James Quinn was the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Brisbane, from 1859 to 1881. Quinn founded his Queensland Immigration Society which brought out ten ships with about 6000 migrants, mainly Irish.

Impact On Brisbane Society

With help from Mother Mary Vincent Whitty of the order of Mercy, Bishop Quinn established a Catholic education system. Quinn’s authoritarian nature led to continuing conflict within the diocese, particularly putting off-side the members of the religious congregations who had arrived in Queensland. Mother Mary MacKillop, of the order of St Joseph, had withdrawn the order from Queensland, in defiance of Quinn’s lust for rigid episcopal control.

Citations

H. J. Gibbney, ‘Quinn, James (1819–1881)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/quinn-james-4425/text7229, published first in hardcopy 1974, accessed online 27 December 2019

Boland, T. P. (Thomas Patrick). James Quinn: Monarch of All He Surveyed, Aquinas Memorial Lecture 1979, Aquinas Library, Brisbane Qld, 1981.

Evans, Raymond. A History of Queensland, Cambridge University Press, Port Melbourne, Vic, 2007.

McLay, Anne. James Quinn, first Catholic Bishop of Brisbane (revised edition), Church Archivists’ Society, Toowoomba, Qld, 1989.

McLay, Anne. James Quinn, first Catholic Bishop of Brisbane, The University of Queensland, Department of History, Ph.D., Thesis, 1975.

McLay, Anne. James Quinn: A Historiographical Introduction, The University of Queensland, Department of History, M.A., Thesis, 1970.

Unnamed. Good shepherds 1859-2009: the Catholic bishops of Brisbane, Brisbane Archdiocesan Archives, Brisbane, Qld, 2009.

Image Citation

James Quinn. [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9306908]