Forever Carnival: A story of priests, professors and politics in 19th century Sydney

John Forrest DD, the exuberant scholar/priest recruited in Ireland in 1859 to set up the Catholic St John’s College at Sydney University, found life in colonial NSW much to his liking. However, it soon became clear that divisions within the Church, even more than a shortage of candidates for degrees, would put paid to his high hopes for the college. Relations between the colony’s English archbishops and Irish ecclesiastics were often poisonous, and he was in the Irish camp. Fortunately his ...