Father Maurice lives alone on a quiet street where early twentieth-century cottages sit tucked behind white picket fences. A statue of a Cambodian King sits on the living room windowsill, gazing towards us with an expression that is hard to read: it could be serenity, it could be aloofness.  Behind me is a bookshelf stacked with books, some of which Maurice has authored. Maurice, who laughs easily, shies away from drawing attention to himself. He never mentions that he has been awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for his work with people living with HIV/AIDS. Nor does he mention that during Pope John Paul II’s visit to Adelaide in 1986, he acted as the Pope’s Master of Ceremonies during the Pope’s blessing of the city.

When Maurice was appointed as the Administrator to the Cathedral in the late 1990s, posters reading ‘Sack [Maurice] Shinnick’ appeared around the church and near his home. “A neo-Nazi group in Adelaide called National Action put the posters up. It was quite scary,” Maurice says. As a high-profile priest, Maurice had published a book, This Remarkable Gift: Being Gay and Catholic (1997), which made a considerable contribution to the scholarly literature at the time¹. The Adelaide Archbishop, Leonard Faulkner, threw his support behind Maurice, standing by his appointment. Maurice spent four years working at the Cathedral, a position he loved. He tells me that life at the Cathedral is very different to any other parish; confession work is an important part of the role as many people prefer to confess to a priest they don't know. How honest are people in confessions I ask? “Very honest,” Maurice replies smiling. “You hear everything in confession and more.”

During the 1980s Maurice became heavily involved in influencing the Church’s response to HIV/AIDS in South Australia. Between 1983-1996, approximately 16,000 people across the country were diagnosed with HIV, 7000 were diagnosed with AIDS and 5100 people died from AIDS-related causes.

Maurice and a small group of people started the South Australian Chapter of Acceptance: a faith community supporting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Catholics. Meetings were held in a chapel in Hutt Street. At first, 6 people would gather in the small chapel, mostly men. By the end of the 1980s up to 50 people would attend the monthly meetings.  “It was about giving people a home in the church and [supporting] their spiritual development. It provided a lot of relief for people,” Maurice says.  “At the time of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the Catholic Church was telling gay men to find a nice girl and get married. That was the Church’s standard pastoral response.”

In the late 1980s, shortly after Princess Diana opened the first specialist AIDS hospital ward in England, Maurice received a grant from the state government and the Church to travel to the US, Ireland, and the UK to learn about initiatives supporting those diagnosed with HIV. With no effective treatment available in the 1980s, there was little hope: thousands of people were dying. On his return, he worked with Adelaide Archbishop, Leonard Faulkner, to establish the Adelaide Diocesan AIDS Council, secured government funding for a drop-in centre and set up a pastoral care program for the sick. Maurice speaks calmly now about what at the time would have been urgent and hectic: “I worked with a nun to set up a team of volunteers who visited those who were very ill in their homes.” Ignoring the stigma and ignorance which was rife at the time, the volunteers would visit people weekly, helping with shopping and tidying homes. The centre also provided education to the broader Church by facilitating regular meetings with Parish Pastoral Councils. “It was the first time,” Maurice reflects, “that serious consideration was given to the pastoral care of gay and lesbian Catholics.” Archbishop Faulkner continued to throw his support behind the work, becoming personally involved in the lives of those dying from AIDS and initiated the AIDS Day Mass at the Adelaide Cathedral; when Maurice speaks about the Archbishop, his face reflects admiration.

For Maurice this issue is personal. His brother was diagnosed with HIV just before Maurice began writing This Remarkable Gift: Being Gay and Catholic – the end product of a master’s degree where he was supervised by an Anglican priest who later became a Bishop. His brother passed away in 1992, aged 63, without ever knowing that the book would be dedicated to him once published five years later. Maurice’s book offers a rereading of Catholic teaching and calls for a genuine dialogue between the Church and same sex attracted people. Maurice’s book aimed to facilitate the process towards the Church’s recognition of same-sex relationships. Since it was published, Maurice has received countless letters, some handwritten, telling him how the book had provided a turning point in their lives. “Even now it is still being read and people are still contacting me to tell me how the book has helped them,” Maurice says. “It needs updating but I am too old for that now.”

Though the overwhelming response to the book was positive, it was not welcomed by all. Some people from conservative factions within the Church took their complaints all the way to the Vatican. Maurice tells me this was the “influence of Bob Santamaria in Melbourne” – the man behind the Labour Party split in 1954. “Santamaria would attack me in his newspaper,” Maurice says. “At the same time, George Pell, the Archbishop of Melbourne at the time, had confrontations with the gay community. He would refuse communion to gay and lesbian parishioners, to anyone wearing a rainbow sash,” Maurice says referring to the Rainbow Sash Movement. “Pell was provocative.” Always searching for contradictions, Maurice tells me one of his favourite lines: “The catechism of the Catholic Church says that every person must accept their sexuality. This implies all sexuality. Not just the heterosexuals.”

