Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 2.djvu/147

 AUSTRALIA

Spanish Benedictine, afterwards founder and first Abbot of New Norcia. A closer hierarchical organiza- tion was needed. At Bishop Folding's earnest See: Hobart, in 1842; Adelaide, in 1843; Perth, in 1845; Melbourne, Maitland, and Port Victoria, in 184S. Sydney also became an archiepiscopal see. Dr. Willson, the first Bishop of Hobart, will be re- membered for his successfid opposition to the ef- forts made, despite the local Church Act of 1837, to have Anglicanism placed on the same official footing as in England. It was the last serious effort to establish a religious ascendancy in any part of Australasia. In New South Wales the first sjTiod was held in 1844. Six years later, the first sod of the first railroad in .Australasia was turned in the capital of the mother-colony. At the census of 1851, the Cathohc body in the mother-colony had risen to 58,899 in a "total population of 190,999. In the Moreton Bay District of New South Wales (now Queensland) there were few Catholics, and no resi- dent priest till the Passionist Fathers opened their mission to the aboriginals on Stradbroke Island, in 1843. In the Port Phillip District of New South Wales (now Victoria) there were, in 1851, 18,014 Catholics in a total population of 77,345, with six priests (in 1850) and thirteen State-aided primary schools. Dr. Gould was the first Bishop of the new see founded there in 1848.
 * olicitations new dioceses were created by the Holy

I\'. Period of Co.\ip.\RATn'E Calm. — The dis- covery of rich gold in Victoria in 1851 had a pro- found and far-reaching effect on the history of Australia. There was a delirium of sudden pros- perity. Population rushed into the new El Dorado. In 1851, the mainland and Tasmania had a joint population of 211,095, nearly double that of 1S41. This rapid increase of inhabitants soon called for the erection of new episcopal sees. That of Brisbane was founded in 1859, the year in which Queensland became a separate colony. The Bishopric of Goul- bum was established in 1864; Maitland (a titular see

117 AUSTRALIA

since 1848) and Bathurst, in 1865; the abbacy nuUius of New Norcia (aboriginal mission), in 1867;. the See of Armidale, in 1869; and those of Ballarat and Sand- hurst, in 1874. In the last-mentioned year Mel- bourne (since 1851 the capital of the separate colony of Victoria) became an archiepiscopal see. The Vicariate Apostolic of Cooktown was formed Ll 1876, and the Diocese of Rockhampton in 1882. Three years later, in 1885, Dr. Moran (successor to Dr. Vaughan in the Archiepiscopal See of Sydney) was raised to the purple as Australia's first cardinal. The Plenary Synod held in Sydney in the same year resulted in the formation, in 1887, of the Dioceses of Grafton (now called Lismore), Wilcannia, Sale, and Fort .\ugusta, together with the Vicariates Apostolic of Kimberley (now under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Geraldton), and of Queensland (for aborigines only), while Adelaide, Brisbane, and (in 1888) Hobart became archiepiscopal sees. The Plenarj' Synod of 1895 led to the formation of the Diocese of Geraldton in 1898. The occupant of that see is administrator of the Diocese of Port Victoria and Palmerston, which, founded in 1848, lost its whole European population in 1849. The latest Plenarj' Sjmod of the Church in the Commonwealth took place in 1905, and two important and higlily successful Catholic Congresses were held, the first in Sydney in 1900, the second in Melbourne in 1904. In 1906, there were in the Australian Commonwealth six archbishops (one of them a cardinal, another a coadjutor), fifteen bishops (two of them coadjutors), one abbot nullius, and one vicar Apostolic; in all, a hierarchy of twenty-tliree prelates exercising episco- pal jurisdiction.

V. Religious Statistics. — The following table, compiled from official sources, shows the numerical strength of Catholics on the Australian mainland and in Tasmania for the years named, which have been chosen as being, in most instances, census years: —

Year

New South Wales

Victoria

Queensland

South Australia

Western Australia

Tasmania

Total Catholics

Total Population

1861 1871 1881 1891 1901

99.193 147.627 207,606 286.915 347,286

109,828 170,620 203,480 248,585 263,710

7.676 31,822 54.376 92,765 120.663

28,271 42,628 47,179 52,193

3.786 19,954 7,282 22.657 8.413 23.055 12.602 25,800 41.892 30,324

408.279 539,558 713,846 856,068

1,141,563 1,650.471 2,245,448 1 3,159.085 3,782,182

The Jews number 15,239 souls, and the minor eral summary of ecclesiastical statistics is from a Christian sects run in diminishing numbers to total table in the "Australasian Catholic Directory" for memberships of mere hundreds. The following gen- 1906: —

State and Ecclesiastical

1

1

1

a.3

■=§

4

£00

Provinces

j:

3

3

o

1.S

1

fs

II

go

.12

^2

O

O

m

!^

dm

Z

W:b

o

n

to

£»

o«

o

State of New South Wales

175

541

294

108

217

2,288

2

8

59

89

346

36

43,281

State of Victoria

107

438

204

52

74

1,190

—

9

41

27

State of Tasmania

19

63

28

—

—

135

—

—

1

25

2

States of South and Western

65

187

95

47

113

676

—

3

14

33

92

14

11,812

(Prov. of Adelaide)

State of Queensland

(Prov. of Brisbane) Commonwealth of Australia

55

106

80

13

25

356

—

4

18

9

66

9

421

1,335

701

220

429

4.645

2

24

133

162

733

76

105,835

(Certain of the figures given above are the sums of incomplete diocesan returns.)