ARSON BY MISSIONARY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19099, 21 August 1936, Page 5

ARSON BY MISSIONARY

SENTENCE REDUCED NEW GUINEA PENALTY SYDNEY, Aug. 19. The High Court of Australia, to-day, on an appeal by the New Guinea mission priest, Father Anthony Cranssen, reduced his sentence from five years to six months to date front May 1The majority of the court held that the sentence was out of all proportion to the seriousness of the offence.

It was alleged that Father Cranssen, while in charge of the Guyebi Mission, resented the placing by a Lutheran missioiLOr named Welsch of native Lutheran boys in villages close by, and sent an armed party of his boys to burn down the Lutheran boys’ huts. He pleaded guilty to the charge of arson and was sentenced in Alay in the Supreme Court of New Guinea Inch iof Judge Wanliss.

The accused’s own account of the incident, told in his affidavit, was that he resented the placing of the rival mission boys in tro.se villages. That Welsch, bv leaving them there without a white man in charge, was breaking regulations framed for the protection of the territory. The burning of the huts, he said, was a necessary disciplinary measure, decided on by him only after he had heard of a plot, hatched by the Lutheran boys and other natives, to attack the mission station during church service and to kill all there.