Martin O'Brien
Former UK Holy See Ambassador and newly installed head of St Marys University, London, Francis Campbell speaks frankly to Martin O’Brien on Catholic vision, the Pope, Isis and Europe
When Co. Down born diplomat Francis Campbell took over last week as vice-chancellor or chief executive of Britain’s newest university, St Mary’s University, Twickenham in London, he and his Board of Governors would surely have been hoping that he will bring to the post the type of vision and sure footedness that contributed to him becoming a pioneering and outstandingly successful British Ambassador to the Holy See for more than five years from 2005 to 2011.
That was the longest spell of any UK ambassador to the Vatican since diplomatic relations were fully restored at the time of Pope St John Paul II’s visit to Britain in 1982.
Mr Campbell’s Board has no doubts. They head-hunted him for their top job and their success in persuading him to leave his positon as a career civil servant to lead the new university is seen by observers in the higher education sector and beyond as a considerable coup.
His experience both of global diplomacy and the corridors of power in Whitehall brings to the university an international perspective that should enhance its standing and its ability to engage confidently with the secular world.
Just before Mr Campbell assumed the positon on August 1, he gave a wide ranging interview to The Irish Catholic, his first interview since he vacated the post of head of the policy unit at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office earlier this year to prepare for the St Mary’s job.
He now heads a university of 6,000 students and nearly 1,000 staff on a spacious 55 acre campus in south west London where double Olympic champion Mo Farah once graced the running track as a student.
In the interview he set out a bold vision for the university taking great care to underline and affirm its distinctly Catholic ethos.
Vision
“The vision is to have in London a university that has a regional, national and international reputation that is clear about what its identity and foundation is but is an inclusive platform for all to participate in.”
St Mary’s, perhaps best known among older readers as one of the major teacher training colleges in these islands, also known as Strawberry Hill, was awarded full university status by the Privy Council in January.
The Privy Council approved the new university’s Articles of Association which assert that its “objects are to advance education, in such manner as befits a Catholic foundation, by the provision, development and conduct of a Catholic institution of higher education.”
Today about a quarter of the students are in teacher education and it offers more than 30 undergraduate courses alone.
Asked what a Catholic ethos and values mean in concrete terms and how they might be squared with a commitment to inclusivity Mr Campbell says St Mary’s looks beyond “the financials” and at “other aspects fundamental to good management such as morale and the quality of the service in keeping with the whole spirit of the Irish Vincentian tradition.”
In practical terms this means such things as not outsourcing services, paying the London Living Wage to employees and having a Catholic chaplaincy that is funded by the university.
While “inclusivity has to be worked at” and everyone made welcome – there is a multi-faith prayer room for example – he warns that “if we found our identity or our values eroded then we would cease to be distinctive and would probably cease to exist”.
“Our primary mission is the education and formation of individuals in a holistic way so they can thrive not just professionally but receive a formation in the widest sense of the word so it is truly an education and not fixated on utilitarianism.”
Last month St Mary’s and Heythrop College, the London University College which specialises in theology and philosophy and founded by the Jesuits in 1614, with 950 students, revealed in separate but simultaneous announcements that they were seeking to form “a strategic partnership”.
It is understood this followed informal approaches from Heythrop to St Mary’s some months earlier and Mr Campbell’s trickiest early challenge is likely to be leading the negotiations on behalf of St Mary’s and co-steering them to a successful conclusion.
He will not be drawn on precisely what “a strategic partnership” may actually mean but clearly favours closer co-operation and partnership between these two important Catholic seats of learning while acknowledging the significance of Heythrop making the initial approach.
Pressed, he says he doesn’t have a preference pointing out that the talks are at an early stage and that any outcome “would be evidence-led” after “due diligence” had been conducted independently by both sides on each other and would have to be “sustainable”.
However, informed obs-ervers of the sector have suggested that a merger of St Mary’s University and Heythrop College may be on the cards.
Francis, the youngest of four sons of Daniel and the late Brigid Campbell, brought up on a farm “one field from the church” near Rathfriland says the greatest influences in his formation were his parents and two priests, Fr James McEvoy and Canon Patrick McAnuff, successively parish priests at his home church, St Colman’s, Barnmeen.
He recalls his mother having “a very humble, pure faith” and Fr McEvoy – ordained by the future Pope Pius XII in the Irish College, Rome in 1935 – “giving me my first words of Italian, his combination of faith, humanity and gentleness was very, very profound”.
Francis, who himself trained for the priesthood for three and a half years before discerning God was calling him elsewhere speaks simply and eloquently about his understanding of God.
“I believe in a God that is merciful, knows the totality of the person, knows what the purity of motive is.”
