IRISH
147
IRISH
moters of the progress of the Church in Australasia.
From the first his main energy was constantly bent
on the estabhshment of an Australian hierarchy.
He sent a letter direct to the pope. " As in all new
colonies", he tells the Holy Father, "so in this few
subjects can be found for the priesthood for many
years to come; a few priests may be procured from
the Catholic countries of Europe, but it is from Ire-
land they should naturally be provided for this mis-
sion, as ninety-five out of every one hundred Catholics
in all these colonies are Irish or of Irish descent."
Several years later the idea wa.s carried out in part. In a visit of Bishop Goold to Rome, in 1873, the question of nationality once more came up. " As re- gards the objection", he replied, "that the bishops of Australia are all Irish it appears to me to have no solid foundation to rest upon; on the contrary any other course would be ridiculous. As a matter of fact the Catholic Europeans who form our congregations in Australia are, with very few exceptions, Irish. . . . It must be abided that the purport of the aforesaid ob- jection is to intrciducc Enf;lish instead of Irish bishops into the Australian Church, and hence the expediency of appointing Irish prelates becomes the more appar- ent, for every one is aware of the special antipathy of the Irish towards Englanil" (Moran, "History of theCatholicChurchin Australasia", 786, 787). Bishop Goold was born in Cork, 4 November, 1812, joined the Augustinians and, after his ordination in Italy in 18.35, volunteered for the Australian mission. The list of the prelates of the Church in Australia shows that the pope and his advisers in the main follower! the lines indicated in what was said by Bishop Goold and Father McEncroe.
Bishop Goold, from Irish foundations, introduced into the country the Jesuits, the Christian Brothers, the Sisters of Mercy, the Sisters of the ( liii«l Shepherd, and the Presentation Nuns. At his iiivitatinn leathers William Kelly and Joseph Lentaigne of the Irish prov- ince had begun a foundation in Melljourne, 21 Septem- ber, 1865. The Sisters of Charity of the Irish Congre- gation were the first to volunteer to serve the .settle- ment in Botany Bay, and the community sent there by Mother Mary Aikenhead arrived at Port Jackson 31 December, 1838; one of this band was a novice, Mary Xavier Williams, born in Kilkenny, 12 July, 1800. She made her vows in Sydney in 1838, and was the first religious to have that privilege on Australian soil. She lived to be ninety-two, dying at Hobart 8 March, 1892, the sole survivor of the pioneer com- munity. The Sisters of Mercy from Baggot Street, Dublin, ne.xt arrived, 7 January, 1846.
Mention has been made of the location of the Rev- erenil Philip Connolly as the first priest in Tasmania, in M.arch, 1821. Three years later, on 7 May, 1824, the Reverend Samuel Coote arrived from Dublin in a ship chartered by Roderick O'Connor, a brother of the Chartist leader Fergus O'Connor, to carry his family and a few other free settlers to Van Dieman 's Land. O'Connor was not then a Catholic, but he became one later and was the donor of £10,000 to the Hobart cathedral building fund. It was here that Thomas Francis Meagher and the other political exiles of 1848 took up their residence. Father Connolly died 3 August, 1839. His old friend, Father Therry, trans- ferred from Sydney, carried on the work until after the appointment of Bishop Wilson to the see in 1842, when he retired. Bishop Wilson died 30 June, 1866, and his successor was Bishop (later Archbishop) Dan- iel Murphy, a native of Cork, who presided in Rome at the funeral of the Liberator, Daniel O'Connell, and Uved to be a centenarian.
In South Australia the tone of public opinion in the early days was anti-Irish and anti-Catholic and the growth of the Church was slow. The first bishop was the Reverend Francis Murphy, a native of the County Meath, who reached Adelaide in September, 1844.
Thomas Mooney, an Irislmian, was the first Catholic
settler in Western Austraha; but it was not until 1843
that Father John Brady, an Irish priest born in Cavan
and who had for twelve years laboured as a mission-
ary in the Mauritius, was appointed to take charge
of the district. In 1845 he was consecrated Bishop of
Perth. For years he hved a life of apostolic poverty,
tireless in his zeal as a missionary, and died in France,
3 December, 1871.
Father Therry was the first priest to visit the Queens- land section, and the roll of his successors is an almost continuous list of Irish names. The Emigration So- ciety in the early sixties of the last century directed many Irish families to Queensland. A Franciscan from Dublin, Reverend Patrick Bonaventure Geo- ghegan, was the first pastor in Victoria and celebrated the first Mass in Melbourne on 19 May, 1839. In May, 1841, the number of Catholics there was 2073, and on St. Patrick's Day, 1843, the St. Patrick's Society had a parade of 150 members.
An Irishman, Thomas Poynton, was the first Cath- olic settler in New Zealand, where he took charge of a .store and sawing station at Hokianga, in 1828. He had married at Sydney the daughter of a Wexford Irishman, Thomas Kennedy. In the course of time a daughter was born to them and the mother took the child to Sydney to be baptized, a distance of 1000 miles. Their next child was a boy who was also taken to Sydney for baptism, but this time the ship went rounrl by Hobart, and the distance was 2000 miles. Mr. PoJ^lton himself made tliree visits to Sydney to try to get missionaries to devote themselves to the care of the New Zealand Catholics, and when the Marists and Bishop Pompalier finally did arrive there he was of much assistance to them. Among the settlers they ministered to was an Irishman named Cassidy who had married the daughter of a Maori chief.
In all this it can be seen how large a part Irishmen had in laying a foundation for the Church in Austral- asia. The details of their association with secular affairs are equally prominent and honourable. They contributed their share and more than their share in building up responsible governments in the four east- ern States and in the culminating federation of the great Commonwealth on 1 January, 1901. In the development and solution of the important public issues of education, the tariff, vote by ballot, adult suffrage, the selection of land, agrarian legislation, the labour movement of 1873, Irish energy, executive ability, and political acumen contributed a large part. It is only necessary to mention as types such men as Sir Charles Gavan-Duffy, Sir John O'Shannessy, Nich- olas Fitzgerald, Augustus Leo Kenny, James Coghlan, M. O'Grady, Daniel Brophy, Sir Patrick Buckley, John Curnin, and Morgan S. Grace (see also lists in article Australia). In the delegates to the tliree great Australasian Catholic Congresses (the first at Sydney in September, 1900, the second at Melbourne in 1904, and the third at Sydney in September, 1909), the numerical strength and influence of the Irish in Aus- tralia was amply evidenced. The million Catholics that the estimates for 1910 give to Australasia show without question that the early proportion of the Irish element is well maintained. Nor have they ever been forgetful of the land of their birth and their ancestors. In the famine years of the last century generous contributions were sent back to help the sufferers. The Hibernian Australasian Catholic Ben- efit Society, founded in 1871, has many thousand members, and has spread to every state of the Com- monwealth and to New Zealand. (See Australia.)
Files of the Freeman's Journal (.Sydney) ; New Zealand Tablet (Dunedin); Advocate, Tribune (Melbourne); The Age (Ade- laide); Southern Cross (Perth); Dvffy, Life in Two Hemispheres (London, 1903), and the bibliography given with the article
AUSTRAUA.
Thomas F. Meehan.
