Father Ted Kennedy was a champion of the Redfern Aboriginal community. In this interview prominent Australian sculptor, the late Tom Bass, talks about Ted Kennedy’s values and ideals. In the excerpt below Tom recalls Ted Kennedy’s influence on his own beliefs.
My friendship with Ted Kennedy goes right back to the time when he’d just left the seminary. It’d be about forty years ago, if not more, I’m not sure. I was in the process of falling in love with the Catholic Church. And our friendship just went on from there and he being a priest and I being in the process of falling in love with the Catholic Church, that brought us very close together – but his qualities, he had really remarkable qualities that attracted me very much. I think it was basically his openness. In the Catholic Church there’s a lot of sort of no-go areas and things like that, but there were no no-go areas with Ted; you felt you could talk to him about anything.
