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 BALLARAT BALLERINI turned to Dublin with two novices, in 1821, to es- tablish the Irish Branch of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the instruction of children. In 1822 she opened the first institution of the order in Ireland, in Rathfarnam House, four miles from Dublin. Mother Frances was a woman of great piety and ad- ministrative ability. Her energies were devoted to the establishment of schools and to the development of the sisterhood which now has members in many countries. Coleridge. The Life of Mother Franeea Mary Teresa Ball (Lon.ion, 1881). Edwin Drurt. Ballarat, Dioce.se of, one of the three suffragan dioceses of the ecclesiastical province of Melbourne, Australia. It comprises that part of the State of Victoria which is bounded on the east by the 144th meridian E. longitude, thence by the Loddon to the River Murray; on the north by the River Murray; on the west by South Australia; and on the south by the Southern Ocean. History. — Victoria (known tiU 1851 as the Port Phillip District of Xew South Wales) was first per- manently colonized in 1835. The rich pastures of the Ballarat district were occupied in 1838. For thirteen years thereafter the site of Ballarat was a picturesque pastoral scene. In 1851 the Port Phillip District was formed into a separate colony under the name of Victoria. It was a period of severe com- mercial depression, and many of the colonists pre- pared to set out for the newlj^ discovered goldfields of Ophir, in New South Wales. On 29 June, 1851, the first profitable goldfield in Victoria was discovered at Clunes by James W. Esmond, an Irish Catliolic miner, who had been on the Sacramento in '49. The hopes of the colonists rose; ebbed again as Clunes proved a passing disappointment; then came in with a rush when, in August, rich gold was struck at Ballarat. Many of the little eight-feet-square claims were mar- vellously rich, lined with "jewelers' shops" and "pockets" of gold. Ballarat became at a bound the richest goldfield in the world, and forty thousand people were soon encamped upon it. Rich fields were discovered in quick succession at Mount Alexander, Bendigo, and other places. Victoria became the modern Transylvania; there ensued a great rush of population to her shores; and she became, and long remained, the most populous of the Australian col- onies. At Ballarat, through the lost battle of the Eureka Stockade the insurgent miners of 1854 ulti- mately %von a victorj' over the exasperating old system of mining licences and "digger hunts". Bishop Goold of Melbourne made strenuous efforts to cope mth the conditions created by the sudden expansion of population. The first priest appointed to Ballarat was the Rev. Patrick Dunne, most of whose flock in Coburg had stampeded to the gold- fields. Father Dunne lived in a calico hut, slept on a slab of gumtree bark, and had for his first church a canvas tent. For some years afterwards a few priests attended to the spiritual wants of what now com- prises the Diocese of Ballarat. It was formed in 1874 out of the See of Mellxjurne. Its first bishop was the Right Rev. Michael O'Connor, a Dublin priest. He was consecrated in Rome on the 7th May, 1874, and was enthroned in his cathedral at Ballarat on the 20th December of the same year. He intro- duced the Christian Brothers, the Sisters of Mercy, and the Loreto nuns, and after a fruitful episcopate died on the 14th February, 1883. His successor was the Right Rev. James Moore, consecrated 27 April, 1884. Dr. Moore opened the successful boys' college at Ballarat, and introduced the Redemptorist Fathers and the .Sisters of Nazareth, of St. jcseph, and of St. Brigid. He was skilled in finance, was a builder with big ideas, and at his death, 2Gth June, 1904, left Ballarat one of the best equipped dioceses in Aus- tralasia. He was succeeded by the Right Re-. Joseph Higgins, who was translated from the See of Rock- hampton on the 3rd of March, 1905. He made mission- and school-extension the chief work of his episcopate. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny were introduced; convents, primary and high schools, and churches (over twenty in two years to March, 1907) erected; and many new missions organized. Much of the work summarized here has been carried out in the once drought-scourged, but now prosperous, Mallee country; and remote Mildura, the Ultima Thule of the diocese, has now a resident priest, a convent of the Sisters of Mercy, and a parish school ^'ith a daily attendance of 130 pupils. Religious Statistics. — In March, 1907, there were: parochial districts, 29; churches, 145; secular priests, 62; regular priests, 10; religious brothers, 17; nuns, 230; convents, 18; college (boys), 1; superior day schools (boys) 2; boarding schools (girls), 10; superior day schools (girls), 9; primary schools, 57; home for aged poor, 1; orphanage, 1; children in Catholic schools, 4,900; Catholic population, 59,488. MoR.N. History of the Catholic Church in Australasia (Syd- ney, s. d.); Jose, History of Australasia (Sydney, 1901); Wn-HERs, History of Ballarat (2d ed.. Ballarat, 1887); Mis- siones Catholicw (Propaganda, Rome, 1907) 688. Henry W. Cleary. Ballerini, Girolamo and Pietro, celebrated theologians and canonists, the sons of a distinguished surgeon of Verona. A rare intellectual sympathy bound these brothers together and led them to assist each other in the preparation and composition of their many works. Girolaiio was born at Verona 29 January, 1702, and died 23 April, 1781. After finishing his course in the Jesuit college of his native city he entered the seminary and was ordained a secular priest. In the pursuit of his favourite his- torical studies he soon came to appreciate the valua- ble labours of the learned Cardinal Noris, also of Verona, and brought out (1729-33) a complete edition of his works. The scholarship of the editors is best seen in the fourth volume, especially in their dissertations against Ciarnerius, and in their study of the early days of the Patriarchate of Aquileia. They also publislied (1733) an edition of the wTitings of Matteo Giberti Bishop of Verona, and in 1739 a critical edition of the sermons of St. Zeno of Verona. PiETRO, b. 7 September, 1698; d. 28 March, 1769, after completing his studies both at college and the seminarj' was chosen principal of a classical school in Verona. Here he began his long and notable literarj' career in 1724, when he prepared for his pupils a treatise on the method of study taught and followed by St. Augustine. Some passages in this work gave serious offence to the school of absolute Probabilists, and for some years Pietro was en- gaged in a lively dispute with them, defending his principles of Probabiliorism in tlu-ee volumes. Shortly afterwards he turned his attention to the much debated question of usury, and threw his influence against the claims of the Laxists. To sustain his argument in this controversy he pre- pared (1740) an edition of the "Summa" of St. An- toninus which he sent to Pope Benedict XIV, and also (1774) one of the " Summa " of St. Raymond of Pennafort. During this same year he published "La Dottrina della Chiesa Cattolica circa I'usura", in which he condemned all forms of usury. This exceptional literary activity made the name of the Ballerini brothers famous throughout Italy, and in 1748 Peter was chosen bj' the senate of Venice to serve as its canonist in Rome in a dispute over the Patriarchate of Aquileia. His conspicuous talent on this mission attracted the attention of Pope Bene- dict XIV, who commissioned him to prepare an edition of St. Leo's works in refutation of the de- fective one published by Quesnel.