Archbishop James Goold

James Alipius Goold (1812–1886), Irish-born first Catholic bishop and archbishop of Melbourne, volunteered for service in New South Wales having studied in Rome and Perugia. He arrived in Sydney in early 1838, three years after his ordination. In five years at Campbelltown he built schools and churches, including St John’s. Mentored by Archbishop Bede Polding, he was sent to Melbourne in 1847. Goold is said to have been the first person to make the journey from Sydney to Melbourne overland in his own carriage – a nineteen-day haul. Within a few months of his much- heralded arrival, he was vying for the title of Bishop of Melbourne with the Anglican, Charles Perry. Through the 1850s Goold sought equal recognition of Catholics at state functions; he boycotted the Queen’s birthday levee in 1859. Meanwhile, he launched the Catholic Association to raise funds for local building, and international recruitment of clergy. He formed the Catholic Education Committee in 1861; soon it was at odds with the Victorian Board of Education, formed the following year, and Goold was warning the electorate not to vote for those advocating a ‘scheme of godless compulsory education’. He tried to interest Rome in missions to the Chinese and Aborigines but here his hopes came to little. In 1873 in Rome it was announced the he would become Archbishop of Melbourne when it became a metropolitan see.

Goold’s great tangible legacy is the William Wardell-designed St Patrick’s Cathedral in East Melbourne. After some significant early setbacks, work on the church as it now stands began in 1858; on completion it was the largest church, anywhere in the world, built as a single entity in the nineteenth century. Having survived an assassination attempt in 1882, when he died of a heart attack four years later Goold was interred in the very-nearly-finished St Patrick’s.