O'Connor was one of Canberra's earliest post-war suburbs, and from the early 1950s the Catholic families of Turner and O'Connor worshipped together as part of St Patrick's Parish, Braddon. The community was already multicultural from the start, the post-war migration programme had brought substantial numbers of Polish, Croatian, Italian and Dutch families to the western suburbs, and they quickly became part of the fabric of parish life.

In 1956, the Sisters of St Joseph arrived from Goulburn to staff the new St Joseph's School. For several years, until their convent was built alongside the school, six sisters lived in a modest house in Boronia Drive. A remarkable figure among them was the late Sister Mary St Jude, who simultaneously led the community household and served as Principal of the school, holding both together with characteristic grace and determination.

The school quickly became the beating heart of the emerging community. Working bees of volunteers tackled drainage, paving, and the restoration of a large hall that served school and parish purposes for fifteen years. Girls of European background formed a formidable basketball team that dominated the Catholic schools competition. In 1962 the school won the Catholic Primary Schools swimming championship, early signs of a community that competed and celebrated together.

St Joseph's was formally established as its own parish in 1959, one of Canberra's first suburban parishes. The new community inherited the school building, the hall, a house in Boronia Drive, the historic stone church at Hall village, and a debt of £36,000. The response was characteristically communal: working bees, fundraising drives, and the introduction of planned giving (the Canvass) in 1962 gave the parish a more stable footing.

As the parish grew, so did the school. Within two years of its opening, St Joseph's School was overwhelmed by enrolments, the Sisters coped with class sizes that stretched belief. A second school, St Michael's, was opened around 1965 near St Ninian's Church in Lyneham, staffed by Sisters of the Ursuline Order. A decade later, changing demographics saw enrolments fall, and after considerable debate and some heartache, St Michael's eventually closed.

Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, a weekly housie night drew faithful participants and raised steady funds for the parish. It was the men who ran this event who, in one of the great stories of parish life, contributed to the purchase of a lottery ticket that won the Sydney Opera House Lottery in 1972. Their immediate confirmation that it was the parish's ticket that had won, not their own, says much about the character of this community.

The full story of how the lottery funded our church building is told on Our Church page.

From its earliest days, St Joseph's has been a parish shaped by migration and cultural diversity. The post-war decades brought waves of new Australians from across Europe, and the parish responded by supporting dedicated chaplains for the Polish, Dutch, Croatian and Irish communities. A Polish Mass was celebrated regularly from the very beginning of the parish's life.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Parish Pastoral Council approved a programme to assist in the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees. A number of those families made their homes in the parish and have remained active members of the community for decades since.

The tradition of welcome continues. From October 2016, the Syro Malabar Community from Kerala, India, has shared the parish's facilities, worshipping alongside the English-speaking congregation. The parish today is also home to Iraqi and broader multicultural Catholic communities, as well as the Neocatechumenal Way communities who gather regularly in the parish.

During the time of Fr. John Bartley in the early 1980s, a substantial Parish Centre was built between the church and Boronia Drive, clad in Canberra bluestone to match the church. For more than two decades it was the hub of parish social and community life, the venue for meetings, gatherings, celebrations and the many activities that bind a community together.

The Parish Centre was destroyed in the arson attack of August 2007 that also badly damaged the church. Its loss was deeply felt. After the church was restored and reopened in 2009, a new Parish Centre was eventually established, once again providing a place for the community to gather beyond Sunday Mass.

Lay participation has always been central to life at St Joseph's. In the early years, men served as Acolytes and volunteers maintained the school grounds and parish buildings. The formation of trained Readers in the 1980s and Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist in the 1990s reflected a growing engagement of the laity in the liturgical life of the parish. Family Groups, gatherings of twenty to thirty parishioners that met regularly for prayer, friendship and hospitality, flourished under Fr. William Kennedy and, though their numbers have diminished over the years, a remnant group continues.

Today the parish is supported by a rich range of ministries and groups.
Find out more here: Our Ministries | Our Communities.