When news broke of his reluctant retirement, the community of South Melbourne was sent into a spin. Sensing there was a story to be told, Australian film director Lynn-Maree Milburn approached Maguire with the idea to document the event on film, and Maguire was eventually able to be convinced.

The feature length documentary, In Bob We Trust was released into cinemas earlier this year, to acclaimed success.

“[Milburn] crept up on me and said, ‘We heard the news that you were being thrown out and we thought it might make an interesting story,’” Maguire begins.

“I thought ‘fair enough’, it wouldn't be bad to get this on record because I thought, ‘there’s something going on here, there’s an injustice going on’.

“I wouldn’t be able to just verbalise it and then I realised it was going to take more time than I thought …  it took another two and a half years.

“So that meant [the crew] wouldn't be just coming to see us walk out the door in a couple of months, they had to hang around while the negotiations went on and they hung around for two and a half years or something.

“I’ve heard of documentaries but I thought it would be boring. I told them, ‘Don’t do it because it’s boring’, but then I didn’t realise she was going to make a bit of an art movie out of it."

The film not only captures the ups and downs of his demise from the church, but it also truthfully documents the impact Maguire has on the people in his community.

“I think I was happy with it, more or less,” Maguire says of the film. “Because it was them I trusted them, you know, and therefore there is a record.

“I begged them, make it a film that is about ‘us’. We, the collective, not me personally.”

After being ousted from the church, Maguire was undeterred to continue the humanitarian work he was doing. He moved his home and his charity to a new location on Victoria Avenue in Albert Park and continues his work with the Father Bob Maguire Foundation.

Like many his age, Maguire now moves slowly with the aid of a walking frame. When he hears us arrive on the premises, he leaves his small flat at the very end of the building and begins walking down the long, thin corridor that separates the various offices and small kitchenette.

“We moved out of there and into here,” he says once settled in his office. “This is being paid for by the Electrical Trade Union.

“I felt outraged about having to leave the other place and I thought ‘Well, I’ll stay as close as I can’ and this thing worked out … all you’ve got here is offices, that little joint down the back.

“And it suits me now because it’s little enough for me to be able to stagger around and look after myself, the rest of it is not bad.”

Many Catholic priests notably retire on a small fortune and continue their days living a life of luxury, but Maguire’s dwellings couldn’t be further from this.

His small flat is fitted with the bare essentials: a single-sized bed to one corner, a worn arm chair perched beside the bed, a TV in another corner, an iPad laid on his bedside table and an ensuite to one side with all the typical facilities of a bathroom.

There is nothing lavish about this space. If it weren’t for all the family portraits sitting up on the shelves above Maguire’s bed, his flat could be likened to that of a hospital ward.

Further down the corridor, Maguire’s office is also filled with old, wearing photos. With them perched behind him, Maguire begins talking about what life was like for him and his family growing up in Melbourne.

Born into what he calls ‘a strange house’ in the suburb of Thornbury in spring 1934, the Maguire household moved around a lot – from Thornbury to Black Rock, to East Prahran.

He recalls his early years growing up with his four siblings.

“I must have still been a child so when we ended up in a place called Pridham Street, East Prahran, I start remembering things,” Maguire says.

“Born in '34, probably in East Prahran by '40, maybe even '39 because I remember my brother went into the air force, so the war was on, so that was [the] '40s.

“My sister was working at the munitions factory in Maribyrnong and Cathleen, the other sister, was working as a telephonist and they all died there for God’s sake.”

Maguire’s childhood was plagued with sadness. He was orphaned before he even began high school. His sister died first, followed by his father and then his mother.

“The [brother] that went away, Jimmy, went away to the air force. The war was over so Jimmy came back from the war so that means he was available to take me in,” Maguire says.

Maguire continued to move around, living in his brother’s care. They lived in various homes all around Melbourne – from Prahan to South Yarra to Glen Iris to Blackburn, all while Maguire was completing his secondary school studies at Christian Brothers' College in St Kilda. It was during this time that Maguire decided to enter the priesthood.

The church for him was like a sanctuary, where he felt a sense of belonging. He began his training straight out of high school at a facility in Werribee, where he lived on campus for eight years completing his course.

“I couldn’t do anything on my own, because I was a lone ranger and broke, but I went to Werribee – you had to live in for eight years.

“From 1953 to 1959 we lived in Werribee like university students.”

During the school semesters, Maguire was cared for at the facility. But like a university student, he had an extended break over the summer holidays – from December to February – and Maguire was forced to take on various part time jobs to support himself financially.

“So we were out for about two months, three months. During which I thought it was an opportunity if you were poor to earn a dollar, and one needed to earn a dollar because one didn’t have a dollar of one’s own.

“The others would have ... the others had families. No family, no money. So that’s what I did.

“I worked for a minute on the wharf putting bands around barrels and we were called ‘coopers’. And then I worked for a while in the mail exchange up at Victoria Barracks, and I worked ... another year at summer as a postie delivering letters around Ashburton and Glen Iris, I remember.

