The Australian Catholic Church lost one of its genuine leaders on Monday morning with the death of 83-year-old Bishop Patrick Power, retired Auxiliary-Bishop of Canberra Goulburn.

A repost from September 17 2025.

Even though he’d been a bishop for 39 years, Patrick Power was always addressed simply as “Pat”, or “Father Pat” by more respectful people. A genuinely humble man, he was not one for titles. But he was also a courageous man who spoke the truth to authority which often landed him in trouble with ecclesiastical hierarchs, both here and in Rome, and even sometimes with secular authority.

Born in Cooma, NSW in February 1942, Pat’s family origins might explain something of his breadth of vision. His father was of Irish heritage, but his mother, Olga Bookallil, had Lebanese parents who arrived in Australia in about 1892 and who set up a general store in Cooma. He actually visited family in war-torn Lebanon in 2008.

Educated at Canberra’s Saint Edmunds College and at Chevalier College, Bowral, Pat studied for the priesthood and was ordained in 1965 in Queanbeyan. After seven years of parish ministry, Pat was sent to Rome in 1972 to study canon law, and after returning to Canberra........

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