St Mary’s Cathedral, Sale

St Mary’s Cathedral, Sale is the cathedral church of the diocese, under the patronage of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

Purpose-built as a cathedral, St Mary’s boasts a Romanesque onyx high altar, notable stained glass windows and a large statue of Mary Help of Christians as its features. Four of Sale’s bishops are buried in the cathedral: Bishop Corbett lies in the main section of the church beneath the front rows of pews on the right hand side and Bishops Ryan, Lyons and Fox are interred in the Lady Chapel.

The main part of St Mary’s Cathedral with its distinctive east-facing Gothic windows was constructed in 1886 by pioneer priest Fr James Hegarty. He initiated work on this red brick church when it was rumoured that Sale would become the seat of a Gippsland-based diocese and he wanted to ensure that the town had a church worthy of being called a cathedral.

This Cathedral Church, built in 1886-1887 to the design of Barker and Henderson, is notable for the broad polygonal plaster-vaulted apse which, together with the side chapel, is elaborately pained and decorated. The interior also includes marble fittings with mosaic panels, stained glass windows and an anonymous pipe organ in the rear gallery. Originally of brick with decorated Gothic window tracery of Waurn Ponds stone, the church is now cement faced. The first Bishop of Sale, Dr James Corbett, was appointed to the see in 1857, having previously been parish priest of St Mary’s, East St Kilda, where he was closely associated with the architect William Wardell.