Roman Catholic Ecclesiastical Province of Melbourne - History

History

When Melbourne, then called the Port Philip Settlement, and the surrounding area was being settled by European settlers in the 1830s, the area was a part of the Roman Catholic Ecclesiastical Province of Sydney, in the Archdiocese of Sydney. In 1839, John Polding, the archbishop of Sydney, placed Patrick Bonaventure Geoghegan in charge of Port Philip Settlement, and the first Mass was celebrated in Melbourne on Pentecost Sunday, 15 May 1839. The entire population of Port Philip in 1841 was 11,738, and the Catholics numbered 2,411.

The oldest surviving Catholic church in Victoria, St Francis Catholic Church, was built in 1841.

The Diocese of Melbourne was created in 1848 out of territory of the then Sydney Archdiocese, with James Alipius Goold as its first bishop. The Catholic population of the colony was 18,000 in 1851, and had grown to 88,000 by 1857, as a result of the gold rush. James Goold was also instrumental in setting up many catholic schools in the diocese and in introducing to the diocese several religious orders devoted to education and works of charity, including the Society of Jesus, the Christian Brothers, Sisters of Mercy, Good Shepherd Nuns, Presentation Sisters, Faithful Companions of Jesus, and Little Sisters of the Poor.

When Goold was appointed bishop of Melbourne in 1848, St Francis Catholic Church became the cathedral church of the new diocese. Construction of a new church on the Eastern Hill of East Melbourne commenced in 1858, to be called St Patrick's Cathedral. Construction of the cathedral was not completed until 1939.

On 30 March 1874, the dioceses of Sandhurst (comprising four parishes) and Ballarat were formed out of territory of the diocese of Melbourne, with the diocese of Melbourne becoming a metropolitan archdiocese of the Ecclesiastical Province of Melbourne, and responsible for the dioceses of Sandhurst and Ballarat as suffragan dioceses. The suffragan Diocese of Sale was similarly formed in 26 April 1887 out of the archdiocese.

Under Goold's successor, Thomas Joseph Carr, additional teaching orders were introduced to the archdiocese, including the Marist Brothers, the Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart, the Sisters of Loreto, the Sisters of St. Joseph, and the Sisters of the Good Samaritan. In 1887, 11,661 pupils attended Catholic schools of the archdiocese, and that number had grown to 25,369 by 1908. The Catholic population of the archdiocese according to Government census returns of 1901 was 145,333.

Until the mid-twentieth century, the Catholics of the archdiocese were almost all Irish or of Irish origin. The priesthood was exclusively Irish until the early part of the twentieth century, when training of native born priests began.