AUSTRALIA
The Age

May 27, 2016

Chris Vedelago, Beau Donelly, Cameron Houston

The departure of Father Joseph Doyle from Our Lady of Lourdes church was announced without warning during one Sunday Mass in late 2005.

The congregation was told Father Joe, as he was known, would retire that day, after 37 years ministering to the Bayswater parish.

The senior administrative official in the Archdiocese of Melbourne, Vicar-General Bishop Tomlinson, made a special trip out to the church to deliver it.

He told Father Doyle’s flock that the priest wanted no fanfare to mark the end of what Archbishop Denis Hart had called – only a few years earlier – his “remarkable service”.

“We couldn’t figure out why Father Joe would do that,” a parishioner recalls, “but we admired him and believed it when we were told he had retired”.

Father Doyle moved from the church and grounds of Our…