The Cathedral Church and Minor Basilica of the Immaculate Mother of God, Help of Christians, Patroness of Australia, locally known as Saint Mary's Cathedral, is a Catholic basilica and the seat of the Archdiocese of Sydney. The cathedral is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the venerated title of “Our Lady, Help of Christians" and Patroness of Australia.
Pope Pius XI raised the shrine to the status of Minor Basilica via the Pontifical decree Inter Potiores Sacras on 4 August 1932. Pope Benedict XVI made an Apostolic Visit to the shrine on 19 July 2008.
It is located on College Street near the eastern border of the Sydney central business district in the City of Sydney local government area of New South Wales, Australia. The cathedral was designed by William Wardell and built from 1866 to 1928. The property was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 3 September 2004.
History Background Sydney was established as a penal settlement on 26 January 1788 in the name of King George III by Captain Arthur Phillip, for prisoners transported from Britain. Many of the people to arrive in Sydney at that time were military, some with wives and family; there were also some free settlers. The first chaplain of the colony was the Reverend Richard Johnson of the Church of England. No specific provision was made for the religious needs of those many convicts and settlers who were Roman Catholics. To redress this, an Irish Catholic priest, a Father O'Flynn, travelled to the colony of New South Wales but, as he arrived without government sanction, he was sent home.
It was not until 1820 that two priests, Father Conolly and Father John Therry, arrived to officially minister to the Roman Catholics in Australia. Father Conolly went to Tasmania and Father Therry remained in Sydney. Therry claimed that, on the day of his arrival, he had a vision of a mighty church of golden stone dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary raising its twin spires above the city of Sydney. This vision came to pass, but not until after 180 years and three intermediate buildings.
One church after another
Father Therry applied for a grant of land on which to build a church. He asked for land on the western side of Sydney, towards Darling Harbour. But the land allocated to him was towards the East, adjacent to a number of Governor Lachlan Macquarie's building projects, the hospital of 1811, the Hyde Park Barracks and St James' Anglican church which was also used as a law court. The more spacious site for the Catholic church overlooked a barren area upon which the bricks for Macquarie's buildings were made. The area is now Hyde Park, with avenues of trees and the Archibald Fountain.
The foundation stone for the first St Mary's was laid on 29 October 1821 by Governor Macquarie. Built by James Dempsey, it was a simple cruciform stone structure which paid homage to the rising fashion for the Gothic style in its pointed windows and pinnacles. In 1835, John Polding became the first archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church in Australia. In 1851 the church was modified to the designs of Augustus Welby Pugin. Father Therry died on 25 May 1864. On 29 June 1865, the church caught fire and was destroyed.
The then archdeacon, Father McEnroe, immediately set about planning and fund raising in order to build the present cathedral, based upon a plan drawn up by Archbishop Polding. Polding wrote to William Wardell, a pupil of Augustus Welby Pugin, the most prominent architect of the Gothic Revival movement. Polding was impressed with Wardell's building of St John's College at the University of Sydney. In his letter, Polding gives Wardell a completely free hand in the design, saying "Any plan, any style, anything that is beautiful and grand, to the extent of our power."Polding's letter to Wardell, 10 October 1865 Wardell had also designed and commenced work on St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne in 1858.
There were to be two intermediate stages. A temporary wooden church was constructed, which was also destroyed by fire in the summer of 1869. The third temporary provision was a sturdy brick building on the site, not of the cathedral but of St Mary's School, which it was to serve long after the present structure was in use.
Construction
Archbishop Polding laid the foundation stone for the present cathedral in 1868.McAteer, B. "The laying of the foundation stone of St Mary's Cathedral 1868". Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society. 19 (1998) 7–8. It was to be a huge and ambitious structure with a wide nave and aisle and three towers. Polding did not live to see it in use as he died in 1877. Five years later, on 8 September 1882, his successor, Archbishop Vaughan, presided at the dedication Mass. Archbishop Vaughan gave the peal of bells which were rung for the first time on that day. Vaughan died while in England in 1883.
The cathedral's builder (for this stage) was John Young, who also built a large sandstone house in the Gothic Revival style, known as "The Abbey", in Annandale, New South Wales.The Heritage of Australia. Macmillan Company. 1981. p.2/35.
But St Mary's was still far from finished, the work proceeding under Cardinal Moran. In 1913 Archbishop Kelly laid the foundation stone for the nave, which continued under the architects Hennessy, Hennessy and Co. In 1928 Kelly dedicated the nave in time for the commencement of the 29th International Eucharistic Congress. A slight difference of colour and texture of the sandstone on the internal walls marks the division between the first and second stage of building.
Following the death in office of Prime Minister Joseph Lyons in April 1939, he lay in state at St Mary's for several days before being taken to his home town of Devonport, Tasmania, for burial.
