Archbishop of Sydney

150th Anniversary of St. Patrick’s Parish, Albury

Feast of St. Bernard

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
20 August 2004

Today we thank God for what we have inherited from 150 years of Catholic parish life in Albury; we express our determination to maintain this heritage and expand it and ask God Our Father to give us the faith, wisdom and courage needed for the future.

 The founder of Albury town in 1836 was Robert Brown, a Catholic.

 The First Mass was celebrated on November 25, 1843 by Father Charles Lovat, an English priest, from Yass, who found 60 Catholics there.

 The first Bishop of Melbourne, Bishop James Goold passed through on his way to Melbourne in 1848 in a coach and four.

 Archbishop Polding created Albury parish (or mission) in 1854 – a vast area, larger than the Wagga diocese of today and with a population of about 600, boosted by gold fields at Beechworth.  Father John Maker was appointed first resident priest on October 1st, 1854

 The foundation stone of the first Church was laid by Archbishop Polding in February, 1858.

 The legendary builder Dr. Michael McAlroy came to Australia in 1855, quarrelled with Bishop Goold in Melbourne and moved north to Yass and then Goulburn, which was established as centre of a new diocese in 1864.

 McAlroy came to Albury in 1868 and he invited the Sisters of Mercy in that same year.  He was known as the apostle of the Southern District, who in the words of Monsignor Patrick Hartigan, the poet John O’Brien “lit the sanctuary lamps from the Abercrombie to the Murray”.

 He was the driving force in the construction of this beautiful church, which many hoped would be the centre of a new diocese.  He completed 20 building projects between 1861 and 1879.  Apparently he could be a bit blunt as some of his fellow priests complained to the bishop that he was “unjust, uncharitable and disrespectful towards them”, but Monsignor Hartigan also explained that he was “an extraordinary combination of the deeply spiritual man and a shrewd man of business . . . .  His vision was almost that of a prophet” and he was supreme in his zeal for the Church.

 His successor Father John Dunne later became Bishop of Wilcannia-Forbes and had been the first priest to celebrate Mass on the Ballarat Goldfields.

 The history of this parish and of every parish is a story of continuity and of change.

 Time is always on the move, even though we older people remain continually surprised by this.

 In 1911 the new curate Father William Slattery arrived by horse and sulky, the last priest to do so.  The district saw the suffering caused in distant lands by the First World War.  Construction of the Hume Weir began in 1919 and brought hundreds to the area.

 St. Patrick’s football team won 6 of 7 premierships between 1921-1927 but so bitter and sectarian was the rivalry with Albury football team that both teams were disbanded and West and East Albury were formed, divided by Olive Street.

 Under Monsignor Harry Larkens the centenary of the parish was celebrated in 1956, a couple of years late as they discovered.

 The enormous changes from the Second Vatican Council came to the district, so that the first parish council was set up in 1970 and the altar was changed to face the people for the centenary of the church in 1972.  The parish history also recounts that in 1994 the parish saw its first girl altar servers.

 The parish began in the year of the Eureka Stockade uprising and the year when the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was defined in Rome.  There were few roads; the railways only came much later and people and foods arrived along the Murray.  The colony of Victoria had not long been separated from New South Wales and the two World Wars, the boom and bust in Melbourne in the 1880’s and 1890’s and the great depression of the 1930’s lay far into the future.

During all these changes the Catholic community here of faith, prayer and service continued on, waxed and waned, saw its own changes, especially those prompted by the Second Vatican Council.  But the Catholic faith and the Catholic community was a constant agent of good in the district and I am sure it will be doing this work in fifty and a hundred and a hundred and fifty years time.

We all know that while we continue to have formidable strength.  Catholic life is also under some pressure.  Generally the rates of regular worship are lower among 20 year olds than those in their sixties.

We must also and always remember that trends are not inevitabilities; trends rarely continue in one direction for ever.

The saint of today Bernard of Clairvaux in France (1090-1153) is an interesting example of an agent of the Spirit, of God at work.  With some family and friends he founded a new monastery at Clairvaux, following the strict reformed life of the Cistercians.  There was nothing inevitable about this.  The foundation was new and against the current.  The major order then was the Benedictines there were no Franciscans or Dominicans (who came 100 years later), much less the 16th century Jesuits or the 19th century sisters of Mercy and Christian Brothers; and they opposed this new beginning.  Thousands eventually joined and Bernard founded 68 new communities in his life time.  Incidentally these were the years of the crusades to recapture and hold the Holy Land against the Moslems and a Pope and anti-Pope.

What did Bernard do to catch the wave?  Or to use another image, to catch the breeze so that it filled his sails?

The answer for him and us lies in today’s readings.  He opened his heart to godly wisdom, so that he had the bread of understanding to eat and the water of wisdom to drink.  He feared God, accepted and embraced the law of God, and he became wise.  He understood what God wanted.

He did not appeal to conscience to reject the hard teachings of Christ or the Church; he put Christ, his person and teachings, at the heart of his life and activities; he understood the importance of prayer and of unity with God the Father through Christ.  He was not looking for fashionable alternatives to the gospel demand that we repent and believe.

Sometimes we act as though someone else was teaching the basics.  We can become distracted, or perhaps too sophisticated, less mindful than we should of the four foundations of Catholic living, which I had placed on the back page of every copy of the new Melbourne-Sydney religious education texts.

There is one true God who loves us.  Jesus Christ is the only Son of God, our Redeemer and Teacher.
Primarily and substantially there is one true Church, led by Pope and bishops.

Jesus does not leave us free to accept any option we choose, but to repent and believe.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.