Knights of the Southern Cross : in Western Australia 1922-2022

A Brotherhood That Helped Build WA: 100-Year History of the Knights of the Southern Cross Revealed for the First Time

A new centenary history publication reveals how a Catholic fraternal order — unknown to the public until the 1960s — quietly shaped Western Australia's aged care, education, church infrastructure, and community life. For the first time, Western Australians can discover who helped create a legacy of care in our state. Before open records, online archives and public recognition, the Knights of the Southern Cross were working quietly behind the scenes — helping establish initiatives and institutions that continue to impact thousands of Western Australians today. That changed on Saturday 30th of May 2026, when the Knights launched their one-hundred-year history book, Knights of the Southern Cross in Western Australia 1922–2022. Primary editor, Dr Marco Ceccarelli, said the book reveals how ordinary lay Catholics played an extraordinary role in shaping WA’s social and faith landscape: ‘Founded in Western Australia in 1922, the Knights of the Southern Cross operated privately and quietly for four decades, focused on service rather than public recognition,’ Dr Ceccarelli explained, ‘As a result, many of these contributions were never widely documented publicly or online. This book helps uncover the people behind initiatives and institutions many Western Australians know today but may never have realised were supported by generations of Catholic laymen.’

The book documents the Knights’ role in:

• Helping to establish in 1966 the aged care service that began as Southern Cross Homes, which evolved into Southern Cross Care and today supporting more than 3,000 elderly Western Australians,

• Providing and maintaining scholarships for teachers, seminarians and students of religious education across Western Australia since 1992,

• Supporting disadvantaged Vietnamese students to access education for twenty-five years,

• Contributing to the restoration of St Mary’s Cathedral in Perth, St Patrick’s Cathedral in Bunbury and St Francis Xavier Cathedral in Geraldton.