History and Origin: The First Convicted Land Church

The history of the Cathedral of St. Mary of Sydney is the history of the Catholic faith in Australia: a history of heroic faith born in the humiliation of the penal colony, sustained by the spiritual stubbornness of the Irish convicts, and crowned with the magnificence of the Gothic building that today dominates the eastern edge of Hyde Park. There is no, throughout the English-speaking world, a Catholic cathedral whose foundation is most closely linked to the dignity of the latter and the marginalized.

It all started in 1821, when the governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, gave Sydney Catholics a site near Hyde Park to build a church. The gesture was remarkable in a context in which Catholics - the vast majority of Irish convicts convicted of crimes of poverty or resistance to English rule - were second-class citizens in the British colony. The first stone of the church was placed on October 29, 1821 by the missionary priest Father John Joseph Kerry, one of the first Catholic priests to exercise his ministry freely in Australia.

The first Archbishop of Sydney, John Bede Polding, OSB, an English Benedictine of passionate soul and vision of the future, was the one who transformed that first church into the cathedral project. Polding, who arrived in Australia in 1835, understood that the Church on this new continent needed a house worthy of God and his people. His Marian devotion - inherited from Benedictine spirituality - found in the project of the Cathedral of St. Mary the symbol of a Church that, like Mary, kept the Word of God in the midst of adversities.

The fire of 1865 and the Gothic cathedral - Tudor

The progress of the construction was slow and accidental. On June 29, 1865, a devastating fire destroyed almost the entire structure that had taken decades to lift. The disaster was immense, but the response of the Catholic community in Sydney - which at that time included tens of thousands of Irish immigrants coming after the Great Hunger of 1845- 1852 - was immediate and generous. In a matter of months a new collection was organized, the architects Wardell and Wilson were hired, and the first stone of the new cathedral was put on 8 December 1868, the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

The new cathedral of Santa Maria, designed by William Wardell in the Gothic style of Tudor that so much liked the Victorian taste of the time, was progressively completed over the next hundred and thirty years. The twin towers - whose absence was for decades one of the symbols of the limited resources of the Australian Church - were finally completed in 2000, on the occasion of the Holy Year. On 8 September 2000, in the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Virgin, the cathedral was formally consecrated with its complete towers for the first time in its history.

The image of Our Lady Helper: Don Bosco's gift

Among all the Marian images that are venerated in the Cathedral of Santa Maria, which occupies a special place in the memory of Italian and Latino immigrants is the image of Our Lady Assistant, donated to the Cathedral by the Salesians of Don Bosco as an expression of the devotion that the founder of the Salesians consecrated as one of the jewels of their spirituality.

Don Bosco, the great educator of the poor young people of Turin, had Our Lady Assistant as the patron of his work and the inspiration of his pedagogy. The image of Our Lady Helper donated to Sydney travelled from Italy as a symbol of the presence of the Italian and Salesian community in Australia, and has since been the subject of a special devotion by the Italian, Spanish and Portuguese-speaking immigrants who found in this image of Mary the mother who accompanied them in the distance.

"This cathedral is the heart of the Catholic faith of Australia. In her, every immigrant who came to these shores, every convict who suffered at the beginning, every faithful who prayed in her found Mary, her mother. She does not ask where you come from or what you did: she welcomes you, listens to you, presents you to her Son." - Cardinal George Pell, homily of the Solemnity of St. Mary, August 15, 2007.

Sydney World Youth Day 2008

The largest event in the recent history of the Cathedral of St. Mary of Sydney was undoubtedly the 2008 World Youth Day, held in Sydney from 15 to 20 July, under the chairmanship of Benedict XVI. More than 200,000 young people from all over the world - the largest number in the history of Australian JMJ - gathered in Randwick Racecourse for the closing Mass, making Sydney the spiritual center of world Catholicism during that extraordinary week.

