Bishop With 156 'Wives 1 Retires
DARWIN (By Airmail).—The Rev. Dr Gsell—known as "the bishop with 150 wives”—recently retired, at the age of 77, after 43 years as Roman Catholic Bishop of Darwin. Dr Gsell said that when he first came to Darwin in 1906 he-found the natives’ closed social customs so deeply-rooted that he could convert few.
One day a mission-trained aboriginal girl of 10, who had been promised in marriage to an old man of her tribe, rebelled and fled to the mission for protection. Dr Gsell said he placated the angry tribesmen by offering to buy the child from the man to whom she had been promised. She was the first of about 150 girls whom he ‘‘bought” to save them from marriages they did not want.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NA19491201.2.29
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Northern Advocate, 1 December 1949, Page 4
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130Bishop With 156 'Wives1 Retires Northern Advocate, 1 December 1949, Page 4
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