When constitutional lawyer Greg Craven gave his as new vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University (ACU) in 2008, he declared that the institution’s success would hinge on two things. “It must be supremely good at being Catholic, and it must be supremely good at being a university.”

That is not an easy double act to pull off, however, in a country where higher education has been ferociously secular for most of its 175 years. When Australia’s first universities were established in the 1850s, Australia was riven by sectarian hostilities they wanted no part of and that Enlightenment values suggested that public institutions should steer clear of.

As a result, theology was not taught on Australian campuses for well over a century, and religious instruction was allowed only in universities’ independently run residential colleges. The founding act of the oldest institution, the University of Sydney, limited its scope to literature, science, art, law and medicine. “They were so scared of sectarian divisions that…you couldn’t [even] teach history,” said former ACU history academic Hannah Forsyth.

Craven – who was only ACU’s third vice-chancellor, following its founding in 1991 – planned to navigate this complicated legacy by committing his institution to public engagement on issues relevant to Catholic intellectualism (in line with a perceived governmental imperative for Australian universities to seek to better distinguish themselves from their peers). This would involve “a profound concentration upon theology and philosophy” and a prominent contribution to public debates “in a way that promotes Catholic values and positions”. He pledged a new institute of public policy focusing on issues such as “life, social justice and religious freedom”.

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Thirteen years later, in 2021, Craven’s successor, Zlatko Skrbis, likewise committed in his own to leading an institution that was “supremely good at being a university and being Catholic”. But “tectonic shifts in the sector” – new educational technology, booming international student numbers, government funding overhauls and pandemic-induced upheaval – meant that “circumstances have changed”, Skrbis added. Under his watch, ACU would have “a stable core” but also “a disruptive edge”.

Disruption ensued. In late 2023, the university announced major cuts to religious studies, history, philosophy and political science. These were ACU’s strong suits; for instance, in the now-obsolete research assessment exercise, Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), the university was the only one rated above world standard on religious research. The cuts spelt the end of the Dianoia Institute of Philosophy, which just a few years earlier had headhunted star international scholars on the promise of an ambitious, sustained research programme.

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Then, in late 2024, ACU decided to close the PM Glynn Institute – the public policy institute that Craven had singled out as a core commitment. This capped a 15-month horror stretch for ACU, including a wave of resignations, terminations and contract non-renewals that would ultimately claim the entire second tier of the university’s executive leadership.

ACU says this was “part of the rejuvenating cycle” of natural turnover. Others describe it as a purge. “It’s no accident that some senior [Catholic] conservatives no longer hold their positions at ACU,” said Paul Oslington, professor of economics and theology at Alphacrucis University College, who worked at ACU for five years.

The university’s financial accounts revealed deficits of A$8 million (£4 million) in 2022 and A$36 million in 2023, ending years of surplus. Despite this, ACU paid about A$1.1 million to reverse the 2024 appointment of a law dean whose back catalogue included two publications portraying abortion as a women’s health matter rather than, as most Catholics would contend, a social or religious issue. The university refuses to discuss this episode.

In October, staff and students walked out of a graduation ceremony as staunchly Catholic former union leader Joe de Bruyn decried abortion and same-sex marriage during an acceptance speech for an honorary doctorate. ACU’s response – offers of counselling and refunds of students’ ceremony fees – earned the wrath of the Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, who resigned as chair of the university’s Committee of Identity.

An from seven prominent Catholic lawyers depicted this “withdrawal of episcopal confidence” as a warning that “if ACU has not already lost its Catholic identity, it is on the verge of doing so”. The letter said that in order to avoid the rescindment of ACU’s Catholic designation, an independent investigation of the institution’s senior executive was required – possibly a joint inquiry by the higher education regulator Teqsa (on civil matters) and the Vatican (on canonical matters).

At Christmas, The Australian newspaper that Teqsa had launched a compliance probe of ACU, citing concerns about its “competent governance oversight” and accountability, as a precursor to the university’s reregistration this coming July. The university confirmed that Teqsa had “sought assurances about a number of matters and ACU is in the process of responding”.

By then, the university’s Senate had reappointed Skrbis for a second five-year term, even though his first term still had more than a year to run. The move was portrayed as a fait accompli by progressive members of the governing council, which, uniquely in Australia, includes an archbishop and is half composed of bishops’ appointees.

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This is not the first time internal Catholic politics have spilt over into university administrative matters. Historian Forsyth said Sydney’s famously conservative archbishop George Pell, ACU’s foundation pro-chancellor and a president of its “corporation” or legal entity, had at one stage threatened to bankrupt the university by charging rent for church-owned land if it did not conduct itself in a “more Catholic” manner.

