St Patrick’s Church Hill in The Rocks is everyone’s second parish, Sydney Auxiliary Bishop Daniel Meagher said at a farewell Mass for the Marist Fathers who have looked after the church for 157 years. Source: The Catholic Weekly.
Originally located in a slum so filthy that bubonic plague swept through in 1900, St Pat’s became the church of choice for Masses and confessions for workers in Sydney CBD skyscrapers since the 1950s.
It is one of the busiest churches in Australia, with four Masses celebrated each weekday, 10 Masses on weekends, hours of exposition of the Blessed Sacrament every day and many hours of confession throughout the week.
The Marist Fathers will continue their ministry in western Sydney. The Sydney Archdiocese has not yet announced its plans for the parish after the Marists leave at the end of the year.
In a gathering after the Mass, Fr Michael Whelan SM reflected on the decades upon decades of service by the Marists.
He paid tribute to “generations of travellers past and present, folk who come looking for God, searching for peace, wanting to give thanks, seeking strength and light in their struggles with good and evil.”
The history of St Pat’s is a tapestry of service and holiness. As Bishop Meagher reminded his listeners, some of the early priests were remarkable men, revered by their Irish parishioners even though they were all originally from France.
When the first Marist parish priest, Fr Joseph Monnier, died in 1874, his room was stripped bare by devotees in search of relics and souvenirs. The 1904 funeral of the third parish priest, Fr Peter Le Rennetel, was attended by 40,000 people.
The fifth, Fr Peter Piquet, was extraordinarily popular as a confessor. He died in 1936 – on the same day as the farewell Mass, August 10.
Like another heroic figure, St Mary MacKillop, he was briefly excommunicated, in his case for giving the last rites outside his own parish and for carelessness in observing Church marriage regulations. In its obituary, the Sydney Morning Herald described him as the Catholic community’s “most revered and beloved priest.”
Bishop Meagher concluded: “Today is a day to give thanks to the Marist fathers, 1868 to the present; to the fathers looking down from Heaven, God bless you, thank you; to the fathers here today, God bless you and thank you.”
FULL STORY
Farewell at St Pat’s Church Hill celebrates rich legacy of Marists (By Michael Cook, The Catholic Weekly)
