135th Anniversary of St Fursaeus’ Church, Zeehan, 25 October 2026

There is something wonderfully appropriate about the response we have just prayed on this anniversary day:

Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.

For 135 years people have been coming to this house of the Lord here in Zeehan. They have come rejoicing. They have also come grieving. They have brought children to the font for Baptism. They have brought their dead through these doors for the last time. They have knelt here when life was good and when life was almost unbearable.

And today we come again.

In 1891 Zeehan was booming. Miners and their families came to the West Coast, and among them were Catholics. Father Timothy O’Callaghan, a Cork-born priest, was appointed to the Zeehan mission in January of that year. He was fondly known as Fr Tim. The foundation stone of St Fursaeus’ was laid on 20 April, and on 29 November the church was solemnly opened. The cost was £1,220—an enormous sum for those days.

The 1891 newspaper account gives us a lovely glimpse of that day. The church was crowded. Archbishop Daniel Murphy celebrated the Mass. A choir sang. Afterwards there was a procession around the church, and the people returned inside for Benediction.

I suspect those first parishioners would be rather pleased that, 135 years later, there are Catholics in Zeehan still doing exactly what they did.

We have come to Mass.

Yet Solomon reminds us in our first reading that God cannot be contained by a building. Standing before the newly built Temple, Solomon asks: “Can it be that God really lives with men on the earth? Why, the heavens and their own heavens cannot contain you. How much less this house that I have built!”

That is important today.

We are not celebrating 135 years of timber and iron. We are celebrating 135 years of the presence of God among his people on the West of Tasmania.

Buildings matter because of what happens within them.

Here sins have been forgiven. Here people have heard the Word of God. Here Christ has given himself to his people in the Eucharist. Here generations have remembered how deeply they are loved by God.

And the history of St Fursaeus’ is filled with people.

There were the priests who travelled enormous distances to serve scattered communities. There were the Sisters of St Joseph who came to Zeehan in 1895 and began teaching the children. The centenary history records that when they arrived, they were joyfully welcomed by around a thousand people. Five days later they opened their school with 120 pupils.

There were miners and shopkeepers, mothers and fathers, children who became grandparents, people whose names we remember and many whose names have disappeared from human memory.

But not from God’s heart.

Among the sons of Zeehan who became priests was Father Graeme Howard. Today happens to be Father Graeme’s ninetieth birthday. This community can rightly give thanks for his vocation which grew from the soil of Zeehan and has been given in service to the Church in Tasmania.

Most of the priests who served in Zeehan were missionary priests including Fr Tim. And most of them when they got here did not want to leave. You are currently blessed with a fine missionary priest in Fr Arokia and he has told me how much he loves being here with you.

Saint Paul tells us today: “You are God’s building.”

The most important St Fursaeus’ Church is not the building around us. It is the Church sitting in the pews.

Paul says that the foundation has already been laid, and that foundation is Jesus Christ.

Zeehan has changed enormously since 1891. The population has risen and fallen. Mines have opened and closed. Schools have changed. Families have moved away. The great bustle of “Silver Town” belongs to another age.

Yet Jesus Christ has not changed.

That is why this anniversary cannot simply be about looking backwards.

Memory is Christian only when it gives us hope.

We remember those who built this church because their faith now becomes our responsibility. They did not build St Fursaeus’ as a museum for us to admire. They built it because they believed that Christ was alive, that the Mass mattered, and that their children should know the faith.

Now it is our turn.

In the Gospel Jesus asks the question which every generation must answer for itself: “Who do you say I am?”

Peter replies: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

That confession is the real foundation stone of every Catholic church.

It was the foundation stone in 1891.

It is the foundation stone in 2026.

And it must remain the foundation stone for the future.

So today we rejoice. We remember those who have gone before us. We give thanks for priests and religious, for families and parishioners, and for those who kept the faith alive when numbers became smaller and circumstances changed.

And perhaps somewhere in heaven there is a congregation of Zeehan Catholics looking down upon us today. They know something we are still learning: buildings eventually pass away, mining towns change, even the strongest human lives come to their end.

But Christ rises.

And because Christ rises, his people rise with him.

So, after 135 years, let the invitation sound once more through Silver Town:

Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.

And may St Fursaeus’ continue to be what those first Catholics intended it to be — a house of prayer, a home for Christ’s people, and a light of faith shining on Tasmania’s West Coast.

For the foundation has been laid.

And that foundation is Jesus Christ.

Most Rev. Anthony J. Ireland
Archbishop of Hobart
25 October 2026