Catherine Coffey
Teacher of Catholic catechism in colonial Australia
Summary
Catherine Brosnaham Coffey was an Irish-born Australian pioneer in the Port Phillip District who was the first Catholic school teacher in Melbourne and the first sacristan of the first Catholic church in Victoria, St Francis. She taught catechism classes to children in colonial Melbourne prior to the arrival of the colony's first Catholic priest in 1839. Coffey’s contribution to Catholic education was celebrated in a St Patrick’s Day pageant at the Melbourne Town Hall in 1930 and she was singled out by Archbishop Justin Simonds in 1939 in a requiem for pioneers as “an outstanding Catholic personality”.
Originally created by Kerrieburn
6/13/2022, 5:00:54 AM
Modified
7/19/2025, 5:17:17 AM
Recent revisions
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removed [[Category:19th-century Australian women]]; added [[Category:19th-century Australian women educators]] using [[WP:HC|HotCat]]
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[[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Catherine Coffey]] closed as keep ([[WP:XFDC#4.0.13|XFDcloser]])
added first sacristan
/* Family life and death */ added name spelling variation to the infobox; good to have it somewhere so ppl find this bio; very common in 19th c.
/* Family life and death */ added back a sentence about children; removed death notice reference (seems unnecessary since there's a more substantial obituary, but also think the URL was wrong)
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