The Cathedral Church and Minor Basilica of Saint Patrick (colloquially St Patrick's Cathedral) is the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, and seat of its archbishop, currently Peter Comensoli.
In 1974 Pope Paul VI conferred the title and dignity of minor basilica on it. In 1986 Pope John Paul II visited the cathedral and addressed clergy during his papal visit.
The cathedral is built on a traditional east–west axis, with the altar at the eastern end, symbolising belief in the resurrection of Christ. The plan is in the style of a Latin cross, consisting of a nave with side aisles, transepts with side aisles, a sanctuary with seven chapels, and sacristies. Although its length is marginally shorter than that of St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney, St Patrick's has the distinction of being both the tallest and, overall, the largest church building in Australia.
The cathedral was listed on the Victorian Heritage Register on 5 August 1999.
Location
The cathedral is located on Eastern Hill in Melbourne, in an area bounded by Albert Street, Gisborne Street, Lansdowne Street and Cathedral Place. Just to the west across Gisborne Street is St Peter's Church, constructed from 1846 to 1848, which is the Anglican parish church of Melbourne.
History
In 1848, the Augustinian friar James Goold was appointed the first bishop of Melbourne and became the fourth bishop in Australia, after Sydney, Hobart and Adelaide. Negotiations with the colonial government for the grant of five acres of land for a church in the Eastern Hill area began in 1848. On 1 April 1851, only 16 years after the foundation of Melbourne, the Colonial Secretary of Victoria finally granted the site to the Roman Catholic Church.
Goold decided to build his cathedral on the Eastern Hill site.
Since the Catholic community of Melbourne was at the time almost entirely Irish, the cathedral was dedicated to St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.
In 1851 a start was made, but with every able-bodied man in the colony soon rushing to the goldfields, not much was built by 1856, when Goold commissioned a larger one, using a design by Charles Hansom, but only the south aisle was built by 1858 when Goold appointed the recently arrived English architect William Wardell to design a far larger one. Wardell was an accomplished architect, known especially for a series of Catholic churches in London, all in Gothic Revival style, and was part of the circle around one of the leading exponents of the Gothic for churches, Augustus Welby Pugin.
St Patrick's Cathedral draws on the Gothic style of late thirteenth century, based on the great medieval cathedrals of England. The style is specifically Geometric Decorated Gothic, showing this style at its most complex in the large west window of the nave. The eastern arm with its chevet of radiating chapels in the French manner is still principally in the English late thirteenth century style, giving the most complete essay attempted in that style during the nineteenth century. William Wardell was a remarkably ambitious and capable architect; he went on to design the second St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney, in a similar style, even larger than St Patrick's, but with a completely English square East End.
In 1974 Pope Paul VI conferred the title and dignity of minor basilica on it. In 1986 Pope John Paul II visited the cathedral and addressed clergy during his papal visit. The building also saw a green ban in the 1970s.
Construction
In 1858 William Wardell was commissioned to plan the cathedral with a contract signed on 8 December 1858 and building commencing the same year.
Although the nave was completed within 10 years, construction proceeded slowly, and was further delayed by the severe depression which hit Melbourne in 1891. Under the leadership of Archbishop Thomas Carr the cathedral was consecrated in 1897 and even then it was not finished. Given the size of the Catholic community at the time, the massive bluestone Gothic cathedral was an immense and very expensive undertaking, and there were long delays while funds were raised. St Patrick's was one of the two largest churches brought to substantial completion anywhere in the world in the 19th century. The other is St Patrick's Cathedral, New York, United States.