Francis Xavier Gsell [SEP] position held
Francis Xavier Gsell
Francis Xavier Gsell, OBE (30 June 1872 – 12 July 1960) was an Australian Roman Catholic bishop and missionary, known as the "Bishop with 150 wives". He was born at Benfeld, Alsace in 1872. He was ordained as a priest in the order of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in 1896, after study in Rome.
He began active missionary work in Papua in 1900, then in 1906 re-established the Catholic Church in Palmerston (now Darwin), Northern Territory
in northern Australia, but owing in part to the hostility of the indigenous population, it lasted only five years, being abandoned in 1829. As "the first attempted European and military settlement anywhere in northern Australia", the site is on Australia's Register of the National Estate.
A Catholic mission was established by Francis Xavier Gsell in 1911, and the islands were proclaimed an Aboriginal Reserve in 1912. A timber church built in the 1930s is a prominent landmark in Wurrumiyanga. The Catholic mission had positive impacts, through