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Forsyth, who spent time on the ACU branch of the National Tertiary Education Union, said she had gained the impression that the “conservative side” of the church was constantly pressuring Skrbis to be more Catholic. “It struck me that the church sees the university as a kind of political football for [its] internal conflicts,” she said.

Catholic politics are particularly complicated at ACU because, unlike most of its international counterparts, it is not aligned with any particular religious order. Things are easier in the US, where the Catholic universities are “Franciscan or Jesuit or whatever”, a source said. “To some extent, you’ve got a guiding manual.”

Maria Luz Vilches, vice-president of Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines, said her institution’s Jesuit values helped guide its strategic priorities and even its oversight. “You don’t see God up in the heavens,” she said. “You see God in the mud. You see God everywhere. That’s how the Jesuit universities are governed – looking at the world not as an enemy, but a place for finding God.”

ACU’s spiritual traditions come from the multitude of religious orders that founded the teacher- and nurse-training colleges that amalgamated into the university in 1991 – Christian Brothers, Dominican Sisters, De La Salle Brothers, Good Samaritan Sisters, Marist Brothers, Sisters of Mercy and Sisters of St Joseph.

This makes for tricky leadership, according to historian Peter Sherlock, the University of Divinity’s longstanding former vice-chancellor. “The Catholic Church, despite papal authority, is not a unitary, singular entity. All the different religious orders…have their own charism [spiritual gift] and structure, and all the different dioceses and bishops will sit somewhere on the spectrum of conservative or progressive. The number one problem you have in a Catholic institution is [to determine] which bit of the Catholic Church are you talking to, and why.”

And that is on top of all the other trials and tribulations of being a vice-chancellor. “Zlatko has a completely impossible job,” Sherlock concludes. As head of ACU, “you’ve got to deal with government, student demand, industry – all the usual stuff – and then you’ve got to deal with the church politics on top of that”.

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Skrbis, however, plays down the challenges. “People will say that having one bishop [to answer to] is better than having six,” he told Times Higher Education. “But…[the Catholic] church is, by definition, a broad church. That is a source of significant enrichment. I would be lying if I said that I have not learned a great deal from this diversity of perspectives.”

He described the relationship as “a genuine partnership”, whereby the bishops are kept informed and occasionally approached for advice, but do not overstep. “Bishops have legitimate interests…in the university, and I can see how a perception could be created where that interest goes beyond what is perhaps appropriate,” he said. “The reality is that the bishops don’t generally interfere with the workings of the university.”

For his part, Father Gerry Gleeson, ACU’s newly appointed senior adviser on Catholic identity and mission, conceded that working with multiple bishops was a “challenge”. But working with multiple Australian states was arguably harder. “You’ve got…Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra…always [exhibiting] rivalry at the best of times. Zlatko has a lot of stakeholders.”

Most Australian universities are covered by single state acts. ACU has three acts – New South Wales, Queensland and Victorian versions – and a “corporation” of archbishops, their appointees and other religious leaders whose primary objective is “to conduct the university as a Catholic university”, according to ACU’s constitution.

Gleeson said the corporation was like the university’s “shareholders”. Most universities were technically owned by states, he explained. “In our case, it’s a church corporation.”

But these fine points are often blurred in people’s minds, with the bishops in the corporation assumed to play a governance role in the university. Forsyth said that when unionists had asked senate members to intervene in the ACU executive’s proposal to retrench humanities academics, they also made similar requests of the bishops.

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“The intel that we were getting…secretly [from] someone who works with the executive suggested that calling the bishops was the most appropriate thing to do – I think because several of them were opposed to the university’s management, and this would give them something to work with.”

One source said the bishops tended to “get very, very antsy” about suggestions of financial risk, particularly after Catholic Church Insurance – a 113-year-old insurer of churches and other non-profit entities – in 2023, over fears that historical sex abuse claims could make it insolvent.

“When something like that falls over and your insurance is gone, they get very sensitive to…any sign of financial instability,” the source said. “The scale of [ACU’s] deficit probably would have set alarm bells ringing.”

ACU is far from alone in encountering financial problems. Deficits were posted by 24 publicly funded universities in 2023, up from just two in 2021. Ten notched bigger shortfalls than ACU, including three with substantially less revenue. The university says its 2024 results will reveal an operating surplus of A$40 million, with rebounding student numbers “ensuring the financial resilience needed to navigate external challenges”.

In February, ratings agency Moody’s ACU’s “Aa2” assessment – the company’s third-best rating – citing the university’s “strong track record of implementing countermeasures” to support its bottom line. “Despite recent weaker operating conditions, we expect ACU’s financial performance…will recover.”

