Archbishop Christopher Prowse slams ACT government over Calvary hospital cross removal

Archbishop Christopher Prowse initially lambasted the ACT government for ordering the removal of Christian symbolism - only to learn that it was the Catholic health organisation which had decided to take the crosses and crucifixes down.

On Sunday morning, he was scathing from the pulpit against the government for sending in the crane to take away the big blue cross on the hospital's facade, and doing it on the important day of the week for Catholics.

"Totalitarian" was the word he used. "Of all the days, they picked the Christian gathering time," he said at St Christopher's Cathedral.

But then it emerged on Monday that the decision hadn't been taken by the government at all - but by Calvary itself.

"Calvary arranged to properly remove the Catholic iconography," a spokesperson for the Catholic hospital said.

"This included the removal of the cross on Sunday, the statue of Mary previously located outside the Xavier building, and a number of other iconography items of heritage significance to Calvary, which have been removed from within the hospital."

This is pretty much what the health minister Rachel Stephen-Smith had said earlier.

"We've been very clear about that the whole way through, that any decision around any of those items, when and how they were removed was entirely a decision for Calvary," she said.

In the archbishop's homily at St Christopher's on Sunday, he had said: "We Catholics have been around for 2000 years. The very first thing a totalitarian government does when it seizes Christian assets - the very first thing, they all do it - they take down the crucifix.

"Isn't that interesting? And that was happening this week."

On Monday evening, he clarified his intent: "Although Calvary HealthCare initiated the removal of the crosses, the point I want to make is that due to the ACT government's forced acquisition of the hospital, removing this cross, or any cross, from Canberra's landscape is a sad day which causes deep dismay in many hearts."

He said he had been to the hospital and met staff. A nursing sister had told him she had been working there for many years. "She said," according to the Catholic leader, "'I felt a gut-wrenching inside. I had been working under the cross for over 20 years and that cross has been taken down in such tragic circumstances'."

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On the Archbishop's reading on Sunday, workers went through the hospital last week removing the ultimate Christian symbol - representations of the crucifix on which Christ was crucified - from wards and other areas.

Archbishop Prowse cited a male nurse who had got in touch with the offices of the archdiocese. He said workers had come into the room he was in to remove a cross. He had asked them to pause while he kissed the symbol.

Archbishop Prowse said he drew hope from the removal of the Christian symbols.

"History has shown that if you take away Christianity from people, they become stronger Christians than ever before, and I hope that that will happen to us as a consequence of these tragic moments in our lives as Catholics in this city."