Denis M. Long, Pioneer and Early Priests, Archdiocese of Brisbane, Deceased or retired by 1929, 2021, pp 167-169:
Very Rev Dean Matthew Horan

Matthew Horan was the eldest of the three brothers who served as priests in the Brisbane diocese. James Quinn was their maternal uncle. Matthew was born of on 6 January 1842, the sons of John and Sarah (nee Quinn) Horan of a comfortable farm family in the townland of Gormanstown two miles from Kilcullen in Co Kildare.

His early education was by a private tutor in the family home. In 1854 he entered the seminary of St Laurence O'Toole's college in Hardcourt Street Dublin,743 moving to St Patrick's Carlow in January 1864.(2) He was ordained in Dublin in June 1865.(3)

Fr Matthew arrived in Wide Bay aboard the Golden Land on 12 October 1865. The passengers were forced to spend 18 days in quarantine, when two more passengers died. Matthew landed on 4 November.(4) For his first year he was based in Brisbane and in 1867 he had the care of St Patrick's Fortitude Valley, then in Wickham Street.(5)

Shortly after gold was discovered by James Nash in 1867, Fr Tissot of Maryborough visited the Gympie Creek, Nashville gold fields offering the first Mass for the miners there. Fr Tissot informed Bishop Quinn that a resident priest was needed there because of the large number of miners. Fr Matthew Horan was appointed to that ministry in late January 1868. He travelled by boat to Maryborough and then by coach to Gympie. Being a rainy season with Goochie creek running a banker, Fr Horan did not arrive in Nashville until March.(6)

He spent his first night in the hotel – not a very pretentious building. Then a man, who was to visit Brisbane, loaned Fr Horan his tent. It was on this site that a presbytery was later built. An Anglican gentleman loaned a large tent in which Fr Horan celebrated the first Sunday Mass. This was used for six weeks until timber brought from Maryborough to allow the erection of rough slab building. He resided with Mr Smith's until his own slab-hut residence was built.

About twenty months after Fr Horan's arrival Bishop Quinn visited the settlement to open a new church built of pine, on Sunday 25 July 1869. The record of the visit in the new established Gympie Times was also re published in the Brisbane press.(7)

The first visit of a bishop of this communion would have been an event of importance had he come to perform even the usual and more ordinary duties of his pastoral charge, but the consecration of this church has an especial interest, when it is considered that such a handsome building had been erected is such a short time, in a place where but a few months ago the aboriginal may have hunted in happy ignorance almost of the sight of a white man, and the wild animals grazed undisturbed by the sound of a pick, or the busy hum of an important town. The building is neatly decorated in the interior, and is capable of containing a thousand people with ease.
His Lordship administered confirmation to those who were prepared to receive it, about eighty, principally young persons.

A half-day holiday was given in honour of the visit and nearly the whole town gathered to hear him speak. The bishop was planning to attend the Vatican Council but was finding it difficult to finance the journey. Word went around the miners and gold specimens were donated which the mint valued at £750. This gift not only financed the bishop's journey to the Council, but assisted him in meeting part of the debt on the convent and bishop's residence in Brisbane.(8)

Fr Horan was credited with many feats of horsemanship. Once he set out for Brisbane on horseback and arrived at Caboolture by 6pm that evening. On another occasion he was involved in a stunt where miners were planning to pull down a local newspaper office which had printed a semi-humorous paragraph telling how easy it was to obtain gold. Father Horan, unknown to the diggers, managed to cut the rope tied around a stump of the building. When the order came to pull, instead of the building it was the men who came down. Who had carried out this was not discovered till weeks afterwards.(9)

The Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart came to Gympie in 1875. They moved into a school at Monkland some three miles from their convent - St Malachy's on Calton hill. Three years later when the disagreement between the bishop and Mary McKillop reached an impasse the sisters left. This school continued to be conducted by lay teachers. When the Sisters of Mercy arrived late in 1878, they moved into the convent and took over a school adjacent to the convent and also St Joseph's school at Monkland.

Fr Horan's name was often in the local press, the Gympie Times. He was a regular correspondent in various controversies when the church was attacked or misunderstood on such issues as: vested and non-vested schools; state aid for education; a division among the Hibernians of Gympie; his concerns about communism, socialism and secularism. He wrote several letters from 1870 up to a year before his death. Reports of his activities were reported in Sydney's Freeman's Journal and Catholic Press.

In 1873 Bishop Quinn called Fr Matthew to Brisbane. After Mass on Sunday 11 May, Fr Horan was farewelled with an address and a very generous purse of £236. The people expressed their desire that the Bishop would one day return him to their midst.

