Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the parliament and the people of Berowra, I want to congratulate Archbishop Anthony Randazzo, the Catholic Bishop of Broken Bay, who was appointed by Pope Leo as Prefect of the Dicastery for Legislative Texts. This is the highest role currently held by an Australian in the Vatican Curia. He's one of a handful of Australians who have run dicasteries, including cardinals Pell, Cassidy and Knox.

Archbishop Randazzo grew up in Queensland, where his father migrated from Lipari, Italy, and ran a greengrocery. Ordained as a priest in 1991, he worked in Rome as a canon lawyer. He returned to Australia running the seminary in Brisbane before being appointed the auxiliary bishop in Sydney in 2016 and the Bishop of Broken Bay in 2019. Pope Francis, seeing his gifts for leadership, appointed him the President of the Federation of Catholic Bishops Conferences of Oceania and the Apostolic Administrator of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross.

Catholics in Broken Bay will be feeling mixed emotions about this appointment: on the one hand, enormous pride that the gifts of the man who has steered the church in our community have been recognised and, on the other hand, a sense of sadness that we're losing such a good shepherd. Archbishop Anthony's leadership in Broken Bay has been transformative. He led the church through the challenging period of COVID, when churches closed and people were physically isolated, and then he brought people back to physical worship again. He participated in the synod for a synodal church and implemented those ideas in Broken Bay, encouraging both ordained and lay leaders to play a role in the leadership of the church.

Building on the foundations of his predecessor, Archbishop Peter Comensoli, he transformed Catholic schools with new governance, improved accountability, improved academic performance and a greater focus on Catholic identity that has seen Broken Bay schools go to over 19,000 children, the highest number ever educated by the diocese. His pioneering work on the Eileen O'Connor schools for children with disability and neurodiversity has been a great innovation.

In 2024, when, for the first time in many years, Christmas and Chanukah coincided, and horrified at the antisemitism taking root in this country, he brought together faith leaders from across his diocese. He encouraged Christians to put a candle in the window at Christmas to demonstrate solidarity with the Jewish community and devoted his homily on Christmas Eve to combating antisemitism. Last year he contacted me in early December to tell me he was going to do the same thing again. He put out a post on 13 December with his candle in the window, and then the massacre at Bondi occurred the following evening. On that night he led our country by example. The simple act of putting a candle in the window to show solidarity with the Jewish people captured the imagination of our country, and millions of people, from the Governor-General down, followed his example. His local leadership has been amazing. His moral leadership has been nation defining.

On a personal level, I want to say how much I've appreciated his friendship and his very good sense of humour. Archbishop Anthony Randazzo is one of the finest people I know, and I've been lucky to work with him during his time as the Bishop of Broken Bay. On behalf of everyone in our community I wish him good luck and godspeed, and we will all be praying for him in his new role.

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