Skip to content
The Catholic Leader
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
The Catholic Leader
No Result
View All Result
Home News

Tribute to Archbishop Rush

byStaff writers
29 July 2001 - Updated on 16 March 2021
Reading Time: 2 mins read
AA
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

ARCHBISHOP Francis Rush remained passionate about the priesthood to the end.

In his last interview with The Catholic Leader in March 1999, to mark the 60th anniversary of his ordination, he said, ‘I’m grateful that today I’m as awed as I was on my ordination day at the gift of priesthood.’

Archbishop Rush still had the browning remnants of his ordination card, which lists the names and countries of origin of the ordinands in Latin.

He said he worried when there was insistent talk about the numbers of vocations to the priesthood.

‘I feel God is always going to call men and women to the priesthood and religious life,’ Archbishop Rush said.

‘It is going on all the time, so one is tempted to believe some are rejecting that call. Why?

‘There are pressures of many kinds on them, not the least of which are attitudes by their parents when they are negative about the idea of their child becoming a priest or religious.

‘The limited generosity of such parents doesn’t match the generosity which characterises a large number of young people today.

‘Pope Pius XII used to say to such parents, ‘Don’t be greedy with God’.

‘I’ve often said that if youth don’t seem generous in their response, it’s because we older ones haven’t the wisdom to tap that generosity.

Related Stories

Cleanup begins after floodwaters swamp South East Queensland again

Angel’s Kitchen serves hot meals to the hungry in Southport

The Church canonises 10 new saints who shared God’s love

‘There are also people who say their area doesn’t have enough priests and should be allocated more. I am tempted to ask what they would say if a child of theirs came to them and said they wanted to be a priest or religious.’

In the same interview, Archbishop Rush touched on the Church’s future. ‘We too often forget that it’s in God’s hands. Our part is to co-operate generously with the promptings of the Holy Spirit.’

Archbishop Francis Rush meeting Pope John Paul II

Another of Archbishop Rush’s passions was the Second Vatican Council, of which he was one of only two surviving Australian bishops who had attended the sessions in Rome.

He said that in a seldom quoted line from the council, it talked of the wisdom that came from the ability to contemplate and to wonder.

On the laity, who he did much to bring into the Church’s mainstream, he said: ‘Eighteen months before the council, in my first address to the people of Rockhampton diocese as their bishop, I told them what Pius XII had said 16 years earlier, that lay people must grow in the conviction that it’s not so much that they belong to the Church, but that they are Church.

‘The council went on to say that the baptised who aren’t apostolic, prepared to carry the faith to others in whatever way they can, if they haven’t the urge to share their belief in Christ, and their hope, they are useless.’

Francis Rush was 17 when he began studying for the priesthood in 1933 at Springwood in the Blue Mountains near Sydney. Seminarians from Queensland and NSW then studied philosophy there before going on to St Patrick’s, Manly, for theology.

But in 1934 he was sent to Rome, where he studied with 37 men from 18 countries. They were ordained together in Rome on March 18, 1939.

ShareTweet
Previous Post

YOU CAN COUNT ON ME

Next Post

Humble Man of God

Staff writers

Related Posts

Cleanup begins after floodwaters swamp South East Queensland again

Cleanup begins after floodwaters swamp South East Queensland again

16 May 2022
Angel’s Kitchen serves hot meals to the hungry in Southport
QLD

Angel’s Kitchen serves hot meals to the hungry in Southport

16 May 2022
The Church canonises 10 new saints who shared God’s love
Vatican

The Church canonises 10 new saints who shared God’s love

16 May 2022
Next Post

Humble Man of God

Mentally Ill 'Abandoned'

Ruling on Deacons

Popular News

  • Here are the stories of 10 new saints being canonised this Sunday

    Here are the stories of 10 new saints being canonised this Sunday

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Hearts ‘fused’ together living their vocation

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • The Church canonises 10 new saints who shared God’s love

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Link between porn and partner violence growing

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Queensland election: The pro-life political parties committed to abortion law reforms

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
Search our job finder
No Result
View All Result

Latest News

Cleanup begins after floodwaters swamp South East Queensland again

Cleanup begins after floodwaters swamp South East Queensland again

by Mark Bowling
16 May 2022
0

LAIDLEY parishioners in the Lockyer Valley west of Brisbane are relieved after floodwater rose to the top...

Angel’s Kitchen serves hot meals to the hungry in Southport

Angel’s Kitchen serves hot meals to the hungry in Southport

16 May 2022
The Church canonises 10 new saints who shared God’s love

The Church canonises 10 new saints who shared God’s love

16 May 2022
Hearts ‘fused’ together living their vocation

Hearts ‘fused’ together living their vocation

15 May 2022
Link between porn and partner violence growing

Link between porn and partner violence growing

14 May 2022

Never miss a story. Sign up to the Weekly Round-Up
eNewsletter now to receive headlines directly in your email.

Sign up to eNews
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Jobs
  • Subscribe

The Catholic Leader is an Australian award-winning Catholic newspaper that has been published by the Archdiocese of Brisbane since 1929. Our journalism seeks to provide a full, accurate and balanced Catholic perspective of local, national and international news while upholding the dignity of the human person.

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader
Accessibility Information | Privacy Policy | Archdiocese of Brisbane

The Catholic Leader acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the First Peoples of this country and especially acknowledge the traditional owners on whose lands we live and work throughout the Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader

0
    0
    Your Cart
    Your cart is emptyChoose another Subscription
    Continue Shopping