Eugene Stockton

In 2008 Stockton established the Blue Mountain Educational and Research Trust to promote local Blue Mountains research and writing, especially in Aboriginal, religious and spiritual studies.

On returning to Sydney, Stockton worked as a chaplain to Sydney University and assisted at various parishes in Sydney including Parramatta, Narabeen, DeeWhy, Mt Druitt, Penrith, Riverstone, Springwood and Lawson. He also worked in far western NSW at Bourke. In 1986 he was involved with founding the Aboriginal Catholic Ministry in Parramatta. Cardinal Gilroy appointed Fr Eugene Stockton as the first Chaplain to Aboriginal Catholics in Sydney, and for this ministry he then adopted a model where the community ran the ministry. Stockton said “It's important to note that the idea of the Aboriginal Catholic Ministry was to get away from the mission idea and for Aboriginal people to run the centres themselves with help from outsiders like myself” further he said “ All over Australia, Aboriginal Catholics have been developing modes of worship and spirituality that are special to them”.

Stockton was living at the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem when the Six Day War broke out in 1967. He was evacuated to Cyprus and later returned to relieve the Director of the British School of Archaeology and work on a thesis based on Arabian Cult Stones. During this time he befriended the famed scholar Roland de Vaux at the Ecole Biblique by helping with relief supplies from the British Consulate which was within the British School of Archaeology. Roland de Vaux influenced and guided Stockton with his thesis.

Eugene Stockton grew up at Lawson in the Blue Mountains where an interest in the natural environment was nurtured. His mother Elsie, converted to the Catholic faith while working with religious sisters in the laundry of St Columba’s Seminary, Springwood. His father died tragically a few months after his birth. At only six years old the young Eugene Stockton announced that he was going to become a priest. He was accepted into the seminary when he was 13. After years of study at St Columba's Seminary, Springwood NSW and St Patrick's Seminary, Manly he was ordained a priest at St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney in 1958 aged 22.  He continued studies and was the first to gain a doctorate in Theology from the Catholic Institute of Sydney.

Fr Eugene Stockton (born 1934) is a retired Catholic priest and archaeologist in the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales, Australia.