''The Advocate'' (Melbourne)

The Advocate was a weekly newspaper founded in Melbourne, Victoria in 1868 and published for the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne from 1919 to 1990.

History

The paper was founded in Melbourne by Samuel Vincent Winter (1843 – 16 October 1904), who was also a proprietor and editor of the Melbourne Herald, in February 1868, with assistance from Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, the Very Rev. J. Dalton, S.J., the Rev. G. V. Barry, and Hon. Michael O'Grady, as an outlet for Irish Catholic news and opinions. A few years later his brother Joseph Winter (1843 – 2 December 1915) took over management of The Advocate.^[1]

In 1902 they imported a font of Gaelic type and were thus the first newspaper in Australia to print in Irish Gaelic. In March 1919 the paper was purchased from the Winter family by the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne and continued weekly publication until 1990.^[2]

Archives

Issues from Vol.I No.1 published Saturday 1 February 1868 to Vol. LXXXVIII No.5188 of Thursday 30 December 1954 are available on-line and accessible via Trove, a service of the National Library of Australia.

See also

Other Roman Catholic publications in Australia are:

• The Southern Cross (South Australia)
• The Record (Perth)
• The Catholic Leader (Brisbane)

Further reading

• Geoffrey Serle, 'Winter, Samuel Vincent (1843–1904)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University

References