CATH NEWS REPORT-
Screenshot of the image from The Record, of the grave of the first Bishop of Perth, John Brady in the parish graveyard of Amelie-Les-Baines in southern France
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Relatives of Perth's first bishop have given permission to return his remains from France 140 years after he left in controversial circumstances, The Record reports.
Currently Bishop John Brady's remains are buried a French provincial graveyard in the village of Amélie-Les-Bains in southern France.
His remains are hoped to be exhumed in March and reinterred later in the year in St Mary's Cathedral Crypt.
Perth priest and trained archeologist, Fr Robert Cross - who is Executive Assistant to Archbishop Barry Hickey - has actively been pursuing the return of Bishop Brady's remains for the last six months.
Among the relatives Fr Cross met were a priest, Fr Eddie Brady, 82, a member of the Missionaries of Africa Order. Fr Brady is a great grand-nephew of Bishop Brady.
Fr Cross also met Bishop Brady's great-great-grand-niece, Lorna Lavelle, her husband Paddy and two of their sons in Dublin, Ireland.
The family gave its permission for Bishop Brady's remains to be exhumed and re-interred in Perth, the diocese he founded. Family members were also delighted that Archbishop Hickey wants this to happen, Fr Cross told The Record.
There is no certainty that there will be any remains after 140 years since Bishop Brady's burial, Fr Cross said.
Amelie-Les-Baines, which lies within sight of the Pyrenees, is a spa town with high concentrations of groundwater. It is possible any human remains may have effectively been dissolved by chemicals in the groundwater.
"Given that, it is necessary for the exhumation to be conducted by an archaeological method to ensure that any human skeletal material and other funerary items are recovered," Fr Cross said.
The controversy surrounding Bishop Brady is still unsolved, the report adds.
The missionary who had previously served in the colony of New South Wales in the 1830s and won high regard from some for his saintly character, arrived in Albany in 1843 with Belgian priest Fr John Joostens and Patrick O'Reilly, a catechist.
He visited Rome the following year, asking that a diocese be created for WA, telling authorities there were approximately two million Aborigines in need of evangelisation.
Rome agreed to the creation of a diocese and appointed Brady as the first Bishop of Perth.
While in Rome, he recruited new clergy for his diocese including Benedictines Joseph Serra and Rosendo Salvado, and then other clergy and Religious from France and Ireland including Sisters of Mercy.
He returned to Perth with a total party of 28 but soon found difficulty in feeding and financing them.
One party of missionary priests sent to the south-west of WA nearly starved to death, but the seriousness of this was overshadowed by the dispute between Bishop Brady and Bishop Serra.
In 1851, Bishop Brady was suspended by Rome, Serra was appointed Apostolic Administrator and a series of violent legal disputes between the two and their supporters ensued, dividing the young Church in Perth.
Bishop Brady was at one point excommunicated and left Perth in 1852 for Ireland.
Brady family folklore holds that Bishop Brady was returning from the first Vatican Council in 1871 when he visited the natural springs health resort town of Amélie-Les-Bains for health reasons.
He subsequently died there.
Although he never returned to Perth, he remained its Bishop until his death in 1871 in France.
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