The parish was established in 1851, with a parish school opening in the 1850’s. This was an elementary school taught by lay teachers, and would have received some government funding.
When state funding ended in the early 1880’s, Catholic authorities turned to the Sisters of Charity who had just established a convent at Ashfield.
St Thomas Becket closed in 2005 at the end of the school year.

The Irish Potato Famine, also known as the ‘Great Hunger’, started in 1845 when a fungus-like organism affected crops and spread rapidly throughout Ireland. The infestation had a catastrophic impact on Ireland and its population. Before it ended in 1852, the Potato Famine resulted in the death of approximately one million people from starvation and related causes, with at least another million forced to leave their homeland as refugees. Read More

John Bede Polding was an English Benedictine monk who became the first Catholic Bishop of Australia. He was concerned for the plight of the convicts. He was responsible for the emergence of the Good Samaritan Sisters, whose institute he founded in 1857. Read More

Catholic schooling in Liverpool goes back to the early nineteenth century, when the area was a mission district in the developing colony. Though there were Catholic schools in Liverpool in 1828, the schooling seems to have begun in 1837 when colonial chaplains Fr John Therry and Fr John McEncroe arranged for the foundation of an elementary school staffed by Patrick Catherine Hennessy and the Sisters of Charity. Read More

In 1838, Archbishop Polding opened this secondary school for boys on the present site next to the Cathedral. Today, St Mary’s Cathedral College is a thriving school for boys from Years 3 to 12. The College, while now part of Sydney Catholic Schools, maintains close relationships with Christian Brothers’ schools through sporting ties and an affiliation with Edmund Rice Education Australia.

The proximity to the Cathedral is more than geographical: students continue to serve as choristers and scholars, and many students are involved in altar serving and in other aspects of the liturgy.

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The first Catholics to be settled in Australia arrived with the First Fleet in 1788. The majority were Irish convicts, together with a few Royal Marines. Other nationalities that joined the First Fleet were either English or Scottish. Read more