NUNDAH’S Catholic community will celebrate a centenary milestone next month with Masses and a pilgrimage to St Stephen’s Cathedral.
Corpus Christi church, Nundah, known for its copper dome and red brick, will host a Mass to mark the 100th anniversary since the foundation of the suburb as a Catholic parish in 1916.
Parish priest Fr Bernie Gallagher, who arrived in the parish two years ago, will concelebrate a centenary Mass on May 29 with Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge.
“The parish has seen thousands of weddings, funerals and baptisms over the last century and has been a beacon to Brisbane’s Catholic community, which has made a tremendous contribution to public life in this city,” Fr Gallagher said.
Fr Gallagher said the parish had dedicated a “feastivity octave” between the feast of the Holy Trinity and Corpus Christi, both celebrated within one week, to mark the centenary year.
Parishioners will make a pilgrimage through the Holy Doors at St Stephen’s Cathedral on May 21.
They will hold a parish mission retreat between May 23 to 26 featuring several guest speakers, including Townsville priest Fr Orm Rush, and conclude with Mass on May 29.
The parish’s centenary also coincides with the return of the Sisters of St Joseph, who were expelled from the Archdiocese between 1880 and 1915, and their first school in Nundah.
While the Nundah parish was officially established 100 years ago, at the appointment of its first parish priest, Fr M Jordan, Catholics had worshipped in the northern suburb for nearly a decade.
They gathered for Mass in a small wooden church, known as the Church of the Real Presence, located on Duke Street and Buckland Road.
Brisbane Archbishop James Duhig eventually bought land on Bage Street to build a permanent church, the present Corpus Christi church.
The timber church was relocated to Banyo in 1927 but was destroyed by a fire in 1976.
A new church was built and reopened in 1977, consecrated as Holy Trinity church.
Holy Trinity Church has been part of the Nundah parish since 2003, when the two suburbs amalgamated to one community.
