At a glance
We have three churches, St James, Malanda (map), Our Lady of Consolation & St Patrick, Yungaburra (map), and St Rita of Cascia, Millaa Millaa (map).
For Mass times: liturgy calendar.
PDF of latest Sunday bulletin
Parish Office: 5 Monash Ave, Malanda; ph (07) 4096 5156.
The Malanda Parish sacramental registers and most office functions are handled in the Atherton Parish Office, 28 Mabel Street, Atherton: ph (07) 4046 5200.
This church was dedicated on 26 April 1914 to Our Lady of Consolation, principle patron of the Augustinians who at that time were in charge of the Vicariate Apostolic of Cooktown, now the Diocese of Cairns.
Fr Patrick Doyle OSA was parish priest (based in Herberton) when the church was built. He died 16 November 1924, and the Yungaburra congregation decided to add a bell in his memory, dedicating it to his namesake, St Patrick, when it was installed on Pentecost Sunday 31 May 1925.
Certificates and wedding documents show the church being called by its correct title, Our Lady of Consolation, until 1941 when the Australasian Catholic Directory mistakenly began listing it as St Rita’s. This was then “corrected” in 1948 to St Patrick’s. Fifty years later people speculated that the name had been changed formally to honour Fr Patrick Doyle, but this is forbidden. In rare circumstances it may be permitted to “upgrade” a church by adding a saint of higher rank, keeping the original dedicatee as secondary patron, but since St Mary, Mother of God, ranks above all other saints it is strictly forbidden to so demote the church to St Rita, or St Patrick, or any other saint. The simplest explanation for the confusion is that with the lack of a proper signage people later mistook the information on the memorial to Fr Patrick under the bell tower as a reference to the church. More confusion occured when the Conservation Plan in October 1999 mistakenly claimed the original dedication was to Our Lady of Ransom, by which it was then listed in the Queensland Heritage Register.
Use of the correct title, Our Lady of Consolation, has been restored, but this quirky history means that many people still think of it as St Patrick’s, so prompting his being listed as secondary patron, and hence it is Our Lady of Consolation & St Patrick Catholic Church. The various signs are still to be updated.
There are several devotions to St Mary as consoler, each with its own date. The Augustinian one emerged from a mediaeval legend in which Mary appears to and consoles Monica as she grieves over the waywardness of her son, Augustine (of Hippo). Common to this type of legend, Mary hands Monica a cincture or belt she was wearing; the belt in Augustinian iconography is modeled on what worn by the members of order. In the image above, both Monica and Augustine are shown receiving a belt. Monica is often shown, as here, wearing black, looking to most people like a nun, but it is actually a mediaeval style for widows, quaintly called “widows weeds”. The Augustinian commemoration of Our Lady of Consolation is 04 September, which is therefore also the titular feast day of this church.