A source of constant frustration for Maurice has been the ignorance with which pastoral care has taken place. “I have been with people who were dying of AIDS, and their partners could not see them as they were not protected legally; their families blocked the partner from visiting,” Maurice says, his face tired with sad memories. For Maurice, accompaniment is key to pastoral care: “It is about accompanying another person on their journey, not controlling their journey.” The act of accompaniment is encouraged by Pope Francis, something which gives Maurice hope. “Pope Francis,” Maurice begins, “recently wrote to an [Argentinean] nun who supports transgender women in poverty, to encourage her and tell her she is doing great work. It is the closest thing he can do aside from make a Statement.”

What do you think has made you so keen on inclusivity within the Church I ask? “Growing up, I never heard my parents criticise people. They helped people, accepted people. Dad one day took someone home that he found in a gutter. So, I grew up with the idea of ‘you don’t judge people, you accept people,’” Maurice says.  “My parents knew about my brother being gay. My brother was married with children before he came out. His ex-wife was one of his carers when he was dying.”

Outside, the clouds move through the blue sky. The afternoon sun does little to warm the chilly spring day. Maurice gets up to prepare a pot of coffee. As he places coffee cups onto the kitchen counter, he tells me about a recent trip to Indonesia with a friend, a fellow priest. He liked the people a lot, especially their friendliness. He spent a lot of time talking with people, asking them questions about their lives, their families. While striking up conversations with people, including complete strangers, is second nature to Maurice now, he tells me that as a child and young adult he was shy.

Maurice was born into a Catholic family in Kent Town, Adelaide, in 1943. Growing up he was always involved with the Church and at eighteen decided to enter the seminary. Ironically, it was Saint Valentine’s Day, 1961. When I ask what made him ordain, he responds, “It was a little boy’s dream, I suppose.” Maurice entered a seminary staffed by priests, ordained in the first half of the 20^th century, prior to the Second Vatican Council period where seminary life was rigid.  “We started with a regime that treated us as little boys and not adults. It was very controlled,” Maurice says. “Some of the priests had entered the seminary as young as 12 and we were treated like those children: as 12-year-olds.”

As a junior seminarian, Maurice lived in a dormitory with 20 other young men. After a couple of years, he graduated to the senior house where he had his own room. They were not permitted to have other students in their rooms as the priests feared this may lead to sexual relationships. “Our rooms in the seminary had a frosted glass panel and clear glass skylight. If the skylight was open, you could see reflections in it,” Maurice says. “The panel was there so that the priests could tell if there were two people in the room. It was a fear that the students may do something but never spoken about.”

I ask whether sexuality was ever discussed at the seminary. “No. It was the elephant in the room,” Maurice says. Once in the mid-1960s, the rector summoned all the seminarians and told them that if they were to ever encounter a certain person from another seminary, a student, they were not to have anything to do with him. “No explanation was given,” Maurice says. “We later found out this seminarian had engaged in a sexual act with a man and was caught by the police and arrested. We were not told any of this. It was always dealt with in such secrecy.” The student left the seminary, and he was never mentioned again. A decade later, in 1975, South Australia was the first state to decriminalise male homosexuality under reformist premier Don Dunstan. It took the last remaining state, Tasmania, 22 years to follow suit.

During Maurice’s second year at the seminary, in 1962, more than 2000 bishops descended in Rome for the Second Vatican Council. Italy, like the rest of Europe was still recovering from a war. When the Council ended in 1965, 16 documents had been written which would lay the foundation for the future of the Church. The changes reverberated across the seminary, loosening some of the rigidity that gripped the lives of the young seminarians. “It was not difficult for the students to change at all. They welcomed it,” Maurice says smiling. However, in the years following the Second Vatican Council, Maurice witnessed many priests leave the church. For some people the changes were too radical, for others the implementation of the changes was too slow. At that time, it was easier for a priest to resign Maurice tells me. However, this changed. “It was much harder from 1978 when John Paul II became Pope for a priest to be dispensed of his duties,” Maurice says. How did they make it harder I ask? “They wouldn’t accept the resignation. Or if the priest left, he was almost excommunicated: he wouldn't be allowed to marry in the church, for the example. They made it crippling,” Maurice responds.

After completing his ordination ceremony, Maurice was sent to work as an assistant priest in a parish. It was the early 1970s – a decade that began with sweeping changes: Gough Whitlam led the Australian Labour Party to election victory for the first time in 23 years. In the first days of government, Whitlam abolished conscription and requested the Arbitration Court reopen its inquiry into equal pay for women. Within the Church, the euphoria of change promised by the Second Vatican Council was still present. “In the 1970s things looked fantastic. Euphoric,” Maurice says. “But then in the parish, [I discovered] a disconnection from the Second Vatican Council.” He encountered a priest well into his forties, who was suspicious of new ideas and had not read any of the Second Vatican Council documents. Maurice on the other hand had been studying the documents since they were introduced as primary textbooks during his final years of studying theology. The priest made it hard for Maurice, being sure to repeat the experience he himself had as an assistant priest. The attitude, Maurice tells me was: “I had it tough as an assistant priest, so you will have it tough. It was a strange time.” Presbyteries were rarely happy places at that time, Maurice recalls: “You thought you would have freedom, but you only got one day off. It was very regimented. We lived virtually in the priest’s house.”

