Year in Review 2024 Catholic Diocese of Sandhurst 31 2024 years since the first Mass was celebrated beside the Bendigo Creek in 1852; and at St Kilian’s itself, the original church of 1852 had already been replaced by a new church in 1857, which was itself to be replaced after thirty years when it was discovered that it was too heavy for its foundations and was replaced by something lighter while a permanent solution was developed. After nearly 140 years, we’re still all very attached to that temporary solution, I must say! But at the time of that first Chrism Mass, travel was still very arduous and time-consuming, and it’s unlikely that priests from the communities of the northeast or places other than Bendigo would have attended. It would have been a very small celebration indeed. Up until then, the oils used in the celebrations of the sacraments would have been blessed by Bishop James Alipius Goold, who had been appointed as the first bishop of the new Diocese of Melbourne in 1847. I’m not sure how the priests were resupplied, but they certainly would have used the oils with great abundance, and in great quantities. Dr Backhaus alone celebrated over 4,000 baptisms in his first decade here in the Bendigo Goldfields, and there would have been similar efforts by pioneering priests in other parts of the Diocese like William Tierney, John Kennedy, George Galen and Nicholas Bassetto. In the decades after that, the gold rush ended here and in the north-east, and the various activities associated with gold mining were gradually replaced by farms, vineyards, orchards and businesses. As towns developed, scattered right across this vast area, churches and schools were built too, culminating in the building of this extraordinary Cathedral that we are so fortunate to have as part of our Diocese, opened in 1901 and completed in 1977. We should be particularly proud of the schools in our Diocese, that have resulted from the commitment of communities across many generations, who were determined to ensure that there is a quality, Catholic education available for all our young people. Through most of that time, this was without the government support that is so integral to our operations today. So in earlier times, Catholic schooling was only possible because of the commitment and generosity of local communities, who often literally built the schools themselves, and because of the extraordinary contribution of generations of religious women and men from a variety of religious congregations. We have been blessed throughout our history as a Diocese by the arrival of migrants. From the earliest days of the Diocese, migrants came from Ireland and England. In the first half of the twentieth century, people came from many countries of Europe, and then in the 1970s, beginning with people from Vietnam, we have welcomed an extraordinary diversity of people from various countries of Asia, India, Africa and the Middle East. We’ve been enormously enriched by people of those cultures and the priests who have come with them or alongside them, by the culture that they bring, and the faith that they share with us. That has been highlighted for me personally over the last year as I visited the families of many of our priests in India and in the Philippines. 150th Chrism Mass Homily
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTQ0MTI=