Faith, Ireland and Empire: The Life of Patrick Joseph Clunes CSSR / Christopher Down

A biography of Archbishop Clune, fourth bishop and first archbishop of Perth, Western Australia. Patrick Joseph Clune was typical of the men who governed the Australian Catholic Church in the first third of the 1900s. Born and educated in a lower middle-class rural family in Victorian Ireland, Archbishop Clune belonged to the last generation of Irish-Australian builder bishops presiding in Perth over vigorous parochial, educational and social welfare expansion. He stood out from his episcopal collagues.

His appointment as a Redemptorist bishop went against the trend whereby Catholic Australia moved away from its colonial reliance on members of religious institutes for leadership. At the start of his term of office he hauled the Perth diocese out of a grave financial crisis. Aware that he was the head of a minority religious community in an isolated, very British part of Australia in a period of sectarian tensions, Clune was resolved to promote harmony in Western Australian society.