Pat Power, the now retired Auxiliary Bishop of Canberra, has a feeling Pope Francis might be just the person to help get the church through these troubling times. He has, Bishop Power said, the common touch that has long been missing.

It takes one to know one. Bishop Power, who was made Canberran of the Year in 2009, is a man with the common touch himself, a tolerant listener who makes a point of welcoming all groups into his church. A man of the people.

However, it is these same qualities that have often led to him feeling sidelined by his own church, with a sense of disquiet at how the church has positioned itself in a changing world.

But he has the sense that Pope Francis brings good tidings, both to Catholics worldwide, and to Canberra, a place that Bishop Power sees as a kind of utopia for integration, healthy inter-church relationships and the good, old-fashioned Catholic goodwill that has been missing for so long on the world stage.

Fighting words? Hardly. He is simply saying it as he sees it, at a time when the Catholic community needs all the good news it can get.

And Canberra, he thinks, is a good news story all round when it comes to the role the church has played in building the city.

In the lead-up to Canberra's centenary year, Bishop Power has been looking back over the city's history, and the contribution that Catholics have made to the community. It was the topic of a series he wrote for Catholic Voice over the past two years, and of a talk he gave this week as part of the St Thomas More forums.

''What motivated me to write the series two years ago when I heard the centenary was coming up was I thought it was a nice way to keep a little bit of history alive … I was conscious to do that,'' he said.

''What I wanted to do was talk about the unique place that Catholics in Canberra have had, as opposed to Catholics in other parts of Australia and the world, and I think it's been a healthy story and a story of good relations with the other churches and with the whole community.''

A lot of it has had to do with the spirit of this place, the blank slate that Canberra was when the site was chosen and named, and the building - of houses, of communities - began.

''A lot of times when there's a lot of baggage and that sort of thing, people have got long memories and hurts,'' he said.

At the tender age of 100, Canberra is still too young to have much baggage.

''There was a bit of a fortress mentality that somehow they were - not an oppressed class, that's too strong a word for it - just that they sort of had to assert themselves a little bit,'' he said of the Catholic community in Australia in the past.

''I think Canberra's been fairly unique in the sense that there's been a broader attitude here … Catholics were well integrated into the society here and made a positive contribution here, and formed probably healthier relationships than might have happened in other parts of Australia.''

It has largely been due to the personalities involved, beginning with the first parish priest of Canberra, Monsignor Patrick Haydon, and continuing with Catholics sprinkled throughout the public service, as well as in the law, medicine and nursing, sport, academia, politics, police, armed forces, advocacy and the media.

For his series, Bishop Power chose 23 such people, only four of whom are church officials. Some, like the late surgeon John Buckingham, have been overt about how much their faith influenced their work. During his career, Dr Buckingham treated thousands of women with breast cancer, and made a point of involving himself in his patients' care long after the official treatment had ended. His faith also helped him to face his own untimely death - in 2011, at the age of 63, just months after being diagnosed with cancer himself - with extraordinary dignity.

Former governor-general William Deane is another prominent figure whose faith has been paramount.

''Catholicism has informed his life and his values very much, but I'd say, too, in his role as governor-general, I think it gave him even greater breadth then with regards to Catholicism because it helped him to become more involved with some of the other churches,'' Bishop Power said. ''Certainly, with the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture over at Barton, he was one of the founding patrons of that, and he worked very closely with the Anglican Bishop George Browning through all of that. I think that broadened his perspective.''

Others, like the one-time manager of the Kingston Guest House, Edith Dickenson, gave up going to Mass but still practised as part of daily life.

''Edith's daughter and I were in the same class at school at St Christopher's, and when I was interviewing her about her mother, I said, 'Your mother is the only non-practising Catholic that I'm going to write about', and she picked me up,'' Bishop Power said. ''She said, 'Pat, she wasn't a non-practising Catholic, she was a non-churchgoing Catholic'. She talked about the way in which she had a real care for a lot of young single fellows who were away from their families - she'd pack a lunch for them to go to work. She said it was Jesus in her life that enabled her to do that. So there would be a real distinction there.''

The series also includes social worker and ''fearsome supporter of the vulnerable'' Ethel McGuire, local businessman Stan Cusack and nurse-educator and environmentalist Sylvia Curley.

It is the sense of openness here in Canberra that he said has long been missing from the broader church culture for so long. ''If there is that openness, then there's that ability then to grow and understand better, and I think that's what excites me about this new Pope, that down-to-earth touch which the previous one certainly didn't have, but even John Paul II, a very gregarious sort of a character, somehow or other he wasn't a great listener, and I think that's a very important part of any good leadership. It's something that I've certainly tried to incorporate into mine, and it's something that gives me a lot of consolation from the new Pope. But I'd say that the best of these people have done that as well.''

Pat Power's series, A Centenary of Canberra's Catholics, is available through Libraries ACT, via the ACT Heritage Library.

Learn more about the St Thomas More Forum at stthomasmore.org.au/.