Peter John Elliott b: October 1, 1943; d: August 6, 2025.
Endeavour Forum mourns the death of another of our good friends in Bishop Peter Elliott, who died peacefully and went to his eternal reward on August 6. He had been in poor health for several years, but he continued to the very end his intellectual and spiritual contribution to the life of the Church in Melbourne and beyond.
Bishop Elliott had maintained a close association with Endeavour Forum for many years, and especially with our founder, the late Babette Francis, whose last public appearance, at A Tribute to Babette on November 25, 2023, he had favoured with his presence. There he led us in prayer and gave a talk on his acclaimed book, The Sexual Revolution: History • Ideology • Power (reviewed in the Endeavour Forum Newsletter, No. 177, October 2021). Over the years he attended the numerous events organised by Babette and was well known as a special patron of Endeavour Forum.
The author of many publications on the celebration of Mass and the Sacraments, such as Liturgical Question Box: Answers to Common Questions About the Modern Liturgy (Ignatius Press, 1998), he had a distinguished academic career. I recall him as a student in our History Honours group at Melbourne University in 1964, where he seemed very English. I later learned that he came from a Church of England family with links to C.S. Lewis. To my surprise a few years later, I found that he had joined the Catholic Church and was studying for the priesthood. The rest is history.
Australian journalist Tess Livingstone, in her biography George Pell: Defender of the Faith Down Under (2004), describes the late Cardinal Pell and Peter Elliott’s adventures as Oxford University students. They were nicknamed by others from a certain religious order, respectively, as the Big Aussie Bastard and the Little Aussie Bastard. The image of Elliott perched on the pillion of “Big George’s” motorbike brings a smile to the reader’s face.
In 2007 he became Auxiliary Bishop to Archbishop Denis Hart in the Melbourne Catholic Archdiocese and served in Rome as consultor to the Congregation of Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments. He was particularly active in support of the Anglican Ordinariate of Catholic priests in Victoria.
Bishop Elliott will be much missed by the Catholics of Melbourne and especially by the committee and supporters of Endeavour Forum, for whom he was “our bishop”. May he rest in peace. Amen.
by John Morrissey