St Paul’s Cathedral Melbourne
15 December 2023
At 5.10pm Evensong in St Paul’s Cathedral on Thursday 21 December, a commissioned medal and plaque will be dedicated in memory of Bishop James Grant. Commissioned from Michael Meszaros, a noted Melbourne architect and sculptor, the memorial will be installed in the Macartney Chapel between similar memorials to Bishop Grant’s colleagues, Archbishops Robert Dann and Frank Woods.
Bishop Grant served the Diocese of Melbourne throughout his ministry. Ordained in 1959, he was Assistant Curate at St Peter’s Murrumbeena, and then part of a Diocesan Task Force established by Archbishop Woods to serve areas of Melbourne with socio-economic challenges, establishing new congregations in Broadmeadows and West Heidelberg.
In 1966, he was appointed Chaplain to Archbishop Woods – also acting as his driver! – until in February 1970, when he rekindled an association begun in undergraduate years with Trinity College, returning as its Chaplain. Later that year, St Thomas’s Day 21 December, he was consecrated as a bishop in St Paul’s Cathedral.
He served as Bishop to the Western Region from 1971-1978 and Bishop of the Central Region from 1978-85, during which time he was also Administrator of the Diocese between Archbishop Dann’s retirement in 1983 and Archbishop Penman’s election in 1984. From 1985 until his retirement in 1999, Bishop Grant was Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, serving also as Bishop of the Inner City Region in 1990-91.
The memorial medal is a cast bronze representation of St Thomas’s words to the risen Christ in John 20.28b: ‘My Lord and my God!’.
The foreground of the medal depicts the risen Christ drawing the viewer’s hands into his wounds (Then Jesus said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe’. Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ John 20.27-28) as if projecting St Thomas and his doubts on to the viewer. Meszaros says of his design, ‘I could easily have depicted the Bible verse as a scene, but I wanted to draw the viewer in, to give a richer experience of the risen Christ.’
The principal donor to the project is the Melbourne Anglican Foundation, with other donations from Bishop Grant’s family and friends, and Trinity College.
The memorial is a fitting tribute to a true gentleman: a loved and loving servant and long-serving bishop of the Anglican Church in Australia.
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