CHAPTER THREE THE ROMAN RISE OF JOHN BEDE POLDING, 1834–1843 Early in 1842 the Secretary General of the Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide, Archbishop Ignazio Cadolini, emerged from his offi ce in the Congregation’s palace into an antechamber in which several missionary clergy were waiting for their appointments with various offi cials. Among them was John Bede Polding, Vicar Apostolic of New Holland and Van Diemen’s Land. On noticing Polding, the Secretary General walked over to him, hugged him and kissed him.1 However much it might have jarred on his Anglo-Saxon reserve, Polding took pride in this effusive gesture of affection because it was a public sign of the high favour in which he was held by Roman offi cialdom. I John Bede Polding had fi rst come before the attention of the Congre- gation 15 years before, in 1829, when it was looking for an appoint- ment to the Vicariate Apostolic of Mauritius. Polding declined to be considered for the position. A few years later, Rome asked Polding to take the Vicariate Apostolic of Madras. After a period of that pain- ful indecision, which periodically marked his mode of operation, he decided on a refusal.2 However, the Propaganda Fide Congregation persisted and in 1834 offered Polding a third vicariate apostolic, that of Australia. This new jurisdiction originated in the conviction of two senior Australian mis- sionaries, the Irishman John McEncroe and the Englishman William Ullathorne, that the rapid growth of the Catholic population in New South Wales, factional fi ghts among the clergy serving there and the impossibility of providing adequate oversight of the New South Wales mission from Mauritius, necessitated the placement of an ecclesiastical 1 Polding-Heptonstall, 10 April 1842, DownAA/Birt, L 143. 2 H. N. Birt, Benedictine Pioneers in Australia (London: Herbert and Daniel, 1911), volume I, 226–7; F. O’Donoghue, The Bishop of Botany Bay: The Life of John Bede Polding, Australia’s First Catholic Archbishop (London: Angus and Robertson, 1982), 12–6. 78 chapter three superior with bishop’s orders in Sydney. Ullathorne added the point that good relations with the civil authorities would be facilitated by a resident bishop. These matters were taken up by Bishop James Bramston whose offi ce of Vicar Apostolic of London gave him an unoffi cial watching brief for the Catholic affairs of the British Empire.3 On 26 April 1834 Bramston wrote to the Prefect General of the Congregation de Propaganda Fide. The Prefect at this time was Cardinal Carlo Maria Pedicini (see fi g. 7). Born in Benevento in 1769 into a noble family, Pedicini carried out his ecclesiastical studies in his home town and later in Rome where he entered the service of the Holy See. Pope Pius VII made him Secretary of the Propaganda Fide Congregation in 1816, a post he held until 1823. Businesslike and practical, he carried out a wide-ranging reorganisation of the Congregation’s administra- tion after the disruption of the French revolution. Under Leo XII he became a cardinal and Prefect of the Congregation for Ecclesiastical Immunity as well as a member of the Propaganda Fide Congregation. The next Pope, Pius VIII, appointed him Prefect of the Congregation of Rites and Bishop of Palestrina. He succeeded to the Prefecture of the Congregation de Propaganda Fide when the then Prefect, Cardinal Mauro Cappellari, was elected Pope as Gregory XVI in 1830.4 In his letter Bramston emphasised to Pedicini that the 20,000 Catholics in Australia, mainly convicts and served by only six priests, were desperately in need of religious assistance. He explained that the English Benedictine Congregation, as the entity responsible for the Vicariate Apostolic of Mauritius, believed that it was next-to-impossible to provide this assistance from Mauritius and that a separate vicariate 3 Birt, volume I, 222–5; J. Champ, William Bernard Ullathorne 1806–1889: A Differ- ent Kind of Monk (Leominster: Gracewing, 2006), 46–50; P. Collins, ‘William Bernard Ullathorne and the Foundations of Australian Catholicism, 1815–1840’, Australian National University, Canberra, PhD thesis, 127; P. O’Farrell, The Catholic Church and Community in Australia: A History (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1977), 39; T. Suttor, Hierarchy and Democracy in Australia, 1788–1870: The Foundation of Australian Catholicism (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1965), 28; R. Wiltgen, The Founding of the Roman Catholic Church in Oceania, 1825–1850 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1979), 190–1. 4 DC, column 1358; DESE, volume 52, 32; M. de Camillis, “Pedicini, Carlo”, in EC, volume IX, 1063; J. Metzler, “Prãfekten und Sekretãre der Kongregation im Zeitalter der neuren Missionãra (1818–1918)” in Memoria Rerum, volume III Part 1, 37–8; Notizie per l’anno MDCCCXXXIV (Rome: Stamperia Cracas, 1834), 170; Notizie per l’anno 1846 (Rome: Stamperia Cracas, 1846), 87–88. .