Catacomb Era - Church Hill Saga
Australian Catholics virtually lived in the catacombs from the departure of the last of the convict priests in 1810 until the arrival in Sydney of Father Jeremiah O'Flynn in November, 1817.
Father Jeremiah O'Flynn (1788-1831) who defied authority by remaining in Sydnety from November 9, 1817 to May 20, 1818. He died in the United States.
They had no priest, no Catholic church, no school where their children would be taught the faith of their fathers. No Mass was celebrated in the colony.
But, by secret prayer and the bond of the Faith, they remained faithful. They met and prayed together in the homes of such men as William Davis, James Dempsey, Michael Hayes, John Reddington, and Michael Dwyer. Officials like overseer Nicholas Devin or surveyor James Meehan kept the Faith despite their associations with an antagonistic officialdom.
Sydney Catholics wrote to their kinfolk abroad begging them to work and pray for one thing above all else-appointment of a priest to New South Wales.
The Cottage of William Davis, pioneer Sydney Catholic, in Charlotte Place, now the corner of Vrosvenor and Harrington Streets, Church Hill. Davis' homw was the principal meeting place for Catholics in the priestless years from 1810 to 1817.
One day—November 9, 1817—a priest came. He was Father Jeremiah O'Fynn, appointed Vicar Apostolic of New Holland by the Holy See.
He had come only as an individual, lacking official approval and status in Australia. He had no mandate to function as a priest in what was still essentially a rigidly governed penal settlement, conducted by England , whose penal laws against Catholics still operated.
But he was a priest. He could say Mass, forgive sin, baptize, marry, and dispense the Eucharist. The Catholics rejoiced and for a few months lived daringly as Catholics in defiance of authority in the person of Governor Lachlan Macquarie.
Lachlan Macquarie (1761-1824), Governor of New South Wales from 1809 to 1821, who deported Father )'Flynn on May 20, 1818. When Father O'Flynn told him he wanted to minister to local Catholics, Macquarie replied: "We want to make them all Prodtestants."
Their joy was short-lived. The lone priest whom they had sheltered and sometimes hidden, was arrested, imprisoned, and put aboard the ship David Shaw. On May 20, 1818, Sydney Catholics saw the ship bear away the only priest they had known in seven lonely years.
Then began the great spiritual drama of the preservation of the Blessed Eucharist on Church Hill.
In a cedar cabinet in the home of William Davis rested the Eucharistic Species consecrated by the hands of Father O'Flynn a few moments before his arrest. They were destined to remain there until consumed by a chaplain on the French ship L'uranie, which came to Sydney on November 19, 1819.
The humble house became a shrine in which the Catholics secretly gathered to pray before the Eucharist.