30 Catholic Diocese of Sandhurst Year in Review 2024 1874 2024 marked the 150th anniversary of the Diocese of Sandhurst which was established on the Feast of Our Lady of Good Counsel in March 1874. Many events were held across the Diocese to commemorate this significant anniversary, starting with a Pilgrimage from St Kilian’s Church to Sacred Heart Cathedral, Bendigo on 24 March and the Chrism Mass at Sacred Heart Cathedral on 26 March. Foundation of the Diocese Sandhurst Anniversary 150th anniversary celebrations of the Diocese of Sandhurst Bishop Shane’s Chrism Mass Homily 26 March 2024 For most of us, this is not the first Chrism Mass that we have participated in. These are familiar patterns, as we gather year after year as part of our annual preparations for Easter, moving from Ash Wednesday at the beginning of Lent through Palm Sunday at the beginning of Holy Week, to today’s Mass where we bless the oils that will be used in sacraments across the Diocese throughout the coming year. At this stage, plans are well advanced in communities across the Diocese for the Easter Triduum, which we will celebrate in a few days’ time. That pattern of our liturgical life has been going on now in the Diocese for 150 years. It might feel like there’s something very stable about that, and in one sense there is. But, as we look back over the 150 years that we mark this year, the pattern has changed dramatically, and much more so than in the particular experience of any of our lives. When Bishop Crane – whose ring, pectoral cross and crosier I use today – arrived as the first Bishop of the Diocese in 1875 with a handful of fellow Augustinian priests who he brought with him from Ireland. They were met by Dr Henry Backhaus here in Bendigo (or Sandhurst as it was known then) and the pioneering priests from the other three original missions of the Diocese, in Beechworth, Wangaratta and Heathcote. At that stage, the communities weren’t called parishes, but missions, each encompassing enormous territories with a number of chapels and a rapidly growing number of Catholics. These mission communities were fairly scattered and disconnected from one another, without much sense of being part of a Diocese as such. So, we can imagine that the Diocese’s first Chrism Mass, celebrated in the proCathedral of St Kilian’s, would have been a fairly small affair, even though in some respects, the Christian community in this region was well established. It was more than twenty
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