ARCTIC MISSION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 235, 4 October 1937, Page 8

ARCTIC MISSION.

WORK WITH ESKIMOS. "MARTYRS OF THE COLD." BISHOP OF NORTH POLE. Mission work in the Arctic Circle— probably the most difficult in the world —was described to-day on the Aorangi by the Rev. Father M. Sweeney, 0.M.1., visitor-general of the Oblate Fathers. Father Sweeney has covered 27,000 miles since he left Rome in April on hia periodical world tour, during which it is his duty to contact the workers of the order (Oblates of Mary Immaculate) in the four corners of the globe.

Having completed, his visitations to India, Ceylon and Australia, Father Sweeney is now on hie way to Canada, whence he hopes to cross into the Arctic Circle, where a band of the fathers is working among the Eskimos from Alaska to Greenland. On his return from there eight years ago he recorded his experience in a book, " 'Midst Snow and Ice."

"In temperatures that drop as low as 75 degrees below zero, our 25 Fathers minister there to the needs of 32,000 members of the Eskimo race," he said. "They follow the movements of the tribes and live in snow houses, living on native foods—for instance, the meat of the seal, the caribou and the walrus. The Order has been working there for the last 25 years, and among the race for the last 70, and an oblate Father, Bishop Tourctille, is the first Bishop of the North Pole. By the Holy Father they have been called the 'Martyrs of the Cold' and the 'Missioneis of the North Pole'

Murders Recalled. "The Eskimo* are an intelligent people penerally. but at times they have proved treacherous. Two of our number. Fathers Le Roux and Rouvierc, were murdered by them about 1913, and the two murderers were captured by the Canadian Mounted Police and taken to Calgary where they were condemned to death. Bishop Braynent, however, obtained a reprieve for them from the Government, and after three years they were completely liberated. They were brought back to their own tribes again, and it was really then that the natives saw that the missionaries were not their enemies, but their friends. Conversions on a large scale began after that."

Aeroplanes were now being used in the work, said Father Sweeney. The priest who was the first to celebrate Mass in the air had founded an international organisation which was called "The Miva," the object of which was to supply means of transport, such as 'planes, trucks and motor boats, to the missionary world. This was Father Schoultej 0.M.T., who had been a pilot, himself in Germany during the Great War.

Violence in Spain. Tn the two of intense cold and intense heat, and in conditions between, the Oblate Fathers worked, said Father Sweeney. At the present lime the Order was ministering to oneseventli nf the jrlobe, its workers numbering 4000. Eleven of the Fathers were shot in Madrid, where two of the Order's educational houses were burned by Communists. From flie furthest North Father Sweeney will pass into the United States and go from there to Ireland and Fnpland. where there are more than 200 in the work. After that he will return to Rome.