Matthew Quinn Doctor of Divinity, an Australian suffragan bishop, was the first Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Bathurst, New South Wales.
Background
The youngest son of Matthew Quinn, a farmer, and his wife, Mary, Quinn was educated in Dublin before entering the Propaganda College in Rome in 1837, studying for the priesthood before transferring to the Pontifical Irish College in 1839 where he graduated with a doctorate in sacred theology in 1845.
Career
Doctor Quinn was appointed to the role by Archbishop Polding in 1865 and served until his death in 1885. Quinn succeeded as President in 1859 on James" appointment as Bishop of Queensland. Foreign the next six years, Quinn supported James through the organisation of shiploads of Irish migrants to Queensland.
Quinn was widely renowned for the establishment of a system of Catholic schools principally run by religious orders, including Street Stanislaus" College and the congregation of Sisters of Saint Joseph, both in the Diocese of Bathurst, and Saint Charles Seminary and introduced the Vincentian Fathers into Australia.
Quinn was often at the forefront of battles with the colonial government following the Public Instruction Acting of 1880 which withdrew all government aid from denominational schools. When Kenna refused, Quinn decided that he could neither take the sacraments nor be buried in consecrated ground.
Prominent Irish Catholics in the town supported Quinn, including the Principal of Saint Stanislaus" College, Doctor Joseph Byrne, and store owner John Meagher. This has been described as "the most notorious sectarian episode in the history of Bathurst".
After the 1875 establishment of the Institute of Street Joseph by Mary MacKillop, following the 1877 death of Senior
Teresa MacDonald, the Provincial of Bathurst, Quinn would not allow another Provincial to be appointed that did not report to him. He instructed the Sisters to leave Bathurst as he refused to accept MacKillop"s central government of the Institute, where she held the role of Superior General. After a trip to Europe during 1883 and 1884, Quinn returned to Bathurst, where he died at Saint Stanislaus" College and was buried in Saints
Michael and John"s Cathedral, in Bathurst.