First bishop interred in new Hobart crypt

Tasmania's first Catholic bishop didn't live to see the Hobart cathedral he commissioned completed but more than 150 years after his death, he will be buried in its crypt.

Bishop Robert William Willson served the southern capital for 21 years until his death in 1865 during a visit home to England.

Originally buried at St Barnabas' Cathedral in Nottingham, intense lobbying by Australian church leaders led to his exhumation in February and on Friday, his remains were interred in Hobart.

"He hoped to return back here to retire, so in one sense we are completing his wish that he would retire here and so be buried in Tasmania," Hobart Archbishop Julian Porteous told reporters.

Among his significant contributions as bishop, during a period which included a change in name from Van Diemen's Land to Tasmania, Willson commissioned the construction of Hobart's St Mary's Cathedral.

"It is also tradition in the church that bishops are buried in their cathedral, it goes back a long time ... that tradition continues here," Archbishop Porteous added.

A new crypt, the cathedral's first, will house the remains of Bishop Willson, who the church remembers as a devoted, caring man.

"He had great passion and concern for those who were needy," the archbishop said.

"We have in him a great humanitarian, a man who had remarkable compassion particularly for convicts and those who were in very desperate personal situations."

Bishop Willson lobbied Britain's House of Lords to ease the sometimes brutal treatment of convicts and is remembered as being instrumental in the closure of Norfolk Island as a convict settlement after citing its squalid conditions.

"His flock (in Tasmania) was extremely poor, the lowest level of society, and I think that's why he had a particular concern for their wellbeing," Archbishop Porteous said.

Friday's interment coincided with the 173rd anniversary of Bishop Willson's initial arrival in Tasmania.