Francis (“Frank”) Moloney was raised in an Irish Catholic working-class family in the inner west Melbourne suburb of Moonee Ponds. He excelled academically in his school days at St Bernard’s Christian Brothers College, Essendon, and also at sport, especially cricket. He played in the third grade of the Victorian District Cricket Association as schoolboy and later represented Melbourne University in the second grade of the same Association. After a year of humanities at Melbourne on a studentship awarded by the Victorian Education Department, he worked as a clerk at Victorian Railways for a year to pay off his student bond, and then entered the Catholic religious congregation, the Salesians of John Bosco (SDB).
As a young Salesian seminarian, in the course of the usual studies for priesthood, Frank taught for three years at Salesian College, Sunbury, honing pedagogical skills that would become legendary later on. In that location (“Rupertswood”), famed as the birthplace of “the Ashes”, he also coached senior cricket teams with notable success.
The final part of his seminary studies, theology, Frank undertook in Rome, in the heady years immediately following the Second Vatican Council. He returned to Melbourne briefly in July 1970 for ordination as a priest in what had once been the ballroom in the Rupertswood mansion, subsequently converted to be the college chapel. Destined by his superiors for future teaching in theology, he returned to Rome to pursue a Licentiate in Sacred Scripture at the renowned Pontifical Biblical Institute, where he won the esteem of the rector Carlo Martini, later Cardinal Archbishop Milan. Having gained this award, with its high demands in languages ancient (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek) and modern (French, German; he had long become fluent in Italian), Frank moved to Oxford in September 1972 for doctoral studies under the direction of Dr Morna Hooker, later Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity at Cambridge and Fellow of the British Academy. Though a member of Campion Hall within the University, he lived in a Salesian community in the outer industrial suburb of Cowley, where again he played quality cricket in the Oxford County Cricket Association.
Frank moved through the Oxford D Phil program with dispatch, completing a dissertation in the area of the Gospel of John, later published at The Johannine Son of Man (Rome: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano, 1978; 2nd ed. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007). This was the first of around fifty books, both scholarly and popular, that were to flow from his pen right up to his final months.
Frank returned to Melbourne in late 1976 to take up teaching at Catholic Theological College, then located at Clayton, a constituent college of the Melbourne College of Divinity (later University of Divinity). From the start he made a big impact on the Melbourne scene. The College librarian at Clayton was wont to say that you could tell the days that he was teaching because the carpark was full when you arrived. In addition to regular teaching, he was greatly in demand at the more popular level for talks and workshops for teachers and parish communities. Many of his multiple publications for a popular audience originated in such activity.
Meanwhile Rome had not forgotten about Frank. He returned from time to time as visiting professor at the Gregorian University, the Pontifical Biblical Institute, and the Salesian Pontifical University. More significantly, in May 1986, Pope John Paul II appointed him to the International Theological Commission of the Holy See, headed at that time by Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI). Here at the annual meetings he mingled with such luminaries of the Catholic theological scene such as Hans Urs von Balthasar, Walter Kasper, Avery Dulles (all of whom subsequently became cardinals). Aside from his theological acumen, his fluency with all the main European languages led to his remaining on the Commission for an unprecedented fourteen years.
During these years of teaching in Melbourne following his return from Rome, Frank found himself moving in the direction of bringing hermeneutic insights from current literary theory, specifically narrative criticism, to the interpretation of biblical texts. Reading widely in the works of literary theorists such as Seymour Chatman, Stanley Fish, Gérard Genette, he pioneered a reader-oriented approach in biblical studies in Australia. This was displayed in his 3-volume commentary on the Fourth Gospel, Belief in the Word: Reading John 1–4 (1993); Signs and Shadows: Reading John 5–12 (1996); Glory not Dishonor: Reading John 13–21 (1998), published by Fortress Press, Minneapolis, a work widely regarded as trail-blazing at the time. This large commentary was reduced to a single volume for the Sacra Pagina series, The Gospel of John (Collegeville, MN: Glazier, 1998), which rapidly became one of the standard commentaries on the Fourth Gospel, selling thousands of copies worldwide. Later Frank pursued the same approach in a commentary on the Gospel of Mark (The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002; repr. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012]).
In recognition of his contribution in teaching and research Frank was elected a Fellow of the Academy in 1990 and in 1992 was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM). He was delighted to receive the latter award from the hands of Davis McCaughey, a former New Testament colleague and friend, who had become Governor of the State of Victoria at the time of the award.
Following the Dawkins reforms of the tertiary system in Australia in the late 1980’s, a number of smaller degree-granting educational institutions operated by various Catholic congregations for the training of teachers and nurses amalgamated to form the Australian Catholic University. When on instructions from Rome the university set up a faculty of theology, it was no surprise that Frank, with his established reputation as scholar and wider public profile, was appointed as Foundation ACU Professor of Theology in June 1994. As such he had to mould the disparate teachers in the area of religion across the multi-campus institution into a single faculty, dedicated not only to teaching but also to the research required at university level. It was not long before a number of young scholars, mentored by him or recruited by him, were producing work of internationally recognized quality in the relevant areas of biblical and patristic studies, text-criticism, and the Jewish and Greco-Roman context of the Bible.
