Brosnan applied gospel values to what might appear from the outside as a ‘God free’ rather than ‘God fearing’ world is seen in his association with Ronald Ryan, the last man hanged in Australia in 1967, and the broad community campaign to defeat capital punishment.

Father Brosnan knew from deep within his heart the essential inconsistency of trying to uphold the value of human life, by taking the life of another. He believed in the unconditional love of God, and was given the opportunity of giving it full expression, where most others might have been more dubious.

Deep down it seemed Father Brosnan had made a discovery about the essential sacredness of human life. It was at this deepest spiritual level that he was able to recognise the transcendental dimension of human life, and the essential inconsistency in attempting to uphold the value of human life by taking the life of another.

Growing up in Cudgee, near Warrnambool, and being educated in the local state school rather than the parish primary school that was more typical of priestly contemporaries, young John had a real sense of ecumenism before the word was readily recognised in ecclesiastical circles.

He had also been confronted with the cross in its lived experience at Pentridge Prison—some of the most intense examples of human suffering and indignity.

And through the intensity of his involvement with Ronald Ryan, he himself carried a very deep wound, a sense of personal trauma that stayed with him throughout his life. He knew he had been confronted by institutionalised evil and he knew he could never compromise his values with that. To walk away would have been compromise and even defeat.

Gospel values were also reflected in his own lifestyle which was simple, if not at times Spartan. He had only one pair of shoes, one suit and a sports jacket. Once, at the dogs, a couple of bookies did a collection and bought him a new pair of shoes. While he displayed great appreciation for their thoughtfulness, the shoes were never worn, at least not by himself.

He was a man with a big heart for those in real need. But this generosity was balanced with a directness and an insight into human behaviour which was hard to parallel: ‘Nurse a mug long enough, and he will die in your arms’, he once said.

When opening the Brosnan Centre in Brunswick in 1987, the then Premier John Cain quipped, ‘Father Brosnan is someone who has worked with a terrible lot of people!’

While the Brosnan Centre has lost its patron, it retains its inspiration in the extraordinary life of this man born in Keilambete in the Western District of Victoria who lived, walked and talked the gospel in contemporary society.

His final resting place says a lot about his approach to life. Instead of being buried in the new mausoleum for priests in the Melbourne cemetery, the Knockabout Priest will be alongside his parents, Jeremiah and Mary, at Williamstown.

Jesuit Father Peter Norden is the policy direct of Jesuit Social Services in Melbourne and was the successor to Father Brosnan as Pentridge Prison chaplain when he retired from the prison in 1985.