Chris Meney has been a steady and trusted presence in the day-to-day life of Sydney’s Catholic community for more than a decade, serving as the first lay chancellor of the Archdiocese of Sydney.
Now retiring to spend more time with his large family, he says he and his wife Mary Clare are open to seeing “what else God might want of us,” he says.
As a canonical appointment, the chancellor role comes with a flexible job description and involves record-keeping and assisting Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP in his governance of the archdiocese for its 590,000 Catholics.
In Chris’s words, “I just try to help the church be what it’s meant to be, and the role is very much about serving the archbishop and the Catholic community in Sydney.”
He and Mary Clare came to Sydney from Melbourne 20 years ago with their children when he took a new role in the archdiocese in the area of marriage and family for the then-Bishop Fisher.
Chris began his career in science, studying applied biology and working in human cytogenetics where he met Mary Clare, an intensive care nurse.
After they married, he served 11 years in the Royal Australian Navy before moving into Catholic education. He later completed Masters degrees in education and also bioethics at the now-closed John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne.
He says his primary vocation over four decades has never really changed but has always been about marriage, family, and the struggle for holiness in the messiness of ordinary life.
After taking over from the former chancellor, the late Monsignor John Usher, much of Chris’s work over the last 11 years was ensuring archives and records were maintained, canonical procedures followed, important committees chaired, archdiocesan acts and decisions effected and communicated, and that nothing “fell through the cracks.”
While important at any time, church governance came under increased scrutiny throughout the country with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which began its work in the same year of Chris’s appointment.
Today, he sees much progress and culture change around the importance of safeguarding children and vulnerable adults.
He has also helped the archbishop through some challenging times.
He accepted the chancellor appointment by Archbishop Fisher in 2013 shortly before the newly-installed archbishop was struck by Guillain-Barré Syndrome and paralysed from the neck down.
It would take many months before the archbishop would regain the ability to eat, walk, and write without assistance.
Some of Chris’s early meetings took place in hospital helping with meals as much as with paperwork.
“You walk in and see a leader of the church, who is your boss, totally paralysed,” he says.
“It was really quite extraordinary, a reality check for me too, and an important time of helping him make sure everything continued to be done as needed and as the archbishop wished.”
A few years on saw the trials, beginning in 2018, of the former Archbishop of Sydney Cardinal George Pell for historical abuse.
Chris is a cousin of the late cardinal and also had a unique perspective as a close witness to the effects on clergy, families and other lay faithful of the cardinal’s trials and subsequent acquittal by Australia’s High Court.
“The atmosphere within the church and in the community more broadly was fraught for a long time; it was a difficult time for many people and even those within our own family,” he said.
“It was very difficult to hear harsh and judgmental things said about someone you know to be completely different in reality. And even when given clear evidence to the contrary people can be slow to change their views.
“But you don’t get to pick the times in which you live. You just try to keep doing what you feel needs to be done.”
Integrity is a word that comes to mind readily for those who know Chris. He says the best part of his role is that it offered space for him to be the same person in the office, at parish or other gatherings, and with his family and his friends.
“I never felt that I had to put on another ‘hat’. Integrity across the various dimensions of your life is really important,” he says.
“But he never brings work tensions home,” Mary Clare adds.
“He protects the confidentiality of people and matters and switches off. The moment he comes home, he becomes Dad and now Grandad. He’s very disciplined and virtuous in that way, but it’s also really just who he is.”
After 41 years of marriage the Meney home has been a living “domestic church” and the couple have long been champions of marriage and childrearing.
They say prayer is at the centre of their faith and family life.
They begin each morning with prayer as a couple and invoke the saints of their children. They pray the family rosary in the evenings.
“If you don’t get those foundations right, the rest wobbles,” says Chris.
The fruits are visible: nine grandchildren under five, and some of their nine adult children now involved in pro-life and other ministries.
Mary Clare herself leads significant apostolates. She’s a trained facilitator of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd; she leads prayer cenacles for priests and religious vocations; and for years she organised national Catholic family conferences.
Chris jokes that his ‘job’ has become her support in many ways, but she is quick to add that his wisdom and encouragement are unfailing.
The best advice he feels he can give his successor, current archdiocesan director of public affairs and engagement Monica Doumit, is just to be herself.
“She has an incredible array of gifts and will engage in her role in all sorts of ways possibly different to mine, but I feel the best thing you can do for your successor is get out of their way and let them be the best person they can be in the role,” he says.