Archbishop of Sydney

Anzac Day

St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
25 April 2004

A couple of years ago I led the Anzac Day religious service at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in Rome.  It was a perfect spring morning with a light breeze, under the ancient Aurelian walls of the city built well over fifteen hundred years ago.  As always this sacred site was immaculately preserved, clipped lawns, beautiful flowers coming to bud around a large cross with the sword of honour at its centre.

Across Australia and everywhere there are significant numbers of Australians overseas, we gather to celebrate Anzac Day; as we gather on no other day for any national celebration.

I have visited the graves of our war dead in Port Moresby, Rabaul, the Middle East and the vast military cemeteries in France.  Most of those buried were little more than boys.  Some of them were only boys, many with names like those of our neighbours and our relations.

In all these visits I have been struck by the tragedy of their young deaths, the powerful example of their sacrifice as they lie there in their hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands to await the resurrection.

Only the very young or the very foolish glorify war.  I have never met an ex-soldier who did and certainly this is not the purpose of Anzac Day, not the purpose of this sermon.

When the First World War ended the nation of Australia was still a teenager, and about 60,000 Australians died in this “The Great War” to end all wars; 60,000 from five million people.  15,000 New Zealanders died from a population of one million, 2000 more than Belgium with a population seven times as large as New Zealand’s.

Different Australian groups, English and Irish, Catholic and Protestant, were united after this common suffering in a way they had never been previously.  I also believe that the contribution of the Catholic priest chaplains to the soldiers of the first A.I.F., whatever their backgrounds meant that the old religious bitterness was fatally weakened.

The threat to the Australian mainland was much greater in the Second World War but the horror of those battles has only reinforced and not replaced the Anzac mythology, this teenage nightmare.

A brother priest who was in the air force in the Second World War wrote that the conversation at reunions was much more about grandchildren and arthritis, those who died recently, rather than the heroics of war.

He explained that there is nothing so basic as facing the prospect of almost certain death.  The bonds between those who did this together, once, a few or many times (perhaps particularly when they were volunteers) are strange and remarkably strong.  For many nothing in their later lives reached that level of intensity.  Some believed their later lives were lived on borrowed time.

Most Australians today have not known active service at war.  We pray this continues.  Why then do we gather on Anzac Day?
 
The answer is simple.  We gather to do our duty, to express our gratitude to those brave enough to put their lives at risk for our freedoms, to remind ourselves and especially the young that our freedoms have been won and defended the hard way and might have to be defended again.

We do not minimise much less trivialize the bitter divisions of the past, but we do not aim to remain there, locked in by the memories of suffering and death.  We pray that in the blood of the fallen, all of the fallen, we may find the seeds of peace.

At the Rome ceremony of a couple of years ago I heard the tribute written by Mustafa Kemal in 1934 to the Anzacs.  We know him as Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey and he was a military commander at Gallipoli.  This is what is now inscribed at Gallipoli; also in Canberra, Albany (WA) and Wellington (NZ).

“Those heroes that shed their blood

and lost their lives…

You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.

Therefore rest in peace.

There is no difference between the Johnnies

and the Mehmets to us – where they lie side-by-side –

here in this country of ours…..

You the mothers

Who sent their sons from far away countries,

Wipe away your tears;

Your sons are now living in our bosom –

and are at peace.

After having lost their lives on this land –

they have become our sons as well.”

These are beautiful and generous words written by a brave soldier and a renowned nation builder.

As followers of Christ we should strive to be no less generous, sustained as we are also by the promise of eternal harmony in heaven for all good people no matter what might have divided them on earth.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.