“Purity of motive” he says “is one of the most daunting things as a human being, you’re never quite sure what your purity of motive is and you most constantly discern that, why do you do what you do, why do you act as you act?”
He sees God as “an entity that is all knowing, charitable and merciful and actually takes the tiniest bit of good will or desire on the part of the individual human being and builds on it through grace”.
Asked how he thinks his faith has influenced the way he has carried out his respective career roles he says it means he tries “to set for myself the standards I expect of others”.
“If you expect others to make allowances for you then you must make allowances for them.”
It also means recognising “the power of faith to change things, to be a force for good”.
After Mr Campbell, 44, the former private secretary to the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, left the Vatican post in early 2011 having crowned his term by playing a key role in the planning and organising of Pope Benedict XVI’s successful State visit, he served for two years in one of Britain’s most fraught foreign missions, in Karachi as Deputy High Commissioner and Director, Trade and Investment for Pakistan.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw famously appointed him to the Vatican making him the first Roman Catholic to hold the post since the Reformation. Mr Blair revealed in the 2010 BBC TV documentary series Our Man in the Vatican – which this writer had a hand in – how he overturned nearly 90 years of British policy to approve the appointment.
As he was a key member of Mr Blair’s team in Downing Street for four years from the age of 29 – during the fraught period after the ratification of the Good Friday Agreement – one is curious about his assessment of the North today, a place he returns to regularly to visit his father.
He reminds me he has not lived here since 1992 but says “I find a place that is transformed and sometimes if you are living there you don’t see it. When I cross the border I see no more militarisation, no more checkpoints, I don’t experience the same degree of tension.”
Privileged
He says he was “immensely privileged” to work with Tony Blair helping to bed down the peace and “the thing which impressed me the most was Mr Blair’s tireless effort in relation to the peace process, it was not a popular cause [in Britain]”.
Francis Campbell is perhaps at his most fascinating when invited to reflect on the question of identity in the context of the provision in the Good Friday Agreement which permits people in the North to choose to be Irish or British or both, highlighted by golfer Rory McIlroy recently choosing to play for Ireland in the 2016 Olympics in Rio.
In the Our Man in the Vatican documentary, he described himself, the holder of both Irish and British passports as “both British and Irish” and one who isn’t “going to exaggerate one identity at the expense of the other”.
Now with a new found freedom to speak his mind he elaborates on what he calls “the complexity of identity”.
He is “passionately pro-Europe” and being members of “the broader European family” enables people to “be different things, to co-exist and have multiple identities”.
“I am very European, I see the whole European project is born out of deep national divisions and the carnage of the Second World War.
“The embodiment of one question, where do you sit on the sovereignty issue, on political identity?” obscures the fact that peoples’ identities may be formed by other things such as “a concept of social justice or faith”.
He points out that “no society is homogenous, that would be very boring” and that “a particular stance on a border or on sovereignty may not embody the complexity of my identity”.
“Northern Ireland had been sleep-walking into an either/or culture which shoehorns people into one label to the detriment of other parts of their identity.”
His point is that identity is much more complex than people realise and as a result people of different national and religious outlooks may find “when it comes to different issues they are more aligned than they think with people they traditionally considered to be in an opposing camp”.
Praise
Mr Campbell describes the papacy “as one of the most challenging jobs on the face of the Earth” and commends Pope Francis for establishing the group of eight cardinals who are helping him govern the Church while praising Pope Emeritus Benedict for his writings which “will be a rich source for generations to come”.
“Francis is someone with another experience, from the Church in Latin America, from a diocese, a Jesuit, first non-European Pope in 1,300 years, he will see things differently, governing and leading such a complex global organisation.”
No longer employed as an impartial civil servant Mr Campbell has lost no time in exercising and tasting the freedom that comes with his new role.
He can now speak openly about his passion for Europe, his faith, higher education of course and much else besides.
A couple of weeks ago he posted a barrage of tweets asking why the British Government and the West generally had kept silent while ISIS carried out the ethnic cleansing of Christians in northern Iraq: “A culture and civilisation is being destroyed and our political leaders are silent.”
In one tweet Mr Campbell asked a British Foreign Office minister, Hugo Swire, directly “but what specifically is the UK doing to help the Christians of #mosul? UK response seems ambiguous. Has UK condemned #mosul?”
He and the rest of us are still waiting for a reply.
Then he took part in a march from Westminster Abbey to Downing Street expressing solidarity with Christians in Mosul.
Francis Campbell strikes one as a person who will choose his issues carefully – he has a university to run after all – but his voice is needed and it will enhance and enrich public discourse.