“It must be hard if the two priests do not get along,” I say, “especially as you get no choice in where you are sent.”

“Yes, and I think in a lot of places they didn’t get along. People say priests should live together as they need more support. But you don't really do it [become a priest] if you need a lot of support,” Maurice laughs. “It’s okay if you are friends or if you are compatible, but when you have a 20-year gap in between when people were trained it can be hard.”

Maurice spent the 1970s and 1980s working at different parishes and as a hospital chaplain. His mornings were spent teaching religious instruction at schools including state schools and the afternoons were spent in the community. “I would visit people or door knock asking if any Catholics lived there,” Maurice says, a practice which is no longer common as people are less likely to be home during the days.

Maurice walks towards the bookshelf and comes back to the sofa with several books he has published during his retirement – they are filled with photos from his trips to Palestine and Israel. He tells me about his travels and the people he met. When I encounter a photo of the Church of Nativity, the birthplace of Jesus, I am flooded with memories of my time working in the West Bank. I remember the annual pilgrims that would descend to Bethlehem, traversing the paths of prophets and preachers, beneath the falling snow that would melt soon after it reached the city’s cobbled paths. Maurice’s photos capture the desert light that falls onto Manger Square, where monastics and pilgrims, tourists and locals, congregate before entering the historic church.

For Maurice, one of the most shattering experiences for the Church has been the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse. “There are no excuses for what people did,” Maurice says. “The whole issue of sexuality was not dealt with in the seminary. The emotional maturing of priests and religious was pretty stunted actually,” Maurice says. “I think if you are in an environment with all males the opportunity to have a balanced connection with men and women wasn’t there.” I listen silently as he continues to speak: “Some of the religious orders, their regimes were so strict, one could understand some of the stuff that led to the abuse. For example, some brothers were emotionally abused – by the order, by their superiors, by the rules. Everything was mapped out for them; they could not make any of their own decisions. Having been formed at a time when you had no rights or control over your life, controlling others may seem ‘normal.’ And also not maturing sexually too and if you have a sadistic streak…. and perhaps desperate for affection if they entered the brotherhood or seminary when they were 12 and saw their families infrequently. Not understanding their own sexuality and its power. These are random thoughts,” Maurice says before falling silent.

“How do you reconcile the lack of compassion towards the child, given faith is supposedly all about love and compassion?” I ask.

“It was about protecting the institution of the church, its reputation. That has come out quite clearly,” he says, referring to the report handed down by the Royal Commission. It has significantly changed the way priests go about their work in the community Maurice explains: “In the past, you would visit schools and talk to the kids, now priests don't want to go to schools for fear it would be misinterpreted, that you are grooming children.” Maurice tells me that in the past it was common for a priest to be invited to dinner, but now a priest may not accept the invitation if he knows children will be present. “Some priests don’t have altar servers – girls or boys,” Maurice says. “It has caused a distance between priests and children. And yet what formed vocations was a healthy relationship between young people and priests and young people being inspired by their lives,” Maurice says, reflecting on his own positive experience as a young person.

Within this shattering experience, Maurice also sees something else: ample potential for liberation. “The Royal Commission gets us out of that boys’ club attitude [and the belief] that the Church comes above all else. Transparency and accountability have come out of the Royal Commission, and this has to apply to all aspects of church life. These are major changes like how Bishops are appointed,” Maurice says. “More needs to be done around how diocese are run as there is still too much secrecy.” Maurice wants to see lay people challenge priests more as this will play a part in addressing the problem of clericalism – the misuse or overextension of the clergy’s authority: “There are some strong movements like Catholics for Renewal which is really good; some Bishops are terrified by what they are saying. But other Catholics don't speak up or challenge the priests. It works both ways. The priests take control and keep power, but the people give them the power.”

Demolishing barriers and building bridges has underpinned Maurice’s ministry for the past 50 years. Words are a way of connecting with people and perhaps this explains why liturgy – the words used in religious ceremonies –has always been important to Maurice. He strikes me as someone who is meticulous in his work, a lover of detail; it is easy to imagine Maurice pouring over words for hours until they have been perfected. He has always enjoyed preaching and the preparation that goes into it. “I have always tried to make it accessible and relevant by bringing warmth into it and not preaching bullshit,” Maurice laughs. Sitting back in his armchair, Maurice takes a sip of coffee, his demeanour is calm, somewhat reminiscent of the statue of the Cambodian King who continues to look upon us both.