St John's College, University of Sydney - History

History

The College of St John the Evangelist was founded by Archbishop John Bede Polding, who named it after the author of the fourth Gospel. The symbol of the College is the traditional symbol of St John, the eagle. St John's College is the oldest Catholic tertiary institution in Australia. It was the first Catholic college to be established in a pre-existing non-Catholic university in the English-speaking world since the Reformation.

In 1854 the first effort to establish a Catholic college within The University of Sydney was made at a meeting in the old St Mary's Cathedral. The NSW Government promised a pound for pound subsidy of up to a 20,000-pound limit if at least 10,000 pounds was raised by public subscription. Remarkably this was met in six months from July 1857. On 15 December 1857 the Act to Incorporate Saint John’s College as a College within the University of Sydney was passed in the NSW Parliament and received Royal Assent from Queen Victoria. The Proclamation of the St. John's College Council took place on 1 July 1858.

In 1887, James Francis Hogan wrote in The Irish in Australia, that Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview, St. Joseph's College, Hunters Hill and St. John's College, affiliated to the University of Sydney are three educational institutions that reflect the highest credit on the Catholic population of the parent colony.