AUSTRALIAN WILDS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 638, 15 April 1929, Page 12

AUSTRALIAN WILDS

MONASTERIES OF THE NOR’ WEST OLD SPANISH ORDER Standing- in isolation at differnt points throughout Nor’-west Australia the various mission stations, which have been mentioned in connection with the search for the Southern Cross, provide an interesting and littleknown sidelight in the history of Australia. The missions belong to the New Norica Monastery. There are four Spanish monks there, out in the wilderness, where some rock pictures by the natives seem to indicate a visit made by Europeans in either the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. The Fathers at the mission have many reproductions of these pictures showing a man wearing sabots and trousers, and crosses carved in the rocks have been discovered. The Fathers keep a large flock of goats as their main support. The Norica is ope of the most picturesque religious establishments in the Commonwealth. It was established more than SO years ago in West Australia on the Moore River. It is a quaint and interesting place, about SO miles from Perth. Early in 1846 two Spanish monks of the Benedictine order, Dom Salvado and Dom Serra, who had been in a monastery in Italy (having been forced to leave Spain on the suppression of the religious houses), were accepted by Bishop Brady of West Australia to work in the diocese of Perth. In the following year they established a monastery at New Norica as the centre of a mission to the aborigines. An aboriginal colony grew up round the monastery where the natives were trained in farming, handicrafts and even telegraphy.

In 1867 Pope Pius IX. made the monastery an abbey with Dom Salvado as abbot and bishop—he was the only mitred abbot in Australia. He visited Rome in 1899 and secured as his successor Dom Fulgentius Torres, and arranged the affiliation of the abbey to the Spanish Benedictine province. Dom Salvado died in Rome in the following year. Dom Torres was elected abbot in 1902 and died in 1914. The present abbot of New Norica is Dom Anslem Catalan. At first the mission comprised 20 acres only, but it now lias 25,000 acres, 6,000 being under cultivation. The abbey, with 50 monks, has within its spiritual jurisdiction 16 square miles of territory. It controls ten churches, 19 religious and two secular priests, 12 monastic students and 23 nuns. The territory has a Roman Catholic population of 2,600.