Third Sunday of Easter
Bicentenary of arrival of Fr Philip Conolly
The Gospel reading today takes us back to the appearance of the risen Lord to his disciples on the evening of Easter day. He specifically points to his wounds as evidence that the One standing before them is the same One who was crucified. St Luke then tells us that the Lord explained the meaning of his death and resurrection to them, concluding with the words, “So you see how it is written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, so that, in his name repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem”.
The apparitions of the risen Lord confirmed the faith of his disciples so that they could preach Christ, crucified and risen, as he commanded, “to all the nations”.
Perhaps it was a consciousness of this instruction of the Lord that inspired Phillip Conolly, an Irish priest ordained in 1814 and then working in a parish in Dublin, to volunteer to serve in the remote British penal colony of New South Wales. The government in London had given permission for two priests to serve the Catholics among the convict population. Their intention was that clergy may help in their moral and civil rehabilitation. For the Irish convicts, a number of whom were political prisoners, it was hoped that the priests might temper their spirit of rebellion and encourage them to be good citizens.
Arriving in Sydney on May 3, 1820, with his companion Fr John Joseph Therry, he spent the best part of a year there before deciding that it would be he who would go to the second major colonial centre, Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land. He arrived in Tasmania from Sydney aboard the Prince Leopold on April 14, 1821.
Arriving in Hobart Town he was able to obtain lodging with the family of Edward Curr. Indeed, he would remain with them until 1823 when they decided to return to England. Edward Curr was a wholesale and retail merchant, and it was in his store in Brisbane Street that Fr Conolly celebrated his first Mass in Van Diemen’s Land the following day. Nine people were in attendance.
His early work involved baptisms of children and celebrating a Catholic marriage for couples, some of whom had been married by the Church of England chaplain, Robert Knopwood. Knopwood, who had a house over in Bellerive, became a close friend of Conolly and they often dined at one another’s residences, enjoying a pipe and a quiet drink. As Conolly was dying the Anglican priest was attentive to him.
Though there was a small group of Catholics who were free citizens, including some soldiers, the bulk of his ministry was among the convicts transported from England. One of his early duties, two weeks after his arrival, on April 28, was to prepare four convicts to face death by hanging. This remained a necessary task in his priestly ministry for the years that followed.
Conolly commented that some convicts remained obstinate while some did respond to his ministrations as they faced the gallows. This experience is not dissimilar to the Lord’s on Calvary as one thief abused him, while the other asked for mercy. And mercy he received.
Four times each year over the next fourteen years he would take the long and arduous overland trip to Launceston to provide Mass for the Catholics there, often going further on to Fort Dalrymple, George Town, at the head of the Tamar. He said his first Mass there for a small number of soldiers on June 1, 1821, after having attended to four convicts who were executed the previous day.
He was granted this property on Harrington Street, bordered by Brisbane and Patrick Streets by Governor Sorrell, and in July 1821 he appealed for donations so that he could build a church. The first Catholic church in Tasmania was a very modest building, made of rough wood which he obtained from the government and built on simple stone foundations. He named it in honour of the Irish medieval astronomer, St Virgil. It stood a little higher up the hill from the location of the present cathedral where St Virgil’s Primary School is now currently situated.
Bishop Poynter in London sent out a set of vestments, chalices and books for his use at Mass. Later, in 1824, a set of six large candles and an altar cross was donated by an Irish benefactor and brought to Tasmania by a Carmelite priest, Fr Coote (they are on the altar today). He continued to use this chapel for the duration of his ministry, though he did attempt to construct a larger church further up the hill. However, this never eventuated.
He built a house next to the church which he named “Killard” and in which he would live for the duration of his time in Hobart. Fr Conolly died in 1839 and was buried in the Catholic cemetery above Barrack Street, where Guilford Young College is today.
When construction of St Virgil’s Secondary School began in 1916 the graves on the property were opened and the remains taken to Cornelian Bay. Fr Conolly’s remains were exhumated and reinterred under the northern transept of the cathedral joining the early bishops who were buried there. When we restore the floor of the cathedral we intend to exhume the bodies of Fr Conolly and the other four bishops buried there and re-inter them in the crypt of the cathedral.
In 1823 he opened a school, the second Catholic school in Australia, across the road in Harrington Street. The teacher, John Wade, was an ex-convict and the school soon had some 50 students, a number of whom were Protestant. He did hold out hope that these children would be, as he expressed it, “initiated into the duties of Religion”.
Fr Conolly’s ministry was difficult and he felt that he had made little spiritual progress with the people. He experienced many convicts who were in his words, “depraved” and were unrepentant. He was appalled by the extent of drunkenness and what he described as “notoriously immoral conduct”.
He carried out his ministry as the only resident priest in Tasmania until shortly before his death. His faithful service laid foundations upon which others would build.
As we celebrate this significant anniversary we take a moment to recognise the sacrifice and pastoral service of our founding priest, Fr Philip Conolly, who Fr Terry Southerwood described in his biography of this pioneer priest as the “Lonely Shepherd in Van Diemen’s Isle”.
Archbishop Julian Porteous
Sunday, 18 April 2021.