Albert Reuben Edward Thomas

Albert Reuben Edward Thomas (26 October 1908 − 24 September 1983) was an English Australian Roman Catholic bishop. Ordained to the priesthood on 30 November 1931, Thomas was named bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bathurst, Australia on 29 September 1963 and retired on 12 April 1983.[http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bthomasa.html Albert Reuben Edward Thomas profile] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131029192057/http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bthomasa.html |date=29 October 2013 }}, catholic-hierarchy.org; accessed 11 March 2014.

He headed Catholic Action in Sydney in the 1940s{{cite news |date=29 Jun 1944 |title=Director of Catholic Action Opens One-Act Play Competition |url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/146487513 |work=Catholic Weekly |location=Sydney |access-date=9 Mar 2022}} and Catholic social welfare in the 1950s.D.J. Gleeson, Some themes in Australian Catholic social welfare history, Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society, 28 (2007), 7-17. As Bishop of Bathurst in the 1960s, he vigorously pursued an anti-Communist line with support for the Democratic Labor Party.{{cite journal |last1=Tierney |first1=Robert |date=2007 |title=The churches and sectarian politics in the Central West: from the 1860s to the 1970s |url=https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/ielapa.200800836 |journal=Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society |volume=93 |issue=2 |pages=152–170 |doi= |access-date=28 Feb 2022}} As Australian Director of the Pontifical Mission Society, he criticised donors who wished to give to particular projects, writing, "Today people are so self-centred that even in their charity they wish to have some self-satisfaction. Hence they prefer to give to a specific need or project than to give to a world-wide fund such as the Holy Father's Propagation of the Faith."B. Lucas, The history of the pontifical missions in Australia', [https://australiancatholichistoricalsociety.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/achs-journal-2016-37-1.pdf Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society 37 (1) (2016)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220301041202/https://australiancatholichistoricalsociety.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/achs-journal-2016-37-1.pdf |date=1 March 2022 }}, 82-90.

==References==

Category:1908 births

Category:1983 deaths

Category:People from Farnborough, Hampshire

Category:Roman Catholic bishops of Bathurst

Category:20th-century English Roman Catholic priests

Category:20th-century Roman Catholic bishops in Australia