A few years ago Ken Haddock, a retired social worker, discovered that a legendary folk tale of Melbourne Catholicism was false. For decades Father Wally Silvester (1919-2005), a charismatic Pallottine priest, has been treated with awe as a former U-boat commander, and hailed as a war hero who defied Hitler by saving enemy Russian sailors.
Only last year did the Melbourne Pallottine order accept publicly the evidence that Silvester was not a U-boat captain and had not defied Hitler. Today, some Catholic websites continue to run the fake news.
The following paragraphs recap Haddock’s experience and ask why in 1966 the Melbourne Herald made Silvester a front-page story. Filling in a missing link in the local folklore, this article concludes that Silvester was lending a hand to anti-Soviet, and implicitly pro-Vietnam war, propaganda.
On Saturday night, 4 June 1966, the ‘In Black and White’ column of the mass-circulation Herald had a front-page story headed, ‘German U-boat captain now Kew priest’. The sub-heading said, ‘He sank Russian ship then defied Hitler and saved crew.’ The author was E W (Bill) Tipping, a well-known journalist, whose column had earned him the nickname ‘Mr Melbourne’.
The Kew priest was Walter Silvester, 47, born in Breslau, then Germany, now Wroclaw, Poland, who had been in Melbourne since 1951 and in charge of the Pallottine order in Australia from 1958 to 1965. The Pallottines were mainly stationed in the Kimberley, Western Australia, among Aboriginal communities, but Silvester was active in increasing their profile in urban areas.
Indeed, he had a reputation as a charismatic preacher and singer, gathering twenty or more groups of followers. Some leaders in the parish-based Young Christian Workers (YCW) were critical of what they saw as his over-emphasis on idealised talk about Christianity as opposed to their practical involvement with young people’s working lives and their leisure activities. Where the YCW was critical of B A Santamaria’s anti-communist Movement, Silvester was sympathetic..
Unquestioned by bishops, laity and daily press
In the course of his ministry, Silvester had told his story to many people. From at least 1958 the Melbourne Catholic Advocate had reported that he was “decorated for his successes as a U-boat commander”. Prominent Catholic figures who have repeated Silvester’s story of a U-boat command and defiance of Hitler include Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, Archbishop Peter Comensoli of Melbourne, Bishop Vincent Long of Parramatta and Father Frank Brennan SJ. When Silvester died on 24 March 2005, aged 85, Mark Brolly’s obituary in the Age used the headline, ‘Father Walter Silvester priest,........