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.
He headed Catholic Action in Sydney in the 1940s and Catholic social welfare in the 1950s. As Bishop of Bathurst in the 1960s, he vigorously pursued an anti-Communist line with support for the Democratic Labor Party. 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."
References
- Albert Reuben Edward Thomas profile Archived 29 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine, catholic-hierarchy.org; accessed 11 March 2014.
- "Director of Catholic Action Opens One-Act Play Competition". Catholic Weekly. Sydney. 29 June 1944. Retrieved 9 March 2022.
- D.J. Gleeson, Some themes in Australian Catholic social welfare history, Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society, 28 (2007), 7-17.
- Tierney, Robert (2007). "The churches and sectarian politics in the Central West: from the 1860s to the 1970s". Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society. 93 (2): 152–170. Retrieved 28 February 2022.
- B. Lucas, The history of the pontifical missions in Australia', Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society 37 (1) (2016) Archived 1 March 2022 at the Wayback Machine, 82-90.
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