The power of the Eucharist kept the Catholic faith alive in Sydney when they had no priests

Sydney, the announced venue of the 2028 International Eucharistic Congress, shows “a story of the power of the Eucharist in building the Church of God from humble beginnings.” This was said by the Archbishop of Sydney, Bishop Anthony Fisher, in a video released today, in which he invites Catholics to the event.

Bishop Fisher recounted how a consecrated host left in Sydney by a Catholic priest who was deported in the early 19th century “served as the center of our first Catholic community.”

The story has been portrayed by Australian artist Paul Newton.

A priest who challenged British colonial authority in Australia

It was Father Jeremiah O’Flynn, Irish, whom Bishop Fisher remembered in 2018—on the occasion of the bicentennial of what happened—as a “character.”

Celebrating Mass for the “200th anniversary of the preservation of the Blessed Sacrament,” on May 6, 2018, the Archbishop of Sydney remembered that Father Jeremiah O’Flynn (1788-1831) “suffered from wanderlust and joined a Trappist mission to the West Indies. When the monks were expelled from Martinique, he remained, although he was still only a deacon, caring for the Catholic slaves until he was declared incompetent by Archbishop Neale of Baltimore, who had jurisdiction over those islands.”

“O’Flynn went to Rome to respond to the accusation and there the idea occurred to him that he should be chaplain to the city of Sydney. He was secularized, ordained a priest and, somehow, obtained a letter of appointment,” the prelate noted.

However, he continued, “Earl Bathurst refused to confirm it, citing O’Flynn’s ignorance of both the English language and Catholic theology.”

Despite this, O’Flynn “sailed for Sydney and, on his arrival in late 1817, told Governor (of New South Wales, Lachlan) Macquarie that his credentials would soon arrive. Macquarie, who at the time hoped to unify the colony by extinguishing the papacy, forbade him from carrying out the rites of his Church until instructions were received from London.”

Far from obeying British authority, which favored the Anglicans, “O’Flynn proceeded to defy the order, carrying out clandestine baptisms, confessions, marriages and Masses in Catholic homes,” said Bishop Fisher.

By 1818, when O’Flynn was in the region, Sydney had gone nearly a decade without Mass being celebrated for the now 6,000 Catholics living there, after the first three Catholic priests who had arrived—Fr. James Harold, Fr. James Dixon and Fr. Peter O’Neill—were returned to Ireland.

In this context, the faithful “rejoiced in O’Flynn’s services,” noted Bishop Fisher.

“The governor was less enthusiastic, given O’Flynn’s defiance and, worst of all, his penchant for converting Protestant soldiers,” the prelate recalled, so “when after six months the official documents of O’Flynn, Macquarie arrested him.”

“Despite a plea from half the soldiers of the 48th Regiment who were Catholic, as well as some Protestant leaders, that O’Flynn be allowed to stay, Macquarie sent him back home.”

A consecrated host that was “the center of Catholic life” in a priestless Sydney

Before leaving, the priest had left “a host consecrated in a pyx,” a small ciborium that is used to bring the Eucharist to the sick in a layman’s home.

“In a colony without a Catholic priest or Mass, that reserved sacrament naturally became the center of Catholic life. It was up to the laity to maintain a daily vigil before it, pray the rosary, teach catechism to children and pray Sunday Vespers,” said the Archbishop of Sydney.

Sydney’s Catholic faithful then “dreamed of the day when they would be free to have priests and sacraments in this country.”

“A few months later, the chaplain of a visiting French warship consumed the Sacrament and celebrated Mass again for the locals. And a few months later came Australia’s first official Catholic chaplains, John Joseph Therry and Philip Connolly,” he continued.

“The petition O’Flynn brought to London had worked,” he said, and “thereafter Macquarie and the civil authorities had to reconcile themselves to the permanent presence of the Catholics and their priests.”

Bishop Fisher recalled in that homily that that story “has many parallels with the birth of the Church that we retell every Easter. Colonial Catholics often met in secret for fear of persecution, as the early Christians did.”

“But they carried out their ministry of word, sacrament and service, as did those first Christians (…) willing to give their lives for love, as Jesus commanded in our Gospel”, in a Catholic community that “ “It was not marked by anger or hatred, but by silent and determined devotion.”