The decoration and enrichment of the cathedral continued with the remains of Archbishop Vaughan being returned to Sydney and buried within the Chapel of the Irish Saints. The richly decorated crypt which enshrines the bodies of many of the early priests and bishops was not completed until 1961 when it was dedicated by Cardinal Gilroy.
For many years the two squared-off towers of the façade gave a disappointing appearance to an otherwise-elegant building. It was from time to time suggested pinnacles should be put up to match the central tower as it appeared plain that William Wardell's proposed spires would never be built. But with the assistance of a grant from the Government to mark the new millennium, the spires were eventually built in 2000.
Since 2000
In 2008, St Mary's Cathedral became the focus of World Youth Day 2008 and was visited by Pope Benedict XVI who, in his homily on 19 July, made the historic full apology for child sex abuse by Catholic priests in Australia, of whom 107 have been committed by the courts. On 16 December 2014, Archbishop Anthony Fisher invoked the special prayers in the Roman Missal from the "Mass in times of civil disturbance" for the victims of the 2014 Sydney hostage crisis. A memorial service was held at the cathedral on the morning of 19 December for Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson, in attendance were the Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove, then-Minister of Communications Malcolm Turnbull, Senator Arthur Sinodinos, Premier of New South Wales Mike Baird, and then-Minister of Transport Gladys Berejiklian.
On 2 February 2023, a funeral service for former archbishop Cardinal George Pell was held at St. Mary's Cathedral amidst protests outside by LGBT groups and survivors of child sexual abuse. Prominent figures in attendance of the memorial service included former Australian prime ministers Tony Abbott and John Howard, then-New South Wales finance minister Damien Tudehope, and then-federal opposition leader Peter Dutton, as well as broadcaster Alan Jones and senator Matt Canavan, senator Don Farrell represented the federal government.
Architecture
Plan
St Mary's Cathedral is unusual among large cathedrals in that, because of its size, the plan of the city around it and the fall of the land, it is oriented in a north–south direction rather than the usual east–west. The liturgical East End is at the north and the West Front is to the south.
The plan of the cathedral is a conventional English cathedral plan, cruciform in shape, with a tower over the crossing of the nave and transepts and twin towers at the West Front (in this case, the south). The chancel is square-ended, like the chancels of Lincoln, York and several other English cathedrals. There are three processional doors in the south with additional entrances conveniently placed in the transept facades so that they lead from Hyde Park and from the presbytery buildings and school adjacent the cathedral.
Style The architecture is typical of the Gothic Revival of the 19th century, inspired by the journals of the Cambridge Camden Society, the writings of John Ruskin and the architecture of Augustus Welby Pugin. At the time that the foundation stone was laid, the architect Edmund Blacket had just completed Sydney's very much smaller Anglican cathedral in the Perpendicular Gothic style and the Main Building of Sydney University. St Mary's, when William Wardell's plan was realised, was to be a much larger, more imposing and more sombre structure than the smaller St Andrew's and, because of its fortuitous siting, still dominates many views of the city despite the high-rise buildings.
The style of the cathedral is Geometric Decorated Gothic, the archaeological antecedent being the ecclesiastical architecture of late 13th century England. It is based fairly closely on the style of Lincoln Cathedral, the tracery of the huge chancel window being almost a replica of that at Lincoln.
Exterior The lateral view of the building from Hyde Park is marked by the regular progression of Gothic windows with pointed arches and simple tracery. The upper roofline is finished with a pierced parapet, broken by decorative gables above the clerestorey windows, above which rises a steeply pitched slate roof with many small dormers in the French manner. The height of the roof is consistent along the full length of the cathedral and reaches above the nave and choir. The roofline of the aisles is decorated with carved bosses between the sturdy buttresses which support flying buttresses to the clerestorey.Facing Hyde Park, the transept provides the usual mode of public entrance, as is common in many French cathedrals, and has richly decorated doors which, unlike those of the main front, have had their carved details completed and demonstrate the skills of local craftsmen in both designing and carving in the Gothic style. Included in the foliate bosses are Australian native plants such as the waratah, floral emblem of New South Wales.
St Mary's Cathedral is generally approached on foot from the city through Hyde Park, where the transept front and central tower rise up behind the Archibald Fountain. During the 20th century the gardeners of Hyde Park have further enhanced the vista by laying out a garden on the cathedral side of the park in which the plantings have often taken the form of a cross.
Despite the many English features of the architecture including its interior and chancel termination, the entrance façade is not English at all. It is a design loosely based on the most famous of all Gothic west fronts, that of Notre Dame de Paris with its balance of vertical and horizontal features, its three huge portals and its central rose window. There are two more large rose windows, one in each of the transepts. The French façade was, however, intended to have twin stone spires like those of Lichfield Cathedral, but they were not to be put in place until 132 years after the building was commenced.