Roger Vaughan

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For other people named Roger Vaughan, see Roger Vaughan (disambiguation).

The Most Reverend

Roger Bede Vaughan

Catholic
ParentsJohn Francis Vaughan
Elizabeth Louise Rolls

Roger William Bede Vaughan (9 January 1834 – 18 August 1883) was an English

Archbishop of Sydney
, Australia from 1877 to 1883.

Biography

Early life

Vaughan was born near

recusant families of Welsh descent in England. His mother was Louisa Elizabeth Rolls, a convert. His brother was Cardinal Herbert Vaughan. All his siblings, save three, entered church ministry.[1]

Vaughan was probably afflicted with congenital heart disease. At the age of six he was sent to a

Benedictine St Gregory's College at Downside, Somerset. His mother's death in 1853 prompted serious thoughts of a religious vocation and on 12 September 1853 he took the Benedictine habit and the religious name Bede
.

In 1855, at his father's request and expense, Vaughan was sent to

St. John Lateran
on 9 April 1859.

Priesthood

He returned to Downside in August of the same year and in 1861 was appointed professor of metaphysics and moral philosophy at St. Michael's,

Menevia, and superior of Belmont and held these roles for over a decade.[2][1]

He contributed to leading reviews and published his most important literary work, his Life of St Thomas of Aquin, in 1872. In 1865 he met Archbishop Polding, who several times asked Vaughan to be coadjutor bishop, and in 5 February 1873, Vaughan agreed and was appointed coadjutor of Sydney and titular bishop of Nazianzus. Cardinal Henry Manning consecrated Vaughan to the episcopate in March of that same year at Liverpool.[3][1]

Coadjutor Bishop of Sydney

Vaughan arrived at Sydney on 16 December 1873 and immediately devoted himself to two important movements: the provision of education for Catholic children and the rebuilding of St Mary's Cathedral which had been damaged by a previous fire.[3][2]

From 1874 onward, Vaughan also served as rector of St John's College.[4]

In 1876, he came into conflict with the

Freemasons in connection with an address delivered on 9 October titled Hidden Springs which accused the Freemasons of a conspiracy to subvert religion and take over the education system.[5]

Archbishop of Sydney

He became

Archbishop of Sydney on the death of Archbishop Polding, on 16 March 1877. In 1880 Henry Parkes passed an education act under which government aid to denominational education ceased at the end of 1882. Vaughan urged Catholics to work against this law.[1]

He initiated moves towards the foundation of

St. Patrick's Seminary, Manly
, construction of which started soon after his death.

Vaughan experienced resistance from the largely Irish Catholic junior hierarchy and priesthood in Australia, who supported a church based on the devotional, penitential and authoritarian model envisioned by Irish Cardinal

Maynooth Seminary clergy were educated to think of the refined English Catholic bishops in sectarian and atavistic
terms. They also felt strongly that the form of church advocated by the Benedictines was less suited to the majority of Irish Catholic adherents than the Cullenist form.

The harsh eighteenth century Penal Laws of the British and Anglo-Irish Ascendency era Irish Parliaments and the on and off sectarian religious struggles since the

Act of Supremacy had bred deep resentment between some of the Irish and English settlers. The consequences of the dissolution of monasteries during the Reformation
had left Vaughan deeply committed to the primary vision of restoring monasticism in English-speaking lands such as this new church in Australia.

This was not a vision the authors of the revived authoritarian devotional form of Catholicism in Ireland foresaw for the Irish Catholic diaspora in Australia, New Zealand or North America. Ireland had managed to preserve a number of pre-Reformation monastic foundations as well as found the

Patrick Francis Moran
, a nephew of Paul Cullen and avid devotee of his vision, was appointed.

Death

Vaughan left Sydney for the last time on 19 April 1883, intending to return to Rome. He arrived at Liverpool and died nearby at

Weld-Blundell relations, on 18 August, where he was buried in the family vault.[6]
His remains were translated to Belmont in 1887 and reburied in the crypt of St Mary's Cathedral in August 1946. Vaughan left the residue of his estate, valued for probate at £61,828, to his successor.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Birt, Henry Norbert (1911). Benedictine Pioneers In Australia, Volume 2 (PDF). London: Herbert and Daniel.
  2. ^ a b Wittingham, Charles (1880). The Downside Review. Downside Abbey. pp. 190–191.
  3. ^ a b The Illustrated Catholic family annual for the United States, for the year of our Lord 1884. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1884. pp. 90–91.
  4. ^ P. Cunich, The coadjutorship of Roger Bede Vaughan, 1873-77, Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society 36 (2015) Archived 15 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine, 16-42; A.E. Cahill, Archbishop Vaughan and St. John's College, University of Sydney, Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society, 14 (1992), 36-49.
  5. ^ Franklin, James (1999). "Catholics versus Masons" (PDF). Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society. 20: 1–15. Retrieved 30 June 2021.
  6. ^ P. Cunich, The death of Archbishop Roger Bede Vaughan, Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society 29 (2008), 7-22.

External links

Catholic Church titles
Preceded by
OSB
 2nd
Catholic Archbishop of Sydney

1877–1883 		Succeeded by
Patrick Francis Moran
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