GOODWILL TOUR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27166, 23 August 1949, Page 4

GOODWILL TOUR

MELANESIAN MISSION’ SHIP CENTENARY CELEBRATION PA WELLINGTON. Aug. 22. The Melanesian Mission’s ship, Southern Cross, seventh of that name to serve the mission during the past century, is expected at Auckland at the end of this week. She will then undertake a goodwill tour of New Zealand in celebration of the mission s centenary. „ , The ship will bring to New Zealand the eighth Bishop of Melanesia, the Rf Rev. S. G. Caulton, and some of his staff, including Archdeacon H. V. C. Reynolds, and four or five Melanesian priests. The ship will leave Auckland to return to Melanesia about November 20 The Melanesian Mission was founded in 1849, after a survey of the islands by Bishop Selwyn, and in 1861 John Coleridge Patteson was consecrated the first Bishop of Melanesia. He suffered martyrdom 10 years later on the little island of Nukapu. in the Reef islands A part of the tragedy of his martyrdom was that he was killed by natives who mistook him for one of the kidnapping traders to whose operations the islands owed much of the decay of their life. The mission authorities hope that the anniversary of Bishop Patteson’s martyrdom or the Sunday nearest to it, will be widely observed throughout the parishes in the province.