In 1998 Frank was invited to apply for the position of Professor of New Testament in the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America, Washington, DC. Shortly after his arrival there in 1999 he was appointed to the Katharine Drexel Chair of Religious Studies. When the Dean of the School suddenly died in 2003, he was prevailed upon to accept appointment as his replacement and held that administrative position until 2005. Meanwhile, his growing reputation on the US academic scene led to his being elected 2001–2002 President of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, the first non-American member of the Association to hold that prestigious office.
For Frank the highlight of his teaching years in Washington was a graduate seminar for doctoral students, from which emerged, mostly under his supervision of their dissertations, a significant number of young scholars, most of whom, in a very tight employment scene, now hold key positions in academic institutions across the United States. A colleague throughout Frank’s time at CUA, himself a distinguished New Testament scholar, recently remarked that, in all his long years of university teaching, he had never known any colleague to be so much loved by his doctoral students as Frank was.
In 2006 Frank was recalled from Washington by his Salesian religious congregation for a six-year term as their Provincial Superior in Australia. At a difficult time for the congregation, as indeed for all religious congregations and the Catholic Church as whole, in view of the sexual abuse crisis then at its height, it is not surprising that they turned to him, with his wisdom, strength of character, and public reputation.
Following this period of administration, Frank was able to resume his professional scholarly work based in Melbourne as a Senior Professorial Fellow of Australian Catholic University. He continued to contribute numerous articles in scholarly journals and book chapters especially in the areas of the Gospel of John and hermeneutics. Collections of his articles appear in A “Hard Saying”: The Gospel and Culture (Collegeville, MN: Glazier, 2001); Gospel Interpretation and Christian Life (Adelaide: ATF, 2017); Johannine Studies 1975–2017 (WUNT 372; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017); New Testament Matters: Biblical and Theological Essays (2 vols, Bayswater, Victoria: Coventry, 2024–25). In collaboration with poet and theologian Anthony Kelly, CSsR, Frank produced a combined study, Experiencing God in the Gospel of John (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2003), the fruit of years of conversation on the topic. Possibly his most attractive work, at once both technical and accessible, is his slim volume Love in the Gospel of John: An Exegetical, Theological, and Literary Study (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013).
The sudden death in August 1998 of the 20th century’s most prominent Johannine scholar in the English-speaking world, Raymond Brown (1928–1998), left unrealized an updating and revision of his monumental two volume commentary on the Gospel of John (The Gospel according to John [2 vols. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966–70]). Brown, who had already anointed Frank as his true successor in the Johannine area, had managed to complete only a draft of the Introduction to this new edition of his commentary. Frank, in a work of pietas to his great forerunner, edited the draft, deftly bringing it up to date where necessary according to the mind of its original author (Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the Gospel of John, edited, updated, introduced, and concluded by Francis J. Moloney, S. D. B. [New York: Doubleday, 2003]). Also dedicated to Brown is a later work, The Resurrection of the Messiah: A Narrative Commentary on the Resurrection Accounts in the Four Gospels (New York/Mahway NJ: Paulist, 2013).
Most recently, Frank had turned his attention to the maverick item bracketed with the Johannine literature in the New Testament, the Book of Revelation, The Apocalypse of John: A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020). In this major commentary, he revived and defended with characteristic energy a controversial revisionist reading of Revelation published in 1980 by Italian exegete Eugenio Corsini.
In addition to scholarly teaching and writing Frank was passionately dedicated to the proper understanding and responsible employment of biblical texts by the Christian churches. He promoted biblical literacy in an unceasing flow of more popular works devoted to this end. Notable among them was his Eucharist in the New Testament (2nd ed. Peabody, MA: Henrickson, 1997), later produced in an expanded 3rd ed. as A Body Broken for a Broken People: Divorce, Remarriage and the Eucharist (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2015), in which he argued for a more inclusive Catholic understanding of the eucharistic tradition and of the complexities of human lives in the present age. Co-authored with his former doctoral student, Sherri Brown (Creighton University, Omaha, NE), one of his more recent contributions has been a superb pedagogical resource for those beginning critical New Testament studies: Interpreting the New Testament: An Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2019).
Frank Moloney died peacefully after a year-long battle with cancer in East Melbourne at the age of 85. He leaves behind a vast oeuvre of works, mainly in the biblical area but widely reflective also on the ways in which “belief in the Word” must engage and interact with the surrounding culture beyond the boundaries of Christian belief. A giant in the field of religious studies on the Australian and indeed international scene, his affability, practical kindness, and instinct to encourage all who came his way, especially the young, have rendered his passing widely and deeply mourned.
Rev Emeritus Prof Brendan Byrne FAHA
University of Divinity
