Most Reverend Shane Mackinlay
Eighth Bishop of Sandhurst

In the language of heraldry, Bishop Shane’s personal arms are:

• Gules, two pickaxes in saltire, blades upwards Or; in chief an open book Argent bound Or with the Greek letter Α on the dexter page and the Greek letter Ω on the sinister page both Sable.

or, in plain English:

• On a red field, two gold pickaxes in saltire, blades upwards and, in the top part of the shield, an open silver book bound in gold with the Greek letter Α on the left page and the Greek letter Ω on the right page.

His motto is taken from John 10:10
I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full.

The crossed pickaxes are the tools of goldmining, which was integral to the founding of both Ballarat and Bendigo. The bible comes from the arms of Catholic Theological College and reflects its motto, Tolle lege, the admonition that prompted St Augustine to take up and read the bible, which led to his baptism.

As is traditional for the coat of arms of a bishop, the arms are placed before an episcopal cross and are ensigned with a green galero (Roman hat) with six fiocchi (tassels) on each side.

Bishop Shane’s personal arms will be combined with those of the Diocese of Sandhurst by impalement, a traditional way of denoting a bishop’s union with his diocese.

In the language of heraldry, the diocesan arms are:

• Quarterly, per saltire or and azure on the former in fess two roses gules, in chief an estoile (eight-pointed star) and in base a representation of the Paderborn Cross argent.

The gold of the field represents the goldfields, which are located within the diocese. The blue and the roses represent the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, who, under the title Our Lady of Good Counsel, is Patroness of the Diocese. The Paderborn Cross at the base is an ancient Christian symbol discovered in an eighth-century grave beneath the Cathedral at Paderborn, Germany, which was the home city of Dr Henry Backhaus, the pioneer priest of the Bendigo Goldfields.

The diocesan arms and Bishop Shane’s personal arms were designed by Richard d’Apice AM KCSG and Fr. Guy Selvester and illustrated by Sandy Turnbull.

Bishop Shane Mackinlay was born in Melbourne in 1965 and attended the local government school until his family moved to Ballarat in 1975. In Ballarat, he was a student at St Francis Xavier Primary School and St Patrick’s College, where he was dux in 1982. He has two siblings and is the uncle of five nieces and nephews.

He studied for the priesthood at Corpus Christi College, Clayton, completing theology studies at Catholic Theological College and a degree in physics at Monash University. As a deacon, he served in the parish of Warrnambool, before being ordained as priest for the Ballarat Diocese in 1991, and serving in the parishes of Hamilton, Colac and Ballarat Cathedral. He then undertook graduate studies in philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, where he completed a Master’s degree and a Doctorate. His doctoral thesis was published by Fordham University Press.

Bishop Mackinlay was administrator of the Casterton parish for six months and parish priest of the Sebastopol parish for four years. He was parish priest of the Bungaree parish from 2005 until his appointment as bishop; from 2009, he also provided weekend sacramental ministry for the neighbouring parish of Gordon.

For several years, he taught philosophy at Australian Catholic University, Ballarat. Most of his teaching has taken place at Catholic Theological College, Melbourne, where he was appointed Master in 2011. The following year, he was appointed Associate Professor by the University of Divinity.

From 2012 to 2014 he was the spokesperson for the Catholic Church during the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and other NonGovernment Organisations. He was secretary to the Bishop of Ballarat from 1998 to 2001, and was the chairperson of the Bishop’s Advisory Council of the Ballarat diocese from when it was established in 2009. He was a member of the College of Consultors of the Ballarat diocese on two occasions and also served six years as Chairman of the two funds that provide support to the active and retired priests of the Ballarat diocese.

Pope Francis appointed Bishop Mackinlay as the eighth Bishop of Sandhurst on 23 July 2019. Since then, he has been elected as Vice-President of the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia and one of the Australian delegates to the forthcoming Synod for a Synodal Church. In 2019, he was asked to join the Methodist-Roman Catholic International Commission, and in 2022 was appointed as its Co-Chair.