Diocese of Port Pirie
Catholic ecclesiastical territory
The Diocese of Port Pirie is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction or diocese of the Catholic Church in Australia. It is a suffragan in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Adelaide, erected in 1887 covering the Yorke and Eyre Peninsulas, Flinders Ranges, Nullarbor Plain, and Mid and Far North regions of South Australia, Australia.
History
The Diocese of Port Augusta was canonically erected by Pope Leo XIII on 10 May 1887, the same day the pope elevated the See of Adelaide to a metropolitan archdiocese and placed the new diocese in its province. On 5 August 1951 the seat of the diocese was moved from Port Augusta to Port Pirie, with the name of the diocese being also changed.
Boundaries
Bishops
The following men have been Bishops of Port Pirie or any of its precursor titles:
Coadjutor bishop
Francis Peter de Campo † (1979–1980)
Other priest of this diocese who became bishop
Francis Augustin Henschke †, appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Adelaide in 1937
Sexual abuse cases
The Royal Commission into Institutionalised Responses to Child Sexual Abuse revealed that Port Pirie was the third-worst diocese in the country, with 14.1% of its priests accused of abuse.
In 2007, Father Charles Barnett was arrested in Jakarta, Indonesia where he had fled in 1995, and extradited to Australia. Barnett pled guilty in 2009 to three child sex charges for events between 1977 and 1985 at Crystal Brook and Port Pirie. He was sentenced for a fourth crime occurring in 1994 and was rearrested in for other crimes after his release.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Diocese of Port Pirie” as catholic ecclesiastical territory. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as catholic ecclesiastical territory. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q183411. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1887, 1951, 1979 and 1980.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Diocese of Port Pirie”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Diocese of Port Pirie primary sources, Diocese of Port Pirie archive and Diocese research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Diocese of Port Pirie” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.