CONSECRATION AT AUCKLAND

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 14637, 5 April 1948, Page 4

CONSECRATION AT AUCKLAND

PREFECT APOSTOLIC OF COOK ISLANDS RECENT VISITOR TO TAURANGA St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Auckland, will be the scene of another ceremony of consecration on Sunday, April 18, when the Eight Rev. Monsignor Lehman, Superior and Prefect Apostolic of the Cook Islands Mission, will bo raised to the episcopate, Monsignor Lehman was a recent visitor to Tauranga, where he stayed at St. Mary’s Catholic Presbytery. The Bishop-elect returned _ to Auckland recently by Pan-American Airways plane, after a visit to Rome and his native land of Holland. The purpose of his visit was to make a report on his Mission both to the Vatican and to his own Superior General in Belgium. Monsignor Lehman received' word in Honolulu by cable from his Excellency the Apostolic Delegate to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, that he had been appointed by his Holiness Pope Pius XII as Vicar Apostolic of the Cook Islands Mission, and Titular Bishop of Sertei, Mauritania. The new Bishop will be consecrated in St.Patrick’s Cathedral on Sunday, April 18, Most Rev. Dr Liston, Bishop of Auckland, being the consecrating prelate, and Most Rev. Dr McKeefry, Coadjutor-Arch-bishop of Wellington, and Most Rev. Dr Lyons, Bishop of Christchurch, co-consecrators. Fifteen islands, • 12 of them inhabited, make up the Cook group, and scattered over them is a population of 14,000. Raratonga, with 5000, and Aitutaki, with 2000, are the biggest centres. Ministering to the needs of the Catholic natives in this area of 100 square miles are seven priests and five nuns, helped by a small band of native catechists. Monsignor Lehman, who is a member of the Missionary Society of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (known also as the Picpus Fathers, of whom Father Damien of Molokai was the- most famous in recent history), has spent thirty-three years in the Cook Islands, and has been Superior of the Mission since 1939.