History of the archives

In their present form, the Archives of the Pallottine Fathers & Brothers- Australian Region are of recent origin. In 1997 Fr Kelvin Kenny SAC was appointed to try to establish some sort of order in the documents that were accumulating in our Pallottine houses around Australia. Prior to that files that were regarded of some historical values were simply stored in boxes after their usefulness in the office filing cabinet came to an end. There were records of property transactions, meetings, contracts, conferences, letters from past members, from Rome etc, all just lumped together as they came out of the office cabinets.

The Pallottines had come to Australia in 1901 to take over the Trappist missions to the Aboriginal people of Beagle Bay in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. In 1935 the Pallottines superior was appointed Bishop. Thus he was both the superior of the Pallottines in the area and Vicar Apostolic of the Kimberley. When Broome became a diocese, all earlier records held in Broome became Diocesan records and part of their archives. So most of the material in the Pallottine archives dates from the early 30’s when the Society established its Mother House in Kew Melbourne.

So far in the document section, 24,387 documents have been catalogued, filling 728 Wallets spread over the 34 Classes and 398 sub classes, in 80 Boxes. A lot more are in heaps on the shelves awaiting identification, sorting, cataloguing, numbering and filing. The photographs/slides etc., are another matter. The long-term plan is to have each photo scanned into the computer and copied on to CD for easy access. So far 1,388 photographs have been catalogued and their description recorded into a database. There are 8 classes and 271 sub classes so far. The computer database used is Microsoft Access. In a recent visit from Germany, of Fr Norbert Hannappel, the provincial from the Limburg Province, the archives received a CD containing hundreds of photos from both the Limburg and Rome archives. Fr Joe Kearney is working on the German text that accompanied it.

Sr Brigida Nialon CSB has finished her research in the archives for material for her book on the history of the Pallottines in Australia, which was published and launched in January 2001, under the title ‘Nothing is wasted in the household of God’. Sister has reassured us that the book is only the tip of the iceberg of research data she collected during its preparation.

Text by Fr Kelvin Kenny SAC

Page updated 24.01.2008

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