Franky and I had a coffee with the Archbishop of Melbourne, Peter Comensoli, at the Hyatt on Friday. It was a very cordial and a wide-ranging discussion. Franky thought he was easy to engage with. He said, “ I’ve never met an archbishop before because in Italy it would cost a lot of money!” I asked him, from where he sits, what he could see about Melbourne, as he has 208 parishes in the biggest archdiocese on the continent.
He said that Melbourne was recovering from Covid, but slowly. If Long Covid is a condition of the lungs then Long Lockdown is a condition of the brain. He said the cognitive consequences of lockdown are the biggest concern in the Melbourne archdiocese at present.
He also said that, globally, Francis was leading the clergy to discern a pastoral view on individual cases rather than a legal or political view like the way of his recent predecessors.
Archbishop Peter. Interesting man. What a job!
Pope Luciani School of Catholic Science Thinking 