ROMAN CATHOLIC CENTENARY

Southland Times, Issue 23406, 13 January 1938, Page 6

ROMAN CATHOLIC CENTENARY

Foundation In New Zealand

THE FIRST MASS 100 YEARS AGO TODAY CELEBRATIONS TO BEGIN IN FEBRUARY On Wednesday, January 10, 1838, Jean Baptiste Francois Pompallier, vicar apostolic of Western Oceania landed in New Zealand, and on January 13, 1838, in the rough plank cottage of an Irish store keeper he said Mass, the first Mass to be celebrated in the Dominion. The bishop’s arrival marked the foundation of the Catholic Church in New Zealand, and today, the one hundredth anniversary of the first Mass, is therefore, the actual centennial of the Catholic Church in this country. The centenary celebrations are, however, to be, held during the last days of February and the first days of March. This fact has no historical significance. Because of the schools being closed and the fact that many people would be on holiday, it would not have been possible to observe the centenary on a national scale in January.

Bishop Pompallier was a native of Lyons, France, where he was born in 1801. After serving as. priest and chaplain with a zeal which attracted the notice of his superiors, in 1836 he was appointed first vicar apostolic of Western Oceania. “One may question” runs a passage in the recent Catholic Centenary Souvenir, “whether the young candidate and his sponsor made any accurate conjecture about the extent of that vast vicariate. The Fijian, Tongan and Samoan Groups, the New Caledonians, the New Hebrides, and our own New Zealand lay within the wide boundaries marked out by Rome.” However that may be, on Christmas Eve, 1836, with a retinue of four priests and three catechists the bishop set out from Havre bound for his vicariate by way of South America.

HAZARDOUS JOURNEY

The voyage was to prove exceptionally long even by the standards of that era of slow and uncertain transport. Moreover, it was to be marked by trials and dangers which might have deterred a less courageous or less single-minded apostle. In leaving Havre the keel of the vessel was damaged and she was forced to pu in for repairs at Teneriffe. Between Teneriffe and Valparaiso, because of head winds and heavy seas, water ran short and all on board were rationed. More calamitous than this, just before the equator was crossed, one of the four priests sickened and died. At Valparaiso the expedition had to delay two months before a passage could be secured to Tahiti. At Tahiti, through the good offices of the American consul, the bishop chartered the schooner Raiatea for the remainder of the voyage. From Tahiti he sailed to Vavau, thence to Wallis island and Futuna, where the first two missions were established, and finally, by way of Rotuma and Sydney, to New Zealand.

At Totara Point, Hokianga, the bishop and his two remaining assistants, 'Father Servant and Brother Michael Columban, were welcomed by Thomas Poynton, an Irish timber merchant and store keeper who had been living in New Zealand for 10 years. Poynton immediately gave up the best of his wooden houses to the bishop and in a home of four rooms on January 13, 1838, Mass was celebrated for the first time in New Zealand.

For some months the members of the mission remained at Totara Point, applying themselves to the study of English and Maori a necessary prelude to their missionary activities, as the bishop clearly realized. In June 1838, the mission was transferred to Papakauwau in the centre of Hokianga and in the following year to the Bay of Islands. Pompallier House remained for many years the headquarters of the vicariate and after surviving the sack of Kororareka during Hone Heke’s war, it stands today as a monument to the bishop’s enterprise and, incidentally, as singular evidence of his admirable taste in architecture.

The Marist Order, or Society of Mary, which was founded early in the last century by the Very Rev. Father Colin, was the first to announce the Catholic faith to the Maoris, and among the first of its missionaries to leave France were those bound for New Zealand. Although none fell to the ferocity of the natives of the Dominion, many of whom were then cannibals, one, Dr Epalle, at first a missionary in New Zealand and later vicar apostolic of Melanesia and Micronesia was killed by tribesmen on the island of Isabella.

SUPERSTITIOUS NATIVES The material on which these pioneers had to work in the natives of New Zealand is shown in a letter written by the Rev. Father Servant, the first missionary priest, in a letter written in December 1841, to Father Colin. “The New Zealanders,” he wrote, “have no temples, altars or idols. They imagine, however, invisible and powerful beings to be present in all places, and to exercise a certain influence on their bodies and on their souls, and on their public and private actions. They believe that these beings are often annoyed. A clap of thunder, a tempest, a disastrous accident, a sudden death, an unexpected loss and a barren year are to them positive proofs of the anger of some god who punishes the violation of a ‘tapu,’ the omission of some prayer, or Maori superstition. If they are attacked by consumption, of which they nearly always die, it is a cannibal and revengeful god which enters into their body and gradually eats it away.” The work of the missionaries, however, difficult though it was, met with great success among the natives. Today its results are everywhere to be seen.

The Catholic cathedrals, churches, convents and schools which now grace New Zealand are the result of the labours and hardships of the early Catholic missionaries. How great were those labours and hardships few today can realize. Not a great number of years ago all that the Catholics of the Dominion could boast of in the way of churches were a few little wooden buildings of no architectural pretensions whatever. A solitary priest in an isolated settlement, sometimes surrounded by hostile natives, had a whole province for his missionary district, and his flock consisted of a score or two of Europeans living at great distances from one another and in places difficult of access. In addition to the risks the priest ran in passing through the territory of unfriendly, and often fanatical, natives, he met many dangers. His way very often

lay through trackless bush and across dangerous rivers. DIFFICULTIES OF PRIEST Father Chataigner, the first pastor of Christchurch, was on one occasion called to the bedside of a dying man who lived close to Moeraki, near Palmerston South. He went in a little sailing craft from Lyttelton to Port Chalmers. Finding himself further south than was necessary, he had to go north for a distance of about 50 miles to reach his destination, where he arrived just a week after leaving Christchurch. He made his return journey overland, and more than once came very near to losing his life while crossing Canterbury rivers that are now spanned by substantial bridges. Journeys such as these were common in the lives of the early missionaries. The work of the pioneers of the Catholic Church in New Zealand and its great progress over 100 years will be honoured when the centenary celebrations take place at Auckland and Hokianga in February and March.