The rev. gentleman took his departure for Brisbane at 2.00p.m., accompanied by a cavalcade of upwards 150 persons who escorted him as far as the Seven Mile.(10)

In May 1873 Father Benedetto Scortechini was transferred from Warwick to administer the parish of Gympie in Fr Horan's absence. He ministered in the parish for over a year.

Fr Horan was brought to Brisbane to assist him in raising funds for the completion of St Stephen's cathedral, with numerous visits to areas of the widespread diocese. He was subdeacon at the blessing and opening by Archbishop Vaughan on 17 May 1874.(11)

Fr Horan returned to Gympie on Thursday 22 October 1874, and Fr Scortechini left for the take charge of the Logan mission.(12)

In March 1877 Father Horan went on a holiday to his native Ireland.(13) He returned in April 1878.(14) It is recorded that this was his only break in his 55 years as parish priest.

The pine church opened in 1869 was a victim of a white-ant invasion. After some four years it had to be replaced by a church built of hardwood milled in Maryborough.(15)

On Saturday 27 January 1883 Archbishop Dunne laid the foundation stone of a new St Patrick's church.(16) Costing £10,000 it took four and a half years to build. It was blessed and opened by Archbishop Dunne on 24 July 1887 - free of debt.(17)

Fr Matthew joined his James and Andrew to celebrate a Solemn Requiem Mass at Ipswich in October 1886 for Sarah Horan, their mother and the sister of the late Bishop Quinn.(18)

In 1915 the year of his golden jubilee of priesthood Fr Horan was created Dean of the North Coast deanery by Bishop Dunne.(19)

The Dean died of influenza at Gympie presbytery on Friday 6 Jul 1923 at 9.50a.m.:

… So ended a record pastorate certainly for Australia, probably the world over. It has not been given to any other clergyman in Australia to come into a parish, start with celebrating Mass in a tent in the midst of scrub-covered land, and then remain as parish priest for over fifty-five years, having in that period of his pastorate seen a fine stone church erected and also the fine substantial buildings of a religious and semi-religious nature attached to the church.(20)

Fr Patrick Murphy who had been his curate for eleven years had left on a visit to Ireland in April of that year. It was only eleven days prior to his death that the Dean was present and spoke at a farewell to Fr Casey who after three years in Gympie was on transfer to Booval. In that speech he said: They had lived together like brothers, and when the Father thought he was doing too much for an old man, he would relieve him of his burden. (Applause).(21)

Archbishop Duhig was on a visit to Western Queensland so the Vicar-General Monsignor James Byrne officiated at the obsequies. Fr John Healy parish priest of Chinchilla and a native of Gympie joined Mgr Byrne and Father Casey for the Requiem Mass and funeral. Fr Healy celebrated the 11.00am Mass. Following the funeral rites in the church the congregation accompanied the body of Dean Horan through the streets of which had been his home town for fifty-five years. The procession returned to St Patrick's Church where the Dean was buried in a tomb which he had built on the right-hand side of the sanctuary.(22)

In apologising for Archbishop Duhig's absence Monsignor Byrne noted that the Archbishop would be present at the Month's Mind which was celebrated on 7 August.

Footnotes
1. Age, Brisbane, 14 Jul 1923, p. 8. Col. 4.
2. Delaney Archives, St Patrick's College, Carlow, 2019.
3. Catholic Advocate, Brisbane, 12 Jul 1923, p. 20. Col 4.
4. Maryborough Chronicle, Wide Bay and Burnett Advertiser, 8 Nov 1865, p. 2.
5. Age, op. cit.
6. Gympie Times, 16 Oct 1917, p.1.
7. Gympie Times and Mary River Mining Gazette, 28 Jul 1869, p. 3.
8. Age, op. cit. p. 9. Col. 4.
9. Ibid.
10. Gympie Times, 14 May 1873, p. 3.
11. Ibid. 20 May 1874, p.3.
12. Patrick J Tynan, Pioneer Priest and Botanist Benedetto Scortechini, 1989, pp. 25 to 32.
13. Catholic Press, Sydney, 16 Mar 1922, p. 21.
14. Freeman's Journal, Sydney, 13 Apr 1878, p. 8.
15. Courier Mail, Brisbane, 2 Oct 1937, p. 23.
16. Maryborough Chronicle, 30 Jan 1883, p. 2.
17. Freeman's Journal, Sydney, 30 Jul 1887, p. 18.
18. Queensland Times, Ipswich, 16 Oct 1886.
19. Gympie Times, 12 Jun 1915, p. 5.
20. Age, Brisbane, 14 Jul 1923, p. 8.
21. Queensland Times, Ipswich, 28 Jun 1923, p. 3.
22. Christopher Hanlon, op. cit.

Reproduced by permission of Fr Denis Long.