“And then later, don’t laugh, we worked as National Fitness Council play centre leaders. Because these were play centres, they ran all over the place in the school holidays for disadvantaged kids.

“I remember, [we were hired] because we were supposed to be trustworthy - which the Roman Catholic clergy are not necessarily known as these days.

“In those days I said, ‘We are not qualified as play leaders’. And she said, ‘Oh no we’re not hiring you as trained play leaders, we’re hiring you lot because you are trustworthy and you can administer the place’. So we did.”

Once he completed the eight years of service training, Maguire was commissioned to take on a tour of duty which again took him to various locations around Melbourne, including Belgrave, Heidelberg, Ashburton, Braybrook, East Kew, Ivanhoe and Seymour.

“I joined the chaplaincy in the Australian Army because Seymour is right near a place called Puckapunyal Training Battalion and the war was on, the Vietnam War,” he says.

“I did that for four years and ended up running around in a uniform for four years and then at the end of September '73, the war was over and I had to go back to work in the churches. The bloke in charge of the Melbourne church made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse, I suppose.

“’I’d like you to go to South Melbourne,’ he said.  So I thought, ‘I don’t know anything about South Melbourne’ and I said ‘alright’.

“So I jumped in the car and came down and had a look and I’d never been to South Melbourne before, I think. So we joined up and the rest is history, my dear. 1973 to 2012.”

When he arrived in South Melbourne, Maguire was confronted with what he calls a ‘lively place’.

“They’d been lively before when all the old population was there because they had fights, they used to have extraordinary fights up from Coventry Street all the way down to the river … that’s what we were confronted with in 1973,” he says launching into an enthusiastic dialogue about his beloved area. 

“To move into the joint and find there wasn’t much going on, I think all the schools were starting to lose numbers because all the population had changed so dramatically.

“But by the time we’d been there 20 years in the '90s, even the rich were poor then, because up this end, all the big houses would have been private houses.

“And then, they were boarding houses, and sometimes empty boarding houses, just held onto by the owner hoping something would happen.

“And then in my time, later, the economy revived and low and behold, ladies and gentlemen, the boarding houses were sold as two people who just wanted one man, one woman, one baby. And they gradually crept up to a million dollar market value then up to $2 million.”

But the fights and the failing economy weren’t even the worst of it. The drug culture was alive and well in South Melbourne when Maguire first arrived, and he was somewhat shocked to find it there.

“I didn’t know much about ‘the drugs’ before I came here and I was in the bloody army,” he begins.

“Other suburbs weren’t as quickly infected as were South Melbourne and Port Melbourne. Public housing, see.

“The dealers were local, or you didn’t have to go far. You hopped in your car or caught a train in because there was a train then which would have taken you down to Fitzroy Street, St Kilda. So there was steady traffic between here and St Kilda to score and then back to use.

“I was surprised. I was confronted by what to do and what did I want to do? Or did I want to do anything? If you were a normal church parish you wouldn’t do anything because you didn’t want anything to do with them. It was ‘beyond your interest’ because you’d have to say, “Are they Catholics?”

“And if they’re not, then they’re not in your demographic. But we said, ‘We didn’t have many Catholics anyway because two thirds of the Catholics had moved out to the suburbs.' 

“So we had a big church empty and a big house empty, we had a school emptying … a technical school which was closing, a girls orphanage that had already shut, a boy’s orphanage that was down in numbers.

“So everything we had was broken down almost, but was still there and the local teenagers – instead of going to the 7/11 or somewhere else – were getting drugs.”

South Melbourne at that time was an incredibly multicultural area, with migrants from Greece, Turkey and Yugoslavia living there, amongst others. Despite their ethnic differences, Maguire gave them some common ground by offering up his place on Dorcas Street as a hang out for the young people.

“They would have been to school together, and yet when they went home they would not normally be looked favourably upon by their parents to be mixing with strange ethnic groups,” Maguire says. “But they found if they came up to my place, they could do what they bloody well like.”

Maguire tried to encourage the teens to focus their efforts on something other than drugs, so he introduced them to boxing.

“It was dangerous in one sense, but we started off with boxing. We did do a bit of footy, and a bit of cricket but because of the bloody drugs they always ended up in terrible fights and things.

“We tried all of the normal things we had tried in suburbia, then we tried boxing which seemed to appeal to them. We then tried boxing on the premises and then went touring around hotels where they used to have boxing tournaments.

“That seemed to help – they started off when they were 13, 14 and 15 – and then they got older and uglier, 17 and 18, the drug traffickers had their eyes on them and I think we got caught because we couldn’t make them as good an offer as the drug traffickers could. 

“So by the time we got them [back] we couldn’t do much with them because we didn’t have bags full of money. We only had vacant rooms and a tennis court and we couldn’t compete with the drug traffickers.