Nevertheless, sources say Skrbis had little choice about cutting humanities programmes after declining domestic revenue made them unsustainable. Forsyth said the scrapping of the ERA research assessment exercise also made humanities research less strategically attractive.

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If church authorities take an unnecessarily keen interest in ACU’s financial affairs, sources say this could reflect a general Catholic focus on accountability – a sense that money should go exclusively to the mission. “The institution should be able to manage its own resources,” said Vilches of Ateneo de Manila University. The purpose of accumulating money, according to Jesuit values, was to “serve more”.

Jesuit values gained ascendancy with the ordination of Pope Francis. The first Jesuit pope, he sparked what have been called the “” by reimposing restrictions on the traditional Latin Mass. Almost 800 mostly youthful worshippers turned up to mark the 450-year-old ritual’s last hurrah at Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral last June, The Age newspaper , reflecting “”.

This “retro spirituality” is part of a “generational divide” with mostly conservative leanings, a source said. It fuelled the furore following the walkout during de Bruyn’s speech in October.

Alphacrucis’ Oslington said conservative Catholics had been appalled at the treatment of de Bruyn for “expressing the traditional Catholic doctrine about abortion” in a “reasonably non-confrontational” manner. “How the hell could you be in a situation where, at a Catholic university, that causes people to walk off the stage?” he asks. “My…view is that the whole ACU project is not worth doing unless it is a seriously Catholic university. No one’s forced to go to ACU, but if you do choose to go, you ought to be up for a bit of Catholicism.”

Such a role is not inconsistent with a university’s legislated responsibility to uphold academic freedom and free speech, Oslington insisted. Rather, the “Christian tradition” of “hospitality towards opposing views” – a “generosity of spirit, combined with certain convictions” – made religiously based institutions natural champions of free speech in a sector where people were increasingly “shut down” through “shouting and violence”.

“If you’re confident in your position, then you should not be worried by people putting an alternative view,” Oslington said. “It’s not the religious who are most intolerant at the moment. Your standard Catholic – even your conservative Catholic – would be one of the more liberal and hospitable [towards] alternative views [among] most people you’d find in arts faculties today.”

But Sherlock, the former University of Divinity boss, believes the walkout from de Bruyn’s speech was “actually a credit” to ACU.

“If I was the v-c there, I would have…praised the graduates and said, ‘congratulations on learning the greatest Catholic value of all, which is the courage of your conscience and the willingness to act on your convictions. It can’t be easy to walk out of your own graduation. Job well done!’”

Skrbis said radically contrasting interpretations of ACU controversies were nothing new. “Welcome to my world.” He added that the de Bruyn incident was a “one-off” that he hoped would not be repeated.

Gleeson said ACU’s Catholic designation made it “a target” on gay and reproductive rights issues. “The Catholic view of these things is…not secret. Possibly for some students, maybe for some staff, that becomes a bit of a flashpoint.”

On the other hand, Skrbis said, ACU had avoided the “ferocious” activism experienced by other universities around the Israel-Palestine conflict. “There are…protective factors that come out of [our] sense of community,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that…we don’t have people with different opinions. But it did not evolve into a big, controversial issue.”

That is despite the fact that, in Forsyth’s experience, ACU has “students from so many cultural backgrounds. Lots of Orthodox students. Lots of Muslim students who didn’t want to go to a secular institution. [They felt] a different religion was better than none.” Some of Forsyth’s students told her that their parents wanted them to train for teaching in specifically Catholic schools, fearing the public school sector would be racist. “Others just thought, ‘a religious institution will understand me better.’”

Forsyth “really thinks” there is a place for Catholic universities. “But it’s so important that academic freedom is protected,” she adds. “And I don’t think that it is being protected in the way that it needs to be. The church really should stay out of it. You can’t [both] protect academic freedom and control what people do.”

Sherlock also believes that no universities should take positions on controversial matters. Therefore, it would be inappropriate for ACU to adopt an anti-abortion stance. “It might have a methodology [around] how [to] discuss such a question; I think institutions are much better placed if they come at it with that framework mentality,” he said. But ACU is far from the only institution to have struggled to hold that line, he added: many universities openly supported the Indigenous voice to parliament, which was also “stepping beyond” their responsibility to “hold open a debating space”, he noted.

Skrbis also argued that most of the challenges he faces are little different from those faced by any vice-chancellor. “Forget about the Catholic bit. None of this is easy. Higher education is not easy,” he said.

“When you then add those Catholic mission-related layers…It’s an institution with deep history, bright future, bright present, but not without challenges. It would be silly to state otherwise. But that’s a source of joy.”

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john.ross@timeshighereducation.com