Catherine Coffey

In 1838, Coffey travelled from Ireland to the Port Phillip District (now in Victoria), via Tasmania, with her husband Jeremiah and their infant child.^[2] They were early pioneers to the area, the first settlement on the banks of the Yarra River having taken place in 1835. The first Catholic priest, Patrick Geoghegan, a Franciscan friar, didn’t arrive in the colony until 1839, and Coffey taught Roman Catholic catechesis to children during the period when no Catholic priest was available.^[3][4] Roman Catholic canon law gives the responsibility of teaching children the catechism to pastors, bishops, clerics and members of religious societies.^[5] Coffey was the first lay person and the first woman reported to have taught the Catholic catechism to children in Victoria, and is referred to as the first teacher at a Catholic school in Melbourne.^[1][2][6][7] When Geoghegan arrived in 1839, he praised Coffey for her initiative and for her “care and zeal” in establishing and conducting the first school in Melbourne.^[2] Coffey’s contribution to Catholic education was celebrated in a St Patrick’s Day pageant at the Melbourne Town Hall in 1930.^[8] She was singled out by Archbishop Justin Simonds as “an outstanding Catholic personality” in a requiem for pioneers in 1939.^[9] Geoghegan used a small travelling wooden box that belonged to Coffey, covered with a linen cloth, as the altar for the first mass held in the Port Phillip District.^[10] This box is held by the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne at the Goold Catholic Museum.^[3]