The Anglican Church of Australia, formerly known as the Church of England in Australia and Tasmania, is a Christian church in Australia and an autonomous church of the Anglican Communion. It is the second largest church in Australia after the Catholic Church. According to the 2016 census, 3.1 million Australians identify as Anglicans. As of 2016, the Anglican Church of Australia had more than 3 million nominal members and 437,880 active baptised members. For much of Australian history since the arrival of the 'First Fleet' in January 1788, the church was the largest religious denomination. It remains today one of the largest providers of social welfare services in Australia.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne is a Latin Rite metropolitan archdiocese in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Erected initially in 1847 as the Diocese of Melbourne, a suffragan diocese of Archdiocese of Sydney, the diocese was elevated in 1874 as an archdiocese of the Ecclesiastical Province of Melbourne and is the metropolitan for the suffragan dioceses of Sale, Sandhurst, Ballarat, and the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Ss Peter and Paul. The Archdiocese of Hobart is attached to the archdiocese for administrative purposes. St Patrick's Cathedral is the seat of the Archbishop of Melbourne, currently Peter Comensoli, who succeeded Denis Hart on 1 August 2018.
The Diocese of Sandhurst is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction or diocese of the Catholic Church in Australia. It is a suffragan in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Melbourne. The Diocese of Sandhurst was erected in 1874 and covers the central and north-east regions of Victoria, including Bendigo.
The Diocese of Ballarat, based in Ballarat, Australia, is a diocese in the ecclesiastical province of Melbourne. It is a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Melbourne and was established in 1874. Its geography covers the west, Wimmera and Mallee regions of Victoria. The cathedral is in St Patrick's Cathedral, Ballarat.
Roger Adrian Herft is a former bishop in the Anglican Church of Australia. He was the Archbishop of Perth from 2005 to 2017. He was previously the Bishop of Newcastle from 1993 to 2005 and the Bishop of Waikato in New Zealand from 1986.
Sacred Heart Cathedral, Bendigo, is the Roman Catholic cathedral church of the Diocese of Sandhurst and seat of Bishop Shane Mackinlay. The cathedral is located in the provincial city of Bendigo, Victoria, Australia.
Sir Thomas Francis Little KBE was an Australian bishop. He was the sixth Roman Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne. He was appointed by Pope Paul VI on 1 July 1974 and retired in 1996; he was succeeded by the Most Reverend George Pell. On retirement he was styled Archbishop Emeritus in the Archdiocese of Melbourne. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that Little had led a culture of secrecy in the Melbourne archdiocese designed to hide complaints against several priests and protect the church's reputation from scandal.
The Anglican Diocese of Brisbane, also known as Anglican Church Southern Queensland, is based in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The diocesan bishop's seat is at St John's Cathedral, Brisbane. The diocese stretches from the south-eastern coastline of Queensland, down to the New South Wales border and west to the Northern Territory and South Australian borders. The diocese currently markets itself as "Anglican Church Southern Queensland" (ACSQ). The "Anglicare Southern Queensland" brand is also heavily promoted by the diocese.
The Anglican Diocese of Melbourne is the metropolitan diocese of the Province of Victoria in the Anglican Church of Australia. The diocese was founded from the Diocese of Australia by letters patent of 25 June 1847 and includes the cities of Melbourne and Geelong and also some more rural areas. The cathedral church is St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne. The current Archbishop of Melbourne since 2006 is Philip Freier, who was translated from the Anglican Diocese of The Northern Territory, and who was the Anglican Primate of Australia from 2014 to 2020.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Toowoomba is a Latin Rite suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Brisbane, established in 1929, covering the Darling Downs and south west regions of Queensland, Australia.
Corpus Christi College is the regional seminary of the Roman Catholic dioceses in Victoria and Tasmania, Australia. The seminary was founded by Daniel Mannix on 25 December 1922, at Chirnside Mansion in Werribee.
Andrew William Curnow is a retired bishop of the Anglican Church of Australia. He was the ninth bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Bendigo in regional Victoria, from 2003 to 2017.
The Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Victoria is part of the Catholic clerical sexual abuse in Australia and the much wider Catholic sexual abuse scandal in general, which involves charges, convictions, trials and ongoing investigations into allegations of sex crimes committed by Catholic priests and members of religious orders. The Catholic Church in Victoria has been implicated in a reported 40 suicides among about 620 sexual abuse victims acknowledged to the public after internal investigations by the Catholic Church in Victoria.
Catholic sexual abuse cases in Australia, like Catholic Church sexual abuse cases elsewhere, have involved convictions, trials and ongoing investigations into allegations of sex crimes committed by Catholic priests, members of religious orders and other personnel which have come to light in recent decades, along with the growing awareness of sexual abuse within other religious and secular institutions.
Gerald Francis Ridsdale is an Australian laicised Catholic priest and sex offender. He was convicted between 1993 and 2017 of a large number of child sexual abuse and indecent assault charges against 65 children aged as young as four years. The offences occurred from the 1960s to the 1980s while Ridsdale worked as a school chaplain at St Alipius Primary School, a boys' boarding school in the Victorian regional city of Ballarat.
Leslie Rogers "Les" Tomlinson was an Australian Catholic bishop. On 3 February 2012, it was announced that Pope Benedict XVI had appointed Tomlinson as the seventh Bishop of Sandhurst. He was installed on 1 March 2012. He was formerly an auxiliary bishop and Vicar General in the Archdiocese of Melbourne.
Henry Archdall Langley was an influential Irish-born Anglican priest, of considerable physical strength, who migrated to Australia in 1853, and became the first Bishop of Bendigo from 1902 until his death in 1906.
Paul Bird C.Ss.R. is the Roman Catholic Bishop of Ballarat.
John McCarthy DD was an Irish-born Roman Catholic priest who served as Bishop of Sandhurst in Victoria, Australia, from 1917 until his death in 1950. John McCarthy was born in Fermoyle, Co. Clare, educated at Ballyvaughan and St Flannan's College, the Killaloe diocesan college, in Ennis before going to the Irish College in Paris from 1877 until 1883, studying theology and philosophy, he was ordained a priest in 1883. He served as a priest in Galway, Ireland, before 1890 when he moved to Melbourne, Australia. He served in the Woodend and St Kilda parishes before becoming private secretary to Archbishop Carr.
