Archbishops urge Vatican probe of Australian Catholic University
Two senior archbishops are urging the Vatican to investigate whether Australian Catholic University is upholding its Catholic identity
Two senior archbishops are urging the Vatican to investigate whether Australian Catholic University is upholding its Catholic identity.
Sydney’s Archbishop Anthony Fisher said in a Dec. 4 letter to Cardinal José Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education, that an intervention in Australia was “urgently needed.”
In the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Pillar from sources in the education dicastery, Fisher said that he and Melbourne’s Archbishop Peter Comensoli would welcome a Vatican investigation of Australia’s only public Catholic university.
The archbishops lead the dioceses in which some two-thirds of ACU students receive their educations, and Comensoli is a member of ACU’s senate, or corporate governing body,
Fisher wrote the letter on the eve of a meeting of ACU’s senate, which confirmed the reappointment of vice-chancellor Zlatko Skrbis.
Critics have accused the Slovenia-born sociologist, who took up the post in January 2021, of failing to defend the university’s Catholic ethos — a charge his supporters deny.
Welcoming his Dec. 5 reappointment, Skrbis said: “My vision for the next five years is for ACU to continue to be a university where academic excellence, human-centred research, and a commitment to our Catholic mission come together to transform lives and society.”
In his letter to Tolentino, Fisher noted that the senate was expected to reappoint Skrbis as vice-chancellor at its Dec. 5 meeting, “even though his present term does not conclude until the end of 2025.”
Skrbis will begin a new five-year term in January 2026. According to a 2023 Guardian report, he received an annual salary of more than 1 million Australian dollars (over $640,000) in 2021 and 2022.
Fisher, who resigned as chair of ACU’s committee of identity Nov. 13, wrote: “The shaken confidence in the leadership of the university amongst many of its stakeholders should surely occasion some serious soul-searching by the university regarding its identity and mission, and to reappoint the vice-chancellor in these circumstances seems premature to say the least and very ill-advised.”
The archbishop acknowledged that local pastors and lay people were divided over what action should be taken to ensure the ACU remained committed to its Catholic identity.
But he expressed support for “the appointment of a Vatican investigation into the allegations made against the university, and regarding its identity and mission.”
Fisher also called for “a pause on any reappointment of the vice-chancellor” until after a Vatican visitation, and the submission of a report to Tolentino and the dicastery.
The ACU, which describes itself as one of the world’s top 10 Catholic universities, opened in 1991. The taxpayer-funded institution has more than 32,000 students based on seven campuses in Australia and one in Rome.
The controversy over ACU’s Catholic identity ignited in January, when the university named lawyer Kate Galloway as its dean of law. Her public statements on abortion provoked a backlash, including a petition calling for the appointment to be reviewed. She was reportedly reassigned as a “strategic professor” with a payment of 1 million Australian dollars.
The ACU made international headlines in October when graduating students walked out of an honorary degree acceptance speech by former labor union leader Joe de Bruyn that criticized abortion, IVF, and same-sex marriage.
In response, the university promised to reimburse graduation fees, and offered counseling services to graduates, students, and staff. Vice-chancellor Skrbis told students and staff he regretted any distress they might have experienced following the Oct. 21 speech.
Fisher, who was in Rome participating in the synod on synodality, met with Tolentino and education dicastery staff Oct. 22.
Tolentino met with Skrbis and ACU’s chancellor Martin Daubney Nov. 7.
Fisher said in his Dec. 4 letter that the cardinal had urged the ACU’s leaders to “mend communion between the university and the rest of the Church in Australia.”
He added that Tolentino had also spoken of the need to observe the provisions of the 1990 apostolic constitution Ex corde Ecclesiae, whose norms govern ACU, and ensure effective institutional communication.
But Fisher said that despite the cardinal’s requests, “the situation seems only to be getting worse.”
Australia’s bishops discussed the ACU at their Nov. 4-8 plenary meeting in Sydney.
ACU’s pro-chancellor Virginia Bourke wrote a Nov. 6 letter to bishops defending the university’s handling of the graduation ceremony controversy.
She said that the university had consistently supported De Bruyn’s right to express his views. The ACU authorities reached out to students because of concerns about the effect and context of the speech, rather than its content, she explained.
Fisher challenged Bourke’s characterization of the controversy in a Nov. 13 letter to the pro-chancellor in which he resigned as chair of ACU’s committee of identity, while remaining a director of the committee and the university’s corporation.
The archbishop said he nominated De Bruyn for an honorary degree in July 2023, when he was a member of the ACU’s senate.
“At the event Mr. de Bruyn was humiliated rather than honored,” Fisher wrote.
He added: “Yet instead of apologizing to Mr. de Bruyn and his family, university leadership apologized to the very staff and students who had behaved so discourteously.”
Fisher told Bourke that the incident “should surely occasion some serious soul-searching within the university about its identity and mission.”
The archbishop said that as of Dec. 4, he had received no response to the letter from the university, but observed it had been leaked to The Australian newspaper.
He also recalled that in July 2024 he was part of an episcopal delegation that met with ACU leaders and proposed the appointment of an external reviewer to examine the university’s handling of recent controversies. He said the proposal was rejected and controversies were likely to continue.
“It has been gravely harmful to the reputation of the university, to the Catholic education sector more widely, and indeed to the Church as a whole,” he wrote.
“The ‘contagion effect’ is a continuing source of anxiety for the leaders of other Catholic agencies who are looking to the Church to intervene and provide some certainty that their institutions won’t be caught up in the ACU mess.”
For my better understanding of Canon Law: doesn't the law give the diocesan bishop oversight over universities bearing the Catholic identity in his territory? Why would a Vatican probe be necessary?
Even if the Vatican investigates (which I don't think is a given) I am doubting there will be any meaningful change here. I suspect it will end up like the Vatican's investigation of the Nuns on the Bus that straddled Benedict and Francis' papacies; they will get off because the Vatican is fearful of alienating people by defending teachings unpopular with the secular world.