The Southern Cross | June 2025

They were coming through the Wakefield Street doors from shortly after 10am for the Memorial Mass on April 27; individuals firstly, then in twos and threes and then larger groups shortly before the 11am start.

Everyone was welcomed. There were leaders of different churches across Adelaide, politicians including the deputy State Premier Susan Close, there to represent the South Australia government, and who stopped before the television cameras banked along the pavement by St Francis Xavier’s Cathedral entrance. She spoke of Pope Francis as a leader and a person, politics absent.

The church was near to bulging at 10.50am when a black saloon car pulled up by the eastern side of the church, the TV cameramen rushing across as Frances Adamson, the Governor of South Australia arrived with her husband. She smiled, a patently popular addition to the Mass, and headed for the reserved seats near to the altar.

With five minutes to go the likelihood of an unversed seat was nil, the spaces behind the back pews packed with TV camera crews and late arrivals.

The long ecclesiastical procession passed through and on the stroke of 11, the Mass began.

It was, on the face of it, a conventional Sunday service but with space for Archbishop Patrick O’Regan to talk about the Pope, a man he had been lucky enough to meet.

The entrance hymn, liturgical greetings and first and second readings done, he began his homily. It centred, for all of its 13 minutes, on Pope Francis and how fortunate we all were to have had him at the helm.

There was a hush as he spoke, the congregation intent on hearing something of Francis the man as much as pontiff, something a little personal that we had not heard before. The Archbishop did not disappoint, it was a soothing and well pitched paean, and very much what the people had come for.

It was close to 12.25pm when the dismissal came and the morning had passed in a flash. Getting out of the church seemed almost as long, the Archbishop walking slowly and rotating from side to side to smile at the attendees perched at the end of each pew. Exiting quickly via the middle door was impossible as the Archbishop shook hands with everyone keen to say hello to the man who had said hello to the Pope on four occasions, the last of them only in October last year during the Synod on Synodality.

Later, when the crowds had thinned considerably, he stood for photos with parishioners and visitors keen to send evidence of the day back to their families across Asia and beyond. No one pushed or cajoled for their 20 seconds with the Archbishop.

There had, of course been symbolism throughout the Mass but it was much less noticeable than usual, the first rate music was more to the fore somehow, the focus very much on Pope Francis and the Archbishop’s homily.

The crowds gone, a media conference with the TV crews on the outside grass followed, if you hadn’t made it to the Cathedral then a minute or two on the Sunday news was a decent substitute.

Conference done, at nearly 1pm, it was quiet once more. It was autumnal and overcast but the sun wouldn’t come out. It didn’t need to.