John Polding

John Bede Polding OSB (18 October 1794 – 16 March 1877) was the first Roman Catholic bishop and archbishop of Sydney, Australia.

Early life

Polding's father was of Dutch descent; his mother died when he was eight. He was placed in the care of his uncle, Father Bede Brewer, president-general of the English Benedictine Congregation. He received the religious habit at the age of 16 followed by minor orders in 1813 from Bishop John Milner at Wolverhampton. In 1814 the community and school moved to Downside in Somerset. Polding was ordained priest by William Poynter on 4 March 1819. Polding was appointed Vicar Apostolic of New Holland and Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) on 3 July 1832, having declined earlier appointments for Mauritius and Madras.

Experiences in Sydney

Polding and party arrived first in Hobart on 6 August 1835 leaving a priest and a student there' and arrived in Sydney on 13 September 1835. Polding travelled widely throughout Australia and was regarded as hard-working; a letter in the Weekly Orthodox Journal (1839) quoted a letter from Sydney: "His labors are incessant, his zeal unbounded, Protestants as well as Catholics revere him as a saint". Polding travelled to Europe in November 1840, during his absence Francis Murphy was appointed vicar-general of the diocese.

Polding was appointed the first bishop of Sydney on 5 April 1842, and Archbishop on 22 April 1842. Despite his many successes as a founding bishop, Polding experienced a degree of resistance from his largely Irish Catholic church in Australia. Even after the English Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, the Irish understood any English leadership (even English Catholic bishops) in sectarian terms.

The British anti-clerical laws of the Reformation Parliament and the Act of Supremacy had bred deep resentment among the Irish of the English, and the consequences of the dissolution of monasteries during the English Reformation had left Polding deeply committed to the primary vision of restoring monasticism in English-speaking lands such as Australia. This was not a vision the Irish—who had managed with great determination to preserve a number of their monastic foundations as well as found the Irish College- necessarily shared as a priority .

Polding travelled again to Rome in 1846 hoping to obtain a coadjutor bishop and Benedictine nuns. He was successful in these quests and also gained approval for the establishment of Melbourne as a separate see.

Apart from the many churches he founded, John Bede Polding began the construction of the second St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney in 1868. Polding also founded the Sisters of the Good Samaritan in Sydney. Polding died on 16 March 1877 in Sydney. John Polding was born in the 18th of November 1794 and died on the 16th of march 1877 when he was 82

References

Bede Nairn, 'Polding, John Bede (1794–1877)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 2, MUP, 1967, pp 340–347.
John Bede Polding O.S.B. on Catholic Hierarchy.org
Serle, Percival (1949). "Polding, John Bede". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson. http://gutenberg.net.au/dictbiog/0-dict-biogP-Q.html#polding1.
"John Bede Polding". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. .

Catholic Church titles
Preceded by New title	1st Catholic Archbishop of Sydney 1842–1877	Succeeded by Roger Bede Vaughan OSB

Archbishops of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

John Polding • Roger Vaughan • Patrick Francis Moran • Michael Kelly • Norman Thomas Gilroy • James Darcy Freeman • Edward Bede Clancy • George Pell

Persondata
Name	Polding, John
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	18 October 1794
Place of birth
Date of death	16 March 1877
Place of death	Archbishop John Bede Polding, Vicar General, is buried at Field Of Mars Cemetery, Ryde, NSW with a contemporary, Venerable Archpriest Samuel John Austin Sheehy, who died 11 September 1910.