Reverend Christopher DowlingPrint Page

The stained glass tryptych window was erected in memory of Reverend Christopher Vincent Dowling, first resident priest in Newcastle who died in 1873. The window, which cost £100, was placed in the sanctuary by His Lordship, Dr. Murray in 1879 during alterations to the interior of the church. 

Christopher Vincent Dowling (1789-1873), Catholic priest, was born on 24 September 1789 in Dublin, and went at an early age to the famous Dominican College of Corpo-Santo in Lisbon, Portugal. There he joined the Dominican order, returned to Dublin in 1814 and was ordained by Archbishop Daniel Murray.

In 1829 Dr Bramston, the Catholic vicar apostolic of London, appointed him to Newport in the Isle of Wight. After ten months he went to London and was ministering there, when at a request of the Colonial Office Bramston nominated him to go to New South Wales to replace the only official Catholic chaplain, Daniel Power, who had died in March 1830.

In August 1836 Dowling became the only resident priest north of Sydney. His parish covered the whole Hunter River district and extended north indefinitely.  In September 1838, Dowling moved to Newcastle as its first resident priest. He lived in a cottage on the Sandhills but for seven years said Mass and ran a school in Croasdill's Long Room above four dwellings in Newcomen Street. Catholic soldiers rented and furnished it for him. When it had to be vacated in 1845, the services took place in his house which had been the first hospital in Newcastle and was close to the old gaol. He regularly attended executions to console the condemned. His Newcastle parish extended from Lake Macquarie to Myall Lakes and included Raymond Terrace and Clarence Town. Owning no means of transport he either travelled by boat or walked. Later he lost the use of his legs and was carried by parishioners to call on sick or dying Catholics. In 1849 he began saying Mass in a government store-room in Watt Street, Newcastle. In 1852 the first Catholic Church of St Mary was built, a temporary structure, in Church Street; it was the only church Dowling built in an era of church builders.

When he died on 14 December 1873 men of all persuasions joined in mourning him. Crowds attended the lying-in-state in St Mary's. All ships in Newcastle Harbour flew their flags at half-mast and many shops closed when, at his own request, he was buried in St Joseph's Churchyard, East Maitland. He was one of the first ten Catholic priests, the fourth official Catholic chaplain and the first member of a religious order, to minister in Australia.

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