MAORI DIOCESE

Evening Star, Issue 19381, 15 October 1926, Page 13

MAORI DIOCESE

APPOINTMENT OF BISHOP ' DIVIDED VIEWS [PIKK UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION.] AUCKLAND, October 14. The difficulties which confront the Church of England in the proposed provision of a diocese for the Maoris were referred to by Archbishop Averill this morning in the course of his presidential address to the Diocesan Synod. “ Contrary to expectation,” he said, “ when a special session of the General Synod passed a canon to provide for a diocese for the Maoris no fur. progress has as yet taken place in c actual creation of the diocese or c appointment of a bishop. The bishops of the province have twice met the Maori Synod in conference as required by the canon, and twice the conference has proved abortive. At the first conference, held in Wellington immediately after the couclusion of the special session of the General Synod, the Maoris strongly urged that the bishop should be a member of the Maori race. The bishops, w'ith a full knowledge of the proceedings of the conference of the North Island bishops, Maori clergy, aud European superintendents, held in Rotorua in June, 1925, when a plea for the Maori diocese was first mooted by representatives of the Maori clergy without any insistence upon the nationality of the bishop, could not see their way to hand over their sacred responsibility for their Maori people to any of the Maori clergy at the present time. The bishops, too, just fresh from a debate in the General Synod when the statute to provide for the organisation of the church work amongst members of the Maori race, and episcopal supervision thereof was passed, were alive to the fact that many members of Synod supported the bill on the understanding that the first bishop at any rate should bo apakeha. “ If the actiou of the bishops needs any justification I would say_ that the bishops were not in any way influenced by what is called the color question, and would gladly have appointed a Maori to the position if in their judgment a Maori of sufficient standing, erudition, and administrative ability had been available, A second conference was held in Wellington in August last, and though a considerable change had taken place in the attitude of many members of the Maori Synod, yet there still remained a majority of one against appointing a pakeha as the first bishop. It seemed, then, as if the whole movement for the creation of a diocese for the Maoris would fall to the ground, and that the General Synod must be asked to repeal the statute. The Maoris, however, requested that they mighty be allowed the privilege of stating their case to the next General Synod, a privilege which I am sure the General Synod will grant.”