Archbishop Charles Owen Leaver Riley
- Position
- Bishop
- Committee group
- Education, ecclesiastical and social
- Year of death
- 1929
- Plaque number
- FA11
- Dedicated by
- Kings Park Board on 29 September 1929
- More information
Biography abstract:
Charles Owen Leaver Riley (26/5/1854 - 23/6/1929) was born in Birmingham, England and his education included BA Cambridge 1878, MA 1881 and Honorary degree DD in 1894.
He was ordained deacon 1878 and priest 1879. By accounts, he was 'beloved by all classes', in parishes where he worked, not least the factory workers and mill hands.
He was made Bishop of Perth in 1894, which was then the largest Anglican diocese in the world with 1,000,000 square miles and a population of 100,000.
He arrived in Western Australia as a young and vigorous man and soon realised it was a place with little money and few clergy.
After much travel, he recognised the need to divide the diocese and the first division was the creation of the Bunbury diocese.
In 1913, he was senior Chaplain of the Commonwealth Military Forces of WA and later Chaplain General.
He was made Archbishop in 1914 and served at the front from July 1916 - February 1917.
He was not known as a great preacher nor a great scholar but his common sense, balanced judgement and overflowing humanity more than made up for that.
When he died, a thousand soldiers marched at his funeral. The feeling at the time was that WA had lost a great personality.
Impassioned in his pleas for funds for the Kings Park war memorial, he did get to see the construction started before he died in July 1929.
His Grace Archbishop Riley was a member of the Western Australian Centenary Committee (Education, Ecclesiastical and Social group) and a tree was planted by his relatives in his honour along Fraser Avenue, Kings Park.