HOW ROME OUTFOXED THE SISTERS

The Vatican moved with unexpected stealth to keep the church out of
safe injecting rooms, writes David Marr.

Catholics have been sidelined from the injecting room debate by Rome
in an operation that still angers and astonishes Catholic health
officials. More was at stake than the Sisters of Charity running a
medically supervised injecting room (MSIR) in Darlinghurst. This was
to be the first MSIR run by any Catholic health organisation in the
world. But Rome said no.

"A precedent would have been set that would have had an impact far and
wide," said the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal Edward Clancy. "It was
a moral issue with universal consequences."

Dead right. So Rome stymied the most persuasive advocates of "harm
minimisation" in Australia and sidelined church health organisations
everywhere while the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith consideres the ethical issues at the heart of the injecting room
debate.

"The distance between St Peter's and Darlinghurst is measured, alas,
more in tragedy than in kilometres," says Peter Joseph, the Bankers
Trust executive who chairs the board of the order's hospital, St
Vincent's, in Sydney's inner-city drug belt. Back in the 1980s, the
hospital and the sisters pioneered needle exchange in Catholic health
worldwide. For them, the injecting room was the next logical step.

But their shrewd grasp of the secular politics involved wasn't matched
by their handling of the church politics. Negotiations with the NSW
Government early last year to open the injecting room were so secret
that Clancy was not part of the loop. Clancy has told priests he found
out only during a lunch for the visiting Australian Cardinal Edward
Cassidy in July. As Clancy tells the story, the conversation over
lunch turned to injecting rooms and Bob Carr made some remark that
suggested the Archbishop knew all about the Sisters' MSIR plans. He
didn't.

Yet at first Clancy hovered between support and forebearance. The
Sisters' announcement, when it came on July 27, was welcomed inside
and outside the church. But not by everyone. A radical conservative,
Waverley priest Father John George, was perhaps the first to complain
- - to Rome and to the United Nations. In the politics of the church
these days, dissidents don't bother making a fuss to bishops at home.
They go direct to Rome. He was not alone.

Archibishop George Pell of Melbourne reached Rome in the wake of the
complaints. He has never absolutely denied a role in the events that
followed. But it is scarcely conceivable that the only Australian
member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was not
closely involved.

Back in Sydney everything seemed to be going well. Having the Sisters
operate the injecting room was a political coup - for Carr and for the
forces of harm minimisation. The Sisters and St Vincent's spent August
and September working with the NSW Department of Health on protocols
for the service. The necessary legislation was due in Parliament in
October.

But early that month, Clancy met the head of the order, Sister Annette
Cunliffe, and warned her that something was going on in Rome. Beyond
that, the Sisters were left in the dark. Father Gerald Gleeson, a
member of the national board of the Sisters of Charity Health Service,
has since written that they knew only that the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith "was investigating the proposal".

The Sisters were expected to let Rome take its course, but they
decided to fight - not that they were particularly worried. They
foresaw a process that might take years to come to any conclusion. But
unknown to them, Rome was not working at its usual pace.

The Sisters prepared what Gleeson calls briefing notes for Clancy -
policy statements and theological arguments - which they also intended
him to pass on to Rome. "The difficulty ... was that they were not
aware of the precise case being mounted in Rome against the proposal.
Accordingly, their letter sought to open a dialogue; they did not see
it as a final submission in a process about to terminate."

While Rome raced ahead, Australia dawdled. The Sisters delivered their
material to Clancy on October 8. This was then forwarded, perhaps by
post, to Archbishop Francesco Canalini, the papal nuncio in Canberra.
He sent the material to Rome with a covering letter explaining the
political situation in NSW and expressing his own opposition to the
Sisters' proposal.

Both the order and St Vincent's Hospital believe their submission
reached Rome too late to influence the decision - if it was read by
the Congregation at all. This was not dialogue. Only three weeks
passed between the first warning of trouble and the arrival in Sydney
of the verdict some time before the weekend of October 23-24.

The timing was exquisite. Carr's legislation was due to pass through
Parliament the following week. The extraordinary speed of Rome's
response and the arrival of this bolt from the blue on the eve of the
decisive debate has convinced a number of senior Catholic figures that
Rome hoped to kill the bill.

Over the weekend Clancy broke the news to the nuns, to St Vincent's
and to the NSW Government. The verdict had come in a letter to Clancy
from the head of the Congregation, Cardinal Ratzinger. The Sisters
have never seen the full text, only a letter of Clancy's quoting
Ratzinger. Despite the urgency of all this, it seems Clancy posted
this to the Sisters.

Ratzinger did not address the core ethical problems. He cited
"scandal" in the wider world for directing Clancy to pull the nuns
out. Ratzinger was judging message, not matter. Several sources have
confirmed that both the order and St Vincent's Hospital were pressured
to cite as the reason for withdrawing, their own change of heart.

They refused. But they felt they had no choice but to go - if only
because they couldn't promise to win a brawl with the Vatican. Better
to withdraw than allow the legislation to go through Parliament on
what might to turn out to be an entirely false basis: that the
injecting room would operate in the care and control of an order of
nuns. And the Sisters of Charity aren't a young bunch of women. How
would they personally survive a crushing conflict with Rome?

The St Vincent's board met the day after they received the
Clancy/Ratzinger letter. It was an amazing afternoon. The bill was
already being debated in the Legislative Council. Early in the
evening, Peter Joseph rang the Government and confirmed they were out.
When the astonishing news broke, no attempt was made to disguise the
role of Rome.

The legislation survived the shock but there was dismay - and elation
- - at the fate of the nuns. The Prime Minister was pleased. Archbishop
Pell, returning from Rome, said: "This is the only appropriate
Catholic response." Joseph publicly mourned the 50 addicts they'd
hoped to save, "young Australians ... who would otherwise be dead in
the back streets and alleys of Sydney if the trial did not take place".

And the nuns pledged to pursue a dialogue with Rome on the deeper
ethical questions involved. In February or March this year, the
sisters sent an expanded version of their 1999 submission to the
Congregation. It is understood they have so far received neither
acknowledgement nor reply.

Italians have begun to consider needle exchange. Ireland is thinking
about heroin trials. But whoever the Congregation is consulting as it
prepares an ethical verdict to bind the Catholic world, it seems not
to be talking to the nuns of Sydney.