Page:The Irish in Australia.djvu/255

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THE CHURCH IN THE COLONIES.
241

family, viz., Richard O'Sullivan, a brother of that lamented orator, author, and journalist, A. M. Sullivan, and of that, happily, still living devoted Nationalist leader and patriotic poet, T. D. Sullivan, M.P., editor of the Nation, When he revisited Ireland in 1859, he brought back with him to Australia the Rev. Dr. Forrest as the first rector of the now-flourishing St. John's College, affiliated to the University of Sydney. In short, Archdeacon McEncroe is fully entitled to share with Archpriest Therry in all the posthumous honours that are justly due to the self-denying, successful pioneer, each having been largely instrumental in laying the sure foundation on which the imposing edifice of the Australian Catholic Church of to-day is built. The Right Hon. W. B. Dalley, soon after the decease of the twin founders of Catholicity on the southern continent, reminded a large gathering of his co-religionists in Sydney of "the privilege of having possessed two such pure, simple, heroic confessors as the two great priests whose memory we wish to perpetuate. They are endeared to us by lives as blameless as they were beautiful, and identified with everything of interest in our ecclesiastical history."

With the arrival in Australia, more than half a century ago, of Dr. Ullathorne, now the aged Bishop of Birmingham, in England, another important stage of Church development was reached. Dr. Ullathorne, then an active young man of twenty-six, came out in the capacity of Vicar-General of the Bishop of the Mauritius, who at that early period exercised a sort of nominal jurisdiction over the whole of Australia and the South Sea Islands. The organising faculty was possessed in no small degree by Dr. Ullathorne, and he was fortunate in receiving material assistance from the new Governor, Sir Richard Bourke, who, though not a Catholic