“Hence why 20 of them are gone. In fact it’s here, look,” Maguire says, beginning to pull up a page on the iMac at his desk. “… because this is one of the reasons why I didn’t want to leave the rotten place – because it was blood, soil, tears and sweat.”

After finding the page he was looking for, Maguire shows us a picture of a large gravestone engraved with names all over it.

“That’s got all the 40 names of those who died in the '80s and that’s up there on a shrine up at the old joint.

“[The new priest in South Melbourne] left it there, thank God. But we knew all those, you know.”

Maguire seems to know his way around a computer. With 100,000 followers on Twitter, he understands how to engage people and doesn’t shy away from a healthy Twitter debate. But when questioned about his social media skills, Maguire plays it down.

“I’m only doing as best I can until I get bored,” he says before shifting the topic away to something more pressing – his retirement.

He seems certain that he knows the reason the Catholic Church wanted him out of there – for it is not uncommon for other priests to remain at their congregation right into their '80s.

“They said, ‘go away.’ And it seemed to be … they couldn’t quite cope with my style,” Maguire says.

“They could for 30 years, and then like all institutions you have changes in culture. So for 30 years, we’re the flavour of the month. For 10 years, we’re not.  

“So I got caught, see, because who knows, in another two years we may well be the flavour of the month again. Because we’re not in supreme command, you can’t say ‘I’m not going anywhere’ – you have to do what you’re told if you want to stay in the institution.

“So I decided I wanted to stay in the institution. But how do I feel?

“I feel the past can either be a burden and drive you mad thinking about it, if only, or it can be an asset and you can get through.”

In the film, there is a poignant moment when Maguire walks out of his parish for the final time. There are bagpipes playing, and the congregation is filled to the brims with people who are giving Maguire their well wishes.

When asked if he found it sad to watch such an incredible moment on screen, Maguire opens up.

“Oh yeah, but I’m a bit psycho-socially challenged. I mean, I don’t know.

“It’s been dangerous for 40 years and maybe because [my family] all died early, you got used to all that business and that this is the case, and you better move on.

“So maybe there are no tear ducts, I don’t know.”

But even though Maguire didn’t shed a tear throughout the film, the audience certainly did.

“People cried at different times. They cried when I handed over the goddamn keys apparently to the monk," Maguire says.

“I said, ‘here you are, here are the keys’ and some sheila broke down crying.”

When he isn’t working for his foundation, speaking at events or chatting with followers on Twitter, Maguire co-hosts Sunday Night Safran, a nationally-syndicated radio show on Triple J with filmmaker and fellow broadcaster, John Safran.

The pair are a diabolical team: funny, charismatic, and deadly serious about their subject matter.

Maguire first met Safran on the set of his television series, John Safran vs God. 

“I remember Safran crept up in the church one day during 10am mass and wanted to have a look at the ambience and the mad priest,” Maguire begins another of his stories.

“Eventually Safran came back and said, ‘Listen, what we’d like to do is use this place and you and me, in one episode’.

“So I said, ‘I don’t care’. I thought, ‘this sounds dangerous to me but it could be good for publicity’, because I never knew much about Safran.

“Then Safran came and took over more of less. We were doing mass but we were doing mass on his terms almost. I had to let him dress up and come up the aisle and be the altar boy for the day and I thought that would be interesting enough.

“He’s mad on the incense and candles and stuff so he did the old fashioned John Safran mad things like getting up onto the marble altar and the candles are high so he’s up there … he’s lighting the bloody candles up on the thing.

“And I’m thinking to myself, ‘if the Archbishop walks in now, here is a madman up on the altar lighting candles’. So it could bring me undone. But anyway, we got away with that for publicity, which segued into, I think Triple J radio.

“[That then] segued into the new series which was called Speaking in Tongues, which means he’s stuck on the set, I’m stuck on the set, maybe for seven or eight episodes.

“It was all day recording and he was interviewing people with vague connections to religions like a girl who talks star language or something, and somebody else was a devil worshipper. So we had a whole string of other religious experiences and we got away with that. They liked that.

“And then I became known as Father Bob on the thing because once you’re in you can’t get out of it.”

On the topic of whether Maguire and Safran are friends that would go out for say, a coffee, Maguire insists that’s just not what their relationship is like.

“You couldn’t say ‘friend’. I’m not a friendly person. He’s not a friendly person.

“He’s psycho-socially challenged, he’s always tortured. We get on good, professionally, but we wouldn’t be living in one another’s pockets.

“We might go for coffee if we had nothing else to do.”

And on that note, Maguire rounds off the interview, letting us know that he has someone else to attend to.

There is a couple waiting in the foyer, there to have Maguire sign their marriage documents.

Moving straight from one thing to the next, Maguire ushers them inside and directs us out.

If it were anyone else it would seem almost abrupt, but given how busy Maguire is, and how freely he gives his time to others, it’s clear his schedule isn’t getting any less demanding.

There’s no stopping Bob Maguire.