Religious Royals in the New Australia: The Queen, the Pope, and the 1970 Cook Bicentenary

Two hundred years after the first Briton claimed the east coast of Australia in the name of the King, Sydney enjoyed two major “royal” tours. In April 1970, Queen Elizabeth II visited to celebrate the bicentenary of Captain James Cook’s “discovery,” even as Britain was retreating from Empire into Europe. In December, Pope Paul VI made the first papal visit to Australia in the midst of declining sectarianism and the emergence of Roman Catholicism as the nation’s largest denomination. Both tours attracted some controversy and revealed substantial shifts in the relationship between worlds old and new. Drawing particularly on the experience of Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Sir Marcus Loane, who preached in the presence of the Queen and refused to join in prayer with the Pope, this article explores the religious meaning of these two important tours within the context of the mood of “new nationalism” redefining Australia’s place in the world. It brings into view the spiritual significance of the end of empire and the cultural significance of what Hugh McLeod has termed “the end of Christendom” in the long 1960s.