When the Hyde Park Barracks was first occupied by convict men in 1819, Catholic colonists worshipped in secret. In coming decades, as the Catholic Church gained acceptance, thousands of Barracks’ prisoners joined congregations at neighbouring St Mary’s. From the 1840s, while clergy and nuns advanced the ‘Catholic Mission’, inmates of the immigrants’ hostel and destitute asylum sought spiritual guidance and comfort in pocket-sized prayer books, religious tracts, rosaries and devotional medals: many of which survive in the Barracks archaeology collection. Presented in a series of installations throughout the museum, this new display relates the gradual surfacing of Catholic faith in colonial Sydney with occupants of Hyde Park Barracks.

Museum trail now on | Free with museum entry