Anglican Dean finds joy in willing service
A dual Olympian with a strong focus on practical social justice and working with youth will be the new Anglican Dean of Perth.
The appointment of Very Rev. Richard Pengelley, 54, as Dean of St George's Cathedral was announced yesterday.
Mr Pengelley will replace Dr John Shepherd, who recently retired after 24 years as dean.
Archbishop Roger Herft said Mr Pengelley's qualities included focus on disciplined prayer, inspiring worship and willing service for others.
The Rev. Canon Kathy Barrett-Lennard said Mr Pengelley was an energetic and visionary priest with "a great heart for those who are so often forgotten and pushed to the margins of society".
Mr Pengelley was born in Bahrain and migrated with his family to Melbourne as a "ten pound Pom" in 1966 and on to WA in 1972.
He represented WA at swimming and Australia in water polo at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 and Seoul in 1988.
He was educated at Churchlands Senior High School, graduated from the University of WA as a physical education teacher and started his teaching career at Scarborough Senior High School.
After accepting a job at Hale School, he was encouraged to become chaplain by then headmaster John Inverarity and became an ordained priest in 1994.
Mr Pengelley has been rector of Carine-Duncraig parish, chaplain at St George's College at UWA and assistant professor in the School of Sport Science, Exercise and Health, where he taught sport and spirituality.
He is assistant chaplain at Christ Church Grammar School, where he has led students on service trips to remote indigenous communities, an orphanage in Fiji and the Cambodian Children's Fund.
He has a long association with the cathedral, having worshipped there with his family, spent seven years as a server and was part-time verger.
He married wife Jo there in 1981 and was an honorary canon since 1999.
He said he had always had an Anglican faith, which developed further while staying in Olympic villages.
"I went to the chapel, met people like (champion US sprinter) Carl Lewis and thought 'this Christianity can be cool'," he said.
As school chaplain he found it frustrating that he had to ask priests in to take certain services and when he began to conduct funerals for young men he realised he had a strong calling to be a priest.
He said he hoped to continue the cathedral's close working relationship with Archbishop Herft and the diocese and to maintain St George's as a place of beauty and holiness through prayer, while expanding its links with Anglican schools.
He hoped to explore a connection with the city's homeless, possibly through involving parishioners and schools in running a soup kitchen or drop-in centre.
Mr Pengelley said he also wanted to grow the relationship with Aboriginal people and to host events involving other faiths, "particularly our Muslim and Jewish brothers and sisters".
He was committed to speaking up for asylum seekers and refugees "to make it very clear that we as a community are not particularly happy with their treatment and are there to help".
He would also continue the liberal approach of Dr Shepherd on gay rights. "I am completely in support of full equality for people of all loving and committed sexual expressions," he said.
He opposed a fundamentalist approach to religious faith, preferring the notion that the Bible "had the full expression of God's relationship with humanity through history, poetry, symbolism and metaphor".
"Science and religion in my opinion don't clash. Science is what pulls things apart and asks how they work and religion is what puts things back together and asks what meaning they have, and you need both," Mr Pengelley said.
And he hoped he could continue playing social water polo.
"There is the fitness aspect, there is the social aspect and there is the conversation with society which is really important," he said.
"And there is the complete lack of respect for me and putting me in my place."
