The Parish of St Bridget was formally established in 1959 although a Church School was built and operating in 1957. In 1961 the first Parish Priest Fr William Pietzch was appointed.
Since then the Parish thrived under the pastorate of Father Francis McLaughlin, Father John O’Shea and then Parish Priest Father Paul Ryan who was appointed in 1984. Father Paul retired in January 2008. He celebrated his 70th year of Ordination in 2009 along with his 95th birthday!
Until he was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Melbourne in 2014, Father Terry Curtin was parish priest and also Episcopal Vicar for the Eastern Region of the Archdiocese, and Head of the Systematic Theology Department at Catholic Theological College, East Melbourne.
In January 2015, Bishop Curtin was replaced by Missionary of the Sacred Heart Fr Dennis Rochford as parish administrator who, after just over two years, retired in April 2017.
His temporary replacement was Fr Brendan Lane, who has been previously involved in the training of priests at Corpus Christi College Carlton.
The St Bridget’s Church was blessed and opened in August 1980.
Parishioners are proud of their achievements and are committed to continuing as a community of faith, celebration, belonging and hospitality.
The pioneer parishioners of Greythorn were a hardy and persistent folk. They arrived in straggling numbers into the north-east corner of Camberwell and beyond in the years following the end of the Second World War.
The return of service men from overseas battle stations and the release of long-frustrated inner city dwellers from the bonds of rationing in every shape and form sent a wave of activity into the little known areas on the fringes of the metropolis to join the great home building surge in the rapidly expanding eastern suburbs.
The farming and grazing lands of that vague district east of the Yarra, known originally as Booroondara (‘a shady place’), had been disappearing since the ‘land boom’ days of the 1890’s. By the 1930 the outposts of Suburbia became Heidelberg, Camberwell and Box Hill, beyond which flourished the orchards and dairy farms, the market and flower gardens that gave a semi-rural flavour to life in these parts.
Somewhere in this triangular tract, a piece of ground – 5 acres – was bought by the parish of Surrey Hills for a new Church and the hardy folk set out to look at it. They knew within a square mile (this was in the pre-decimal days of simplicity) where to find it, so on Sunday afternoons the slope across the road from the Wild Life Sanctuary would reveal the occasional, straggling family group prospecting for spiritual gold, mud-spattered in winter or bramble-torn in summer.
Today, bitumen roads are flanked by nature strips and trim homes, thriving gardens and beautiful trees; and as a bonus for their persistence, the bountiful Lord has preserved for these builders distant prospects of the Dandenongs, the Kinglake Ranges and (on smog-free day across the city), Mount Macedon.
This is our story of creation, how out of chaos came forth order.