Archdiocese of Perth
Catholic ecclesiastical territory based in Perth, Western Australia

The Metropolitan Archdiocese of Perth is a Latin Church metropolitan archdiocese of the Catholic Church in Australia covering the Greater Perth, Goldfields-Esperance, Peel and Wheatbelt regions of Western Australia.
St Mary's Cathedral located in Perth, Western Australia, is the seat of the Catholic Metropolitan Archbishop of Perth, currently Timothy Costelloe, appointed in February 2012.
History
On 6 May 1845 the Diocese of Perth was erected in an area covered and administered previously by the Archdiocese of Sydney.
It lost territory repeatedly, to establish on 12 March 1867 the Benedictine Territorial Abbacy of New Norcia, on 10 May 1887 the Apostolic Vicariate of Kimberley in Western Australia and on 30 January 1898 the Diocese of Geraldton.
It was elevated as Metropolitan archdiocese on 29 August 1913.
On 12 November 1954 it lost territory to establish the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bunbury.
In 1982 it regained former territory from the suppressed Territorial Abbacy of New Norcia.
Cathedral
The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, commonly called St Mary's Cathedral, is the seat of the archbishop and is located in East Perth.
During restoration work in the cathedral between 2003 and 2006, the brick and plaster crypt containing the coffins of bishops Matthew Gibney and Martin Griver was discovered by archaeologists under the floorboards of an aisle in the cathedral.
In 2011, the remains of Perth's first bishop, John Brady, were exhumed from his grave in France and he was laid to rest in the crypt.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Archdiocese of Perth” is catholic ecclesiastical territory based in Perth, Western Australia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Archdiocese, Perth and Catholic, not as a finished interpretation.
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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 Aug 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1365275. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2012, 1845, 1867 and 1887.
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This entry incorporates text from “Archdiocese of Perth” 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.