So in Australia's Catholic Church was based, until fairly late in the 20th century, upon working-class Irish communities. Patrick Cardinal Moran (1830–1911), the Archbishop of Sydney 1884–1911, believed that Catholicism would flourish with the emergence of the new nation through Federation in 1901, provided that his people rejected "contamination" from foreign influences, such as anarchism, socialism, modernism and secularism. Moran distinguished between European socialism as an atheistic movement and those Australians calling themselves "socialists;" he approved the objectives of the latter while feeling that the European model was not a real danger in Australia. Moran's outlook reflected his whole-hearted acceptance of Australian democracy and his belief in the country as different and freer than the old societies from which its people had come. Moran thus welcomed the Labor Party, and the Church stood with it in opposing conscription in the referendums of 1916 and 1917. The hierarchy had close ties to Rome, which encouraged the bishops to support the British Empire and emphasise Marian piety.