The Cathedral of Santa Maria was the liturgical heart of the JMJ. There Benedict XVI held the opening Mass, there was the ecumenical encounter with the other Christian denominations of Australia, and there the Pope stopped in prayer before the image of Our Lady Helper. The 2008 Sydney JMJ was also the context in which the first Australian saint, Mary MacKillop, whose cause had been opened decades earlier, was beatified. Mary MacKillop, founder of the Sisters of St. Joseph, was finally canonized by Benedict XVI in Rome in 2010.

Immigrants and Marian devotion

The Cathedral of St. Mary of Sydney has historically been the point of reference for successive waves of Catholic immigrants who came to Australia for a better life. The Irish convicts of the 19th century, the Italian and Maltese immigrants of the 20th century, the Poles who fled from communism, the Vietnamese who fled the war, the Lebanese, the Filipinos, the Latin Americans: all of them found in the Cathedral of Santa Maria a mother who spoke their language, or at least understood their heart.

The chapel of Our Lady Auxiliary has witnessed countless requests from immigrants who arrived with nothing and asked Mary for work, health, family reunification. The intention books, preserved in the cathedral's archives, are a human document of extraordinary wealth: petitions in dozens of languages, in English and Irish, in Italian and Polish, in Vietnamese and in tagalo, which narrate the anguish and hopes of five generations of Catholic immigrants in Australia.

Miracles and graces documented

The healing of Father John Therry (1829)

The founder of the first Sydney church, Father Therry, narrated in his memoirs that in 1829, seriously sick of a fever that colonial doctors could not treat, he asked to be taken to the chapel of St. Mary where he spent a night in prayer. The next morning, it was completely restored. He lived until he was 79 years old and always attributed this healing to the intercession of the Virgin.

La curación de la señora Anne O’Brien (1887)

Las crónicas del Archivo Arquidiocesano de Sydney registran el caso de Anne O’Brien, inmigrante irlandesa de Limerick, diagnosticada con cáncer de mama en 1887 y dada por incurable. Tras una novena a Nuestra Señora en la catedral de Santa María, el tumor desapareció en el plazo de tres meses sin intervención médica. El caso fue investigado por el vicario general de la arquidiócesis y figura en los archivos con el número de registro 23/1887.

Protection of the neighborhood during the bombing (1942)

During World War II, when Japanese submarines bombed Sydney Bay in May 1942, panic spread throughout the city. The parish community of the cathedral organized a continuous night vigil of Rosario that lasted several days. No bomb or projectile fell near the cathedral, and the parishioners attributed the protection of the neighborhood to the intercession of Our Lady.

• 1788First British fleet arrives in Sydney. Among the convicts are numerous Irish Catholics who keep their faith secret.
• 1821First stone of Australia's first Catholic church. Governor Macquarie cedes the site.
• 1835Arrival of Archbishop Polding, OSB. The Benedictine Marian devotion gives shape to the spirituality of the new Australian Church.
• 1865Fire from the cathedral. The Irish community responds generously and raises funds for reconstruction.
• 1868First stone of the present cathedral, on December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception.
• 1942Japanese bombing of Sydney Bay. Marian vigil in the cathedral.
• 1986John Paul II visits Sydney and celebrates Mass in the cathedral. First papal visit to Australia.
• 1995The Salesians donate the image of Our Lady Helper. Don Bosco's devotion enters the Cathedral of Santa Maria.
• 2000Final congracation of the cathedral with the complete towers. The holy year culminates in St. Mary of Sydney.
• 2008JMJ from Sydney. Benedict XVI prays to Our Lady Helper. 200,000 young people fill Randwick.
• 2010Canonization of Saint Mary MacKillop - first Australian saint.

The sanctuary today

The Cathedral of St. Mary of Sydney is today the most visited historical monument of the Archdiocese of Sydney and one of the great Marian shrines of the southern hemisphere. Each day it welcomes thousands of visitors - tourists, pilgrims and the faithful of the city - who stop in prayer before Our Lady Auxiliary or simply contemplate the beauty of the Gothic building in the heart of one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the Pacific.

Pray the Holy Rosary