AUSTRALIA : NEW VICAR GENERAL OF MELBOURNE

ARCHDIOCESE OF MELBOURNE REPORT:

Meet our new Vicar General

Sunday 18 March 2012 By Edwina Hall The newly appointed vicar General of Melbourne, Mgr Greg Bennet, has turned his hand to many things in life. As a boy he lived first in Canterbury and North Balwyn, and then moved to Bullengarook, in the Macedon Ranges, as a teenager. "I was blessed with the best of both worlds. I come from six lines of butchering on the Bennet side of the family. My mother and father had a business in Maling Road, Canterbury, which my sister now runs, so as children our lives revolved around the family business. And then my parents bought a property in the country in Bullengarook," Mgr Bennet said. "As Fr Barry Tobin always jokes, 'can anything good come out of Bullengarook?'" Mgr Bennet, 48, is the second of four children to Len and Maureen Bennet, who these days live in Tylden. "I come from a family where our faith was lived in ordinary acts and association to the Church was always important," he said. "The witness of living faith as disciples was gently and lovingly nurtured in us as a family." As a young man Mgr Bennet worked for Westpac—then known as the Commercial Bank of Australia. His career was going from strength to strength when he realised that he was called to the priesthood. "I went to work in banking and I started studying economics and administration. I was simply working at a local branch and then out of the blue I got a call to say I had been seconded to the state manager's office in Collins Street. It was at that time that I had been beginning to consider the priesthood, so I thought the message from God was 'go to the city' and maybe the sense of priesthood vocation would diminish. "While I was extremely happy at work, I knew there was a deeper call beyond that. At the end of that year I began the process of entering Corpus Christi Seminary. The day that I was going in to see Archbishop Little, I was called into the general manager's office to say I had been offered a secondment to Frankfurt. I phoned the vocations manager and said, 'look, I'm in a bit of a bind here because I've been offered this job and I really want to go to the seminary'. I saw Archbishop Little the next day and he said, 'come on in to Corpus Christi. Go back and tell your boss you are having another transition'." Mgr Bennet said he was humbled and honoured to have been asked to be Vicar General. "I pray that I will do it well for the diocese, and when I say that, I mean the people of the diocese. I know there will be days when it won't be easy, but I come with trust and hope that God, who brought me to this moment, has been with me and will sustain me. I'm excited; it's all before me in so many ways. "My understanding [of the role of Vicar General] is that I have been engaged to work very closely with the Archbishop, to support him, the priests and the many dimensions of the diocese in the delivery of the Good News to people and I understand that I will be involved in areas of governance. "Whatever happens, my sense of being a priest in this role is something that is foremost and that therefore achievement will be around 'have I supported the mission of the diocese, its pastoral mission in particular, and valued and honoured people?'" Mgr Bennet, who has been the parish priest at St Bede's in North Balwyn for the past four and a half years, said he would dearly miss his parishioners there. "From my arrival at St Bede's to my departure I've had a real sense of being cared for. The liturgical life of the community is something that has nourished my priesthood, so the people of St Bede's will always be dear to me." Snapshot 1986 Corpus Christi College 1992 Ordained by Bishop Frank Little 1996-1998 M.Science, Loyola College, Baltimore 1998-2000 Studies at Teresanium Angelicum, Rome 2000 Director, Ministry to Priests 2005 Director, AOFE 2007 Parish Priest, St Bede’s, Balwyn North 2007 Victorian Parliamentary Chaplain 2012 Vicar General, Archdiocese of Melbourne Photo by Fiona Basile.