Bicentenary of Sydney’s first Mass

Sydney
11 May 2003

Bicentenary of Sydney’s first Mass

French held first Catholic service

Convict priest was in favour ... and out

Catholics in a land without priests

Healing service a ‘most meaningful’ Mass

Christianity and New Age practices held up to light

Governor’s signature let Catholics have first Mass after years of neglect, denial

Editorial: Inalienable rites

Letters: Celibacy and marriage

Voice of Youth - Faith: It’s what makes the difference

Catholic schooling ‘worth every penny’

How do you know when it’s the right school?

Students take social justice to heart

Bicentenary of Sydney’s first Mass

The first Mass is commemorated in a stained glass window (pictured) in the south side of the transept on the western side of the nave of St Mary’s Cathedral Photo Max Hurford

Perhaps it is propitious that the celebrations this coming week for the bicentenary of the first Mass, which saw the birth of the Australian Catholic Church, should begin with a Mass on Mother’s Day and in a church dedicated to the mother of Christ.

St Mary’s Cathedral opens this week’s celebrations of the first official Mass, which took place on May 15, 1803. It does so with a commemorative Mass this Sunday, celebrated by the bishops of Australia.

The first Mass, however, was a very different affair, celebrated at The Rocks, a rough place then, by a convict priest for a convict congregation.

Our Australian Church was born in conflict and of conflict. Sadly, 200 years on, we still live in a world rent by strife.

But, in these days of modern conflict, Mary has come to be seen as a beacon of hope. The Pope promotes her prayer, the Rosary, renewed as a prayer of peace, and we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Catholic Church in Australia in her church in Sydney.

How blessed, too, that commemoration of that first Mass should take place in Australia’s Mother Church on Mother’s Day, a day when we honour our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers.