In Bob We Trust (PG). Director: Lynn-Maree Milburn. Starring: Bob Maguire, John Safran. 102 minutes
Pope Francis notwithstanding, Father Bob Maguire is the closest thing the Catholic Church in Australia has to a celebrity. His authentic manner and dedicated work with the homeless in the community surrounding his former parish, Saints Peter and Paul's in South Melbourne, over the course of decades, have earned him many admirers both within and outside the Church. His aptitude at engaging with the media and in recent years his regular Triple J radio show with John Safran, has earned him a deeply committed fanbase, especially among young Australians.
The cult-like nature of his following is acknowledged in the title of this documentary by Melbourne filmmaker Milburn, which follows Bob during the years following his forced retirement from Saint Peter and Paul's, and captures some of the community outrage at the decision, and Bob's own ultimately unsuccessful resistance to it.
Senior members of the hierarchy, including Denis Hart, the Archbishop of Melbourne who requested Fr Maguire's retirement, and George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, with whom Bob has had run-ins related to the clergy sexual abuse crisis, are cast as authoritarian villains against whom Bob the cage-rattling hero must rage. Hart and Pell are all but absent from the film, having declined to be interviewed, which frees Milburn to frame this as an unequivocal tribute to a man whom she clearly admires. She casts Bob as a prophet, and presents a compelling case for that description.
The film opens with a monologue in which Bob distills thousands of years of Judeo-Christian tradition into a single, gripping manifesto, explaining in profoundly casual language how Christianity grew from a grassroots movement based in grace and self-sacrifice into an institution concerned with power and wealth, steeped in clericalism, and susceptible to corruption. He recalls the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s as nothing less than a revolution, which sought to even out the Church's power structures and to open up a Church that had become stodgy and self-referential. The revolution, though, has since been stymied.
This monologue sets the tone for the film, as Bob takes the 'invitation' to retire as an example of the over-extension of power by the hierarchy, and a rejection of his outspoken manner and unconventional methods, regardless of his pastoral intentions. Bob here is cast in a similar mould to Peter Kennedy and Bill Morris, those other earthy Australian clerics who according to the popular narrative were suppressed by the hierarchy for flouting outdated practices while attempting to find ways to be