Letter from

AUSTRALIA
by Alan McElwain
Master of the ten-minute rule
CARDINAL Sir James Freeman was Archbishop of Sydney from 1971 until 1983, when arbitary age (75), the great ecclesiastical ejector, caught up with him. He retired but, thank God, he is still very much in circulation.
He is a noted keep-to-thepoint and make-it-short speaker, celebrated for the wisdom, the wit, the pleasantries and the sheer human truths he can confine to ten-minute addresses. To cap it all, he has a photographic memory and never speaks from notes.
A wealth of organisations are still after him to speak here or there or support this or that. Recently, he and the retired Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne, Sir Frank Woods, have been joint patrons of the Combined Churches' African, Drought Appeal, which has raised more than $5 million.
I mention Cardinal Freeman because the other day I addressed a group of journalists at a special Mass in Sydney. When approached about speaking, it was strongly hinted that I would be doing everyone a favour by staying within a tenminute limit.
No problem. For years, I had been studying the example set by that Master of Brevity, the Cardinal. He is also a Master of the Instant Retort.
One of Australia's most popular glossy magazines, The Women's Weekly, prints everything from stories about the love life of celebrities to how to knock up the most tantalising dishes in the kitchen.
Once, after having delivered one of his ten-minute gems, Cardinal Freeman was cornered by one of those questing women who make a point of sending up the clergy. Had the talk, she asked, been all his own work or did someone write if for him?
"No", he replied sweetly. "1 lifted it from The Women's Weekly-. And that, as Cardinal Freeman said, fixed that.
Until he retired, Cardinal Freeman gave a regular, lastSunday-of-the-month, talk over Sydney's Catholic radio station, 2SM. The talks went down well and many people missed them.
A good example of his straight, compact style marked one broadcast in which he described his native Sydney as "a city with two faces, a city of darkness and light, of vast contrasts, where the first-rate competes with the secondhand and blessings and curses go hand in hand".
He compared Australia's economic situation with her "intolerable poverty rate"; her just pride in her sturdy, healthy children with the killing off, by abortion, of an estimated 50,000 unborn children a year in the State of New South Wales alone.
"We like to think of ourselves as the friendly type", Cardinal Freeman said, "yet mindless, savage violence abounds among us".
I was foreign correspondent in Rome, representng The Catholic Herald and the Sunday Times as well as Australian and other newspapers, when, in 1958, the late Pope John XXIII was elected to succeed Pope Pius XII.
Cardinal Freeman has always liked the story of how, soon after his election, Pope John summoned us correspondents accredited by the Holy See to a special Audience.
He looked us over in that benevolent way of his and said: "You know, there is a close affinity between us of the Church and you of the press — we are both striving to tell the truth". Then, grinning, he added: "We in our way — and — you in yours!"
Cardinal Freeman has endearing memories of Rome, especially of' his friendship, spontaneously and deeply made, with the late Pope John Paul 1. When they entered the conclave to elect a successor to Pope Paul VI, the Australian and Cardinal Albino Luciani, Patriarch of Venice, had an arrangement that, when they came out, Freeman would go to Venice as the Patriarch's guest.
Well, as we know, the smiling Italian never came out and, 33 days after he became Pope, he was dead.
As I write, Cardinal Freeman is in Rome for a meeting of that special commission of Cardinals that keeps an eye on Vatican finances (such as they are).
He likes the occasional trip, but is always glad to be home.
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