Róisín Annesley KC urges Catholic professionals to be boldly invitational

At the most recent Melbourne Catholic Professionals luncheon, held on Thursday 12 June at the RACV City Club in Melbourne, prominent Melbourne barrister Róisín Annesley KC gave a heartfelt and engaging address on the way her Catholic identity has intersected with her professional life, encouraging her audience to be visible and courageous witnesses to their faith.

Speaking to about 280 luncheon guests, including colleagues, family, friends, clergy and Archbishop Peter A Comensoli, Ms Annesley said it was ‘a joy to look around this room and see so many friends … It’s as though all the compartments in my life have come together in one room.

‘I must admit, I thought that only happened at funerals. And I’m just hoping today’s not mine,’ she joked.

Specialising in commercial and insurance litigation, Ms Annesley has had a distinguished career at the Bar. She currently serves as president of the Australian Bar Association Council, and is also a director of Melbourne Archdiocesan Catholic Schools (MACS) and Melbourne Archdiocesan Catholic Early Years Education, as well as being a newly elected member of the Senate of Australian Catholic University.

You couldn’t walk past a church without going in to say a prayer, and then you couldn’t leave until someone else came in because it wasn’t nice to leave our Lord on his own.

The third and youngest child of Irish parents, she spoke warmly of a home life steeped in Irish Catholic tradition and ritual—the kind of upbringing ‘where your whole life was intertwined with God’.

‘Mass was mandatory, no matter how old you were, how sick you were or how late you came in the night before,’ she recalled. ‘You couldn’t walk past a church without going in to say a prayer, and then you couldn’t leave until someone else came in because it wasn’t nice to leave our Lord on his own.’

Her early days as a student at St Dominic’s, Camberwell—where she was taught by ‘gentle and gracious nuns in habits’—were formative, although she remembered school Masses as ‘tortuous affairs, where a very young and not long ordained Fr Anthony Fisher, as he then was, patiently endured those 1970s classics, “I danced in the morning” and “On eagle’s wings”, accompanied by some extraordinarily bad liturgical dancing.’

During her secondary schooling at Loretto Mandeville Hall, Ms Annesley was taught by ‘extraordinary women, devoted to their life of prayer and to the education of women’. She credits the Loretto nuns and her own mother—‘the hardest working woman I have ever known’—for instilling in her the belief that whatever path in life she chose, she ‘was required, in the words of Mary Ward, to do good and do it well’.

Poor St Jude. He does get bothered by me a lot, but then, in the line of work I do, I can assure you there are some very desperate cases.

In contrast to her school years, her time at Monash Law School did not provide many opportunities to reflect on her faith. ‘St Patrick’s Day was properly celebrated,’ she recalled, ‘but there was little discussion about moral or ethical challenges. It is fair to say that I did not grow in my faith or understanding of Christ and his teachings during my university days—indeed, I am confident that I put much on the backburner.’

Early in her legal career, during a period of professional uncertainty, she turned to St Jude, patron saint of hopeless causes. ‘Poor St Jude,’ she said. ‘He does get bothered by me a lot, but then, in the line of work I do, I can assure you there are some very desperate cases.’

She credits the intercession of St Jude not only with her decision to pursue a career at the Bar, but also with bringing her together with her husband, fellow barrister Gerard Meehan, with whom she now has three university-aged children.

‘So while I do recommend St Jude to you all, you do have to be careful what you pray for,’ she quipped.

‘To the extent that my faith was present in my life, it was the same as always,’ she recalled of her earlier years in the law and as a mother of young children. ‘I held on to my core beliefs. We went to Mass. We were involved on the periphery of the parish life. I prayed to St Jude, as I always had. I was lucky that I had not had any occasion in which my faith had been particularly tested. I was not, however, contributing to the life of the Church in any particular way other than money on the plate on Sunday.’

Being a director of MACS enables me to encounter God in Christ. It forces me to pursue wisdom and truth in the decisions which I contribute to for the staff, students and schools within the Melbourne Archdiocese.

It wasn’t until 2018–2019, when she was confronted with a series of personal and public challenges to her Catholic identity and faith, along with the upheaval of the COVID pandemic, that she was truly ‘shaken out of [her] comfort zone’ and began to consider the deeper implications of her faith for her work and family life.

In 2018, wanting to show her solidarity with the Church at a time of intense public scrutiny and criticism, Ms Annesley attended her first Melbourne Catholic Lawyers’ Association dinner, where the newly ordained Archbishop Comensoli reminded the assembled lawyers that they had a voice and should not be afraid to use it—a call she initially resisted but eventually took to heart.

One of the most significant opportunities that emerged in this period was an invitation to join the MACS board, where she now plays a role in ensuring Catholic education remains authentically grounded in faith.

‘Being a director of MACS enables me to encounter God in Christ,’ she explained. ‘It forces me to pursue wisdom and truth in the decisions which I contribute to for the staff, students and schools within the Melbourne Archdiocese.’

Another, more personal shift came when she and her family joined St Roch’s Parish in Glen Iris. The experience of parish community life there, she said, helped her whole family re-engage more deeply with the Church. ‘It has made an extraordinary difference to my entire family to belong to a parish surrounded by other faith-filled families … I have witnessed my children’s faith grow much deeper and stronger, which has in turn challenged my own faith.’

Ms Annesley also spoke passionately about the need for Catholic professionals to be open and honest about their faith in the workplace, even when it might be countercultural. Drawing on the example of St Philip Neri, known for his joy and spiritual wisdom, she encouraged attendees to take small steps in showing their faith in their daily lives.

‘You don’t have to rock the boat violently, but I do encourage you to rock it,’ she said, urging Catholics to gently challenge prevailing workplace norms where they might come into conflict with Catholic values.

Endorsing initiatives like the Melbourne Catholic Professionals gatherings, Ms Annesley emphasised the power of a simple invitation. ‘I do actively invite people to come to these sorts of events,’ she said. ‘It can be as simple as letting them know that it’s on and suggesting that they might be interested in coming … Your leadership in showing and telling others about Catholic events and your involvement in them makes it easier for them to join. It helps grow and strengthen their faith, your faith and the Catholic community in Melbourne.’

She recalled, for example, how issuing a simple invitation to some barrister friends to attend Ash Wednesday Mass one year meant she found herself walking together with a small group of colleagues to St Francis’ Church. ‘It’s not much, but it was a sense of camaraderie and community.’

And after she participated in a recent pilgrimage for Catholic leaders to Rome and Assisi, she told colleagues who enquired about her ‘holiday’ that ‘it wasn’t a holiday; it was a pilgrimage’, opening up conversations about the significance of her faith to her whole life. Even casual conversations, she said—whether at the school gate, in the workplace or on the golf course—can plant seeds of curiosity and interest in the faith.

In conclusion, Ms Annesley urged attendees to use their voice and their education as Catholic professionals to engage with the world courageously and faithfully. Being a Catholic professional, she said, ‘means you have received, as a minimum, the gift of education. You can write, you can debate, you have, in the words of Archbishop Peter, “a voice”.

‘So… whether you are, like me, a cradle Catholic, or whether you are a convert Catholic, I urge you, above all, not to be a complacent Catholic.’