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Edmund Campion

Edmund Campion is a Catholic priest and historian. He is the author of Australian Catholic Lives and numerous other books on Catholic history in Australia and abroad. He has served as a committee member on a number of arts administrative bodies, including the Literature Board of the Australia Council and the Pascall Prize for Criticism.

'On the Park Bench' by Edmund Campion

July 1999, no. 212 01 July 1999
You know you are getting old when one of your students, genuine in her puzzlement, says to you, ‘Who was Bob Santamaria?’ Santamaria? The most famous lay Catholic since Ned Kelly! The man whose machine split Australian Catholicism for a generation; whose politics kept Labor from office for two decades; whose disciples and friends still move through the corridors of power in church and state! T ... (read more)

Edmund Campion reviews 'Daniel Mannix: Priest and Patriot' by Michael Gilchrist, 'The Demon of Discord' by Margaret M. Pawsey, and 'St. Bede’s College and its McCristal Origins 1896–1982' by Leo Gamble

July 1983, no. 52 21 July 2022
What major figure in Australian history, apart from Ned Kelly, has had more biographies than Archbishop Daniel Mannix? Librarians can give a decisive answer to this far from rhetorical question. Certainly, Mannix looms large in serious Australian historiography. There are personal studies by Captain Bryan (1919), E.J. Brady (1934), Frank Murphy (1948 and 1972), Niall Brennan (1964), and Walter Ebs ... (read more)

Edmund Campion reviews 'The Mansions of Bedlam: Stories and Essays' by Gerard Windsor

June 2001, no. 231 01 June 2021
Gerard Windsor had a rocky start to his writing life. Out of the Jesuits after seven years, he scored a contract with his old school, Riverview, in Sydney, to write its centennial history. I was one of the alumni he interviewed; I remember suggesting that he take steps to guarantee the publication of his text. After all, I argued, a school run by a religious order was like a family commissioning i ... (read more)