St Patrick's Cathedral is the seat of the Archbishop of Melbourne, currently Peter Comensoli, who succeeded Denis Hart on 1 August 2018.

[2] When Melbourne, then called the Port Philip Settlement, and the surrounding area was being settled by European settlers in the 1830s, the area was a part of the Roman Catholic Ecclesiastical Province of Sydney in the Archdiocese of Sydney.

In 1839, John Polding, the Archbishop of Sydney, placed Patrick Bonaventure Geoghegan in charge of the Port Philip Settlement and the first Mass was celebrated in Melbourne on Pentecost Sunday, 15 May 1839.

The Diocese of Melbourne was created in 1848 out of territory of the then Sydney archdiocese, with James Alipius Goold as its first bishop.

Construction of a new church on Eastern Hill in East Melbourne commenced in 1858, to be called St Patrick's Cathedral.

The priesthood was exclusively Irish until the early part of the 20th century, when training of native born priests began.

On 20 February 2012, Pope Benedict XVI elevated him to Archbishop of Perth, Western Australia.

[8] Hart regretted the "slow start" made in the process of resolving complaints and investigating instances of abuse but "st[ood] by what [they] did since 1996 nevertheless".

In May 2020, newly disclosed portions of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse report, which was originally published in redacted form in December 2017, revealed that priests and clergy staff accused of abusing children within the Archdiocese of Melbourne were sometimes "dealt with" by being transferred to other parishes.