Bevan Meredith

Bevan Stanley Meredith (14 August 1927 – 17 December 2019) was an Anglican clergyman in Australia and Papua New Guinea who was Bishop of the New Guinea Islands (1977-95) and Archbishop of Papua New Guinea (1990-95).

Early life[]

Meredith was born in 1927,^[1] the son of Stanley Meredith, who was a teacher,^{[2] [3]} and his wife Edith (née Witchard).^[4]

He was educated at Towalbyn Public School in Uralba^[5] and Ballina High School.^[6] In 1945 the family moved to Mango Hill in Queensland.^[7] Initially working on the family farm, he then became a clerk at the City Electric Light Company.^[8] Meredith then became a teacher, initially at a small Anglican school called St Christopher's in Brookfield, which had been established by Fr Robert Bates, Rector of All Saints, Wickham Terrace, Brisbane.^[9]

From 1948 he taught at the Slade School in Warwick,^[10] before moving to Papua & New Guinea in 1954 to teach at the Martyrs School in Popondetta.^[11] This was only three years after the Mount Lamington volcanic eruption which destroyed the school, and at the time it was still being rebuilt.^[12]

Career[]

Meredith trained for ordination at St Francis' Theological College, Brisbane and was ordained deacon in 1961 and priest in 1962.^[13] He served a short curacy at St Thomas', Toowong in the Diocese of Brisbane from 1961 to 1962 and then returned to Papua & New Guinea as a missionary in the Papuan Peninsula from 1962 to 1966.^[14] He was then Archdeacon of New Guinea from 1966 to 1967.^[15]

He was consecrated a bishop in 1967 and became an assistant bishop of New Guinea, as well as being Archdeacon of the New Guinea Islands.^[16] In 1968 he was appointed an Australian Army chaplain (Papua & New Guinea then being an Australian territory).^[17]

As late as 1970, Meredith was still finding communities of Papuans in the Highlands for whom Christianity was novel, and he was the first to baptise any of them.^[18] In 1977 he became Bishop of the New Guinea Islands,^[19] and in 1990 additionally Archbishop of Papua New Guinea.^[20] He survived the volcanic eruption in Rabaul in 1994,^[21] and retired in 1995. Meredith was a Franciscan tertiary.^[22]

Personal life[]

In retirement Meredith lived in Brisbane.^[23] He died in 2019, aged 92, and his funeral was at St John's Cathedral in Brisbane.^[24] He was unmarried.^[25] His sister Marion married the Rt Rev George Tung Yep.^[26]

References[]