Australia's first Jesuits start seminary and South Australia's first Catholic boys' school at Sevenhill, Clare Valley
The Jesuits set up the first Catholic boys’ school in South Australia's Clare Valley.
A characteristic of South Australian Catholicism was the strength of orders, such as the Jesuits and Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart, not directly under Rome’s control.
Austrian Jesuits, Fathers Kranewitter and Klinkowstroemset up an abbey diocese at Sevenhill, near Clare Valley, in 1848.
Besides planting the valley’s first vines, the Jesuits set up the first Catholic boys’ school in South Australia. It was also a seminary for diocesan and Jesuit priests. Seminary graduates included Christopher Reynolds (first Adelaide bishop) and Julian Tenison Woods (also a distinguished geologist).
As parish priest at Penola, Woods (later the director Catholic education) met governess Mary MacKillop and they founded in 1866 the first Australian religious order: the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart, dedicated to giving poor children an education.
By 1871, Adelaide bishop Laurence Sheil was facing complaints about St Joseph members living in the community and begging for money to fund their work. After MacKillop argued against each convent being under a priest’s authority, she was excommunicated. Fifty other sisters had to leave the order and its Franklin Street convent was transferred to the Dominican sisters.
While shut out of the church, MacKillop was sheltered at Sevenhill by the Jesuits who had paved the way for many of her schools. Her nuns were supported by non-Catholics such as the Jewish businessman Emanuel Solomon and MacKillop’s close (Presbyterian) friend Joanna Barr Smith.
From the late 19th Century, more religious orders of priests were given charge of parishes in and near Adelaide: Benedictines (1875), Carmelites (1881), Passionists (1896), Dominicans (1898), Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (1913). Other orders arrived in the 1940s and 1950s. By the 1960s the archdiocese of Adelaide had more clergy from orders than diocesan clergy. This is no longer the case.
