Justin Daniel Simonds

Justin Daniel Simonds was born near Glen Innes, the son of Irish school teachers. He came to Sydney and attended Sydney High, leaving in 1906. He was said to be good at Rugby. He also came first in the sack race at the annual athletics meetings in 1904 and 1905.

After school, he began studying for the Roman Catholic priesthood at St Patrick’s College, Manly and was ordained in 1912. After a brief parochial appointment at Bega, he held various positions at the theological colleges at Manly and Springwood.

He also travelled to the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, where he obtained a doctorate.

In 1937 he was consecrated as a bishop and was appointed Archbishop of Hobart, becoming the first Australian-born Roman Catholic Archbishop.  In 1942 he moved to Melbourne to be coadjutor (with right of succession) to the long-lived Archbishop Daniel Mannix, and became Archbishop of Melbourne upon Mannix’s death in 1963.

His duties in Melbourne were not heavy during his long period as coadjutor. He spent some time overseas in the wake of Wotld War II. In 1946, he went into Germany with a convoy of 17 trucks carrying special relief for those suffering the aftermath of war. In 1949 he attended the United Nations assembly in New York, as special adviser to the Australian delegation.

His short term as Archbishop of Melbourne saw a restructuring of the Catholic education system and a start to the liturgical reforms brought on by Vatican II (which he attended, despite poor health). His Australian Dictionary of Biography entry records of him:

While he attempted throughout his life to reconcile the secular and religious worlds, Simonds also defended the separation of church and state. He abhorred the involvement of the Church in party politics and vigorously opposed any attempt to use the youth movements of Catholic Action to combat communism in the political and industrial spheres. In contrast with Mannix and the other Victorian bishops, he was critical of the Catholic Social Studies Movement, headed by B. A. Santamaria, especially after the Australian Labor Party split in 1955. His most courageous and controversial act as archbishop of Melbourne, carried out within days of taking office, was to terminate Santamaria's weekly contribution to a Catholic television programme, 'Sunday Magazine'.

Ill health led to his resignation in May 1967. He died shortly after.