AUSTRALIA
Spanish Benedictine, afterwards founder and first
Abbot of New Norcia. A closer hierarchical organiza-
tion was needed. At Bishop Folding's earnest
- olicitations new dioceses were created by the Holy
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.
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.)
