POMPALLIER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 20, 24 January 1936, Page 6

POMPALLIER.

I I That great apostle of Christianity in the | South Pacific, Bishop Jean Baptiste Francois j Pompallier, certainly deserves a greater share in the recorded history of i\ T cw Zealand than has so far been devoted to hie life and works. The story of his experiences and achievements lias been told to a certain extent, but it is not in the popular histories, and it is quite true that, as the lie v. Father McKcefry said in his address to the Catholic Teachers' Conference recently, his work and his influence on the beginnings of colonisation have been 111 is understood and neglected. Far more attention has been given to the journeys of the first • Bishop Selwyn than to the travels and labours of the great Catholic pioneer. Both were noble and tireless toilers in their respective spheres, but Pompallier had a more difficult task, inasmuch as he was the founder of his Church in New Zealand, whereas the English Church missionaries had opened their crusade here more than a quarter of a century before their first bishop arrived. Pompallier, moreover, had cruised from island to island in the South Pacific, in his capacity of Vicar Apostolic of Western Oceania, before he set foot in this country in the beginning of 1838. Later he made more long cruises; he voyaged in all kinds of craft, from small, cranky schooners to warships, in dangerous seas all but uncharted. Ilokianga was the scene of the Catholic bishop's first mission settlement. It was at Mangamuka that he landed from the small schooner Baiatea, in which he had come from Tahiti, and his first host in the new land was an Irish timber merchant, Air. Thomas Poynton, afterwards a resident of Talcapuna. He had a hard and trying life of it at first, because instead of receiving funds and assistants from Europe at the end of six months, it was not until he had been at Hokianga seventeen months that they reached him. It was then that he fixed the scat of his bishopric at Kororareka, Bay of Islands. Like Selwyn in the 'forties, Bishop Pompallier voyaged as far south as Otago, visiting the Maoris, and ho stationed priests and catechists in many parts. Ono of his coastwise cruises lasted six months; on a South Sea proselytising voyage ho was away from Kororareka for fourteen months. He had to grapple with all manner of problems ashore and afloat: to be not only a religious teacher but an ambassador to primitive peoples, a diplomat, a linguist, a financier, an architect and builder, and also a good deal of a seaman. He laboured and travelled in his New Zealand and South Pacific dioccse for thirty years, and he died in France in 1870, only 1 two years after he returned from the field. The story of such a life, the career of a wonderfully energetic and zealous apostle, is well worth the writing by some qualified son or daughter of the Church. There is a small pakeha and Maori settlement in the Far North of Auckland named Pamapuria; that is the Maori pronunciation of Pompallier. Another memorial of his life here is that historic house in its pretty garden at Kussell, with "Pompallier" painted on the j gate; it is a reminder to all who see it that ' the substantial old house was the home of the bishop and his priests in Kororareka's adventurous days ninety years ago. ■ - • !—JjC.