Not only is Frank Brennan Australia’s best known Catholic priest, but he has also contributed much to Australia’s public life, above all to those most marginalised.

During the 1998 Wik Aboriginal debate Prime Minister Paul Keating called Jesuit Father Frank Brennan “the meddling priest”, to which Frank replied that if “meddling” got “federal politicians and bureaucrats to devise policies that assist those most in need” then his meddling was fully justified.

Keating was presumably referring to the somewhat truculent Saint Thomas Becket (1119-1170), archbishop of Canterbury and for a time Lord Chancellor of England. Becket had a difficult relationship with King Henry II (1154-1189), himself a bad tempered, impatient man who, furious with the archbishop, is said to have asked “Who shall deliver me from this meddling priest?” Four knights took the king seriously and murdered Becket on December 29, 1170 in Canterbury cathedral.

Fortunately, four ALP backbenchers didn’t inflict the same fate on Frank Brennan and he has lived on to 2025 to celebrate his Golden Jubilee as a member of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. He has been an ordained priest for forty years.

I first met Frank in 1968 when he was a student at Downlands College, Toowoomba and I was a teacher there. An intelligent, well nurtured boy from a loving Brisbane legal family, he was a daily attender at Mass, but without the slightest trace of pretentious piety. He joined the Jesuits in 1975 right at the time they were committing themselves in “the struggle of faith and the struggle for justice that faith includes.”

As a priest and a trained lawyer who is interested in politics, he has dedicated his life to witnessing to faith through a commitment to justice. Even before he joined the Jesuits, as a first-year law student at the University of Queensland, he witnessed a month-long state of emergency imposed by the Bjelke-Peterson government during the anti-apartheid protests against the south African Springbok Rugby Union tour.

More than 700 Queenslanders were arrested.

It was events like this that have shaped his unique career in Australian Catholic history. He has been a very public priest who has not been frightened to say what he thinks. He has also often acted as an honest broker in public debates which has earned him the “meddling” title.But he has also been the confidant of prime ministers, people in power and has been a voice for ordinary people particularly our indigenous citizens.

Mind you, the notion of a Jesuit in public life is not unusual. In ages past the Jesuits have played political and advisory roles to European monarchs and, as missionaries, counselled imperial regimes in China and India. A more recent example is Father Robert Drinan, SJ, who served for ten years as a Democratic representative for the fourth congressional district of Massachusetts in the US House of Representatives. In July 1973 Drinan introduced the motion for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.

The fact is that Frank’s public life is in a great Jesuit tradition. In the course of his ministry, he has held leadership positions in tertiary education, social justice, parishes, and served on government boards and committees. He has also been the “go to” person for governments of both persuasions seeking advice on many issues, but especially concerning First Nations people. He played an important role in the Voice referendum trying to bring Labor and Coalition together. Above all he has brought an integrated and consistent conscience to public life.

Frank’s father, Sir Gerard Brennan, was chief justice of the High Court of Australia from 1995 to 1998. It was he who wrote the lead judgment in the Mabo case which rejected the doctrine of terra nullius as antithetical to “the values of justice and human rights (especially equality before the law) which are aspirations of the contemporary Australian legal system.” Currently Frank is working on his father’s writings with a view to publishing a collection of them.

Few other church people have contributed as much to our nation and to public life as Father Frank Brennan, SJ. Congratulations on your 50 years as a Jesuit – and thank you for all you have done for Australia.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.