100 YEARS AGO

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIV, Issue 20931, 10 January 1938, Page 12

100 YEARS AGO

ARRIVAL OF BISHOP POMPALLIER A NOTABLE CENTENNIAL It is now exactly a century since Jean Baptiste Francos Pompallier, Vicar Apostolic of Western Oceania, first landed in New Zealand. In the Bishop’s “Early History of the Catholic Church in Oceania,” published in 1888, the incident is simply narrated in a style characteristic of the man. "On Wednesday, the 10th of January, 1838," he wrote, “we arrived at the entrance to the Hokianga River, which is on the north-west coast of the North Island of New Zealand, after a pleasant pasasge of twelve days.” This was the final episode in a long and eventful voyage during which the Bishop had sailed on three oceans and touched ports as far-flung as Tenerlife, Valparaiso and Tahiti. It was, moreover, the prelude to a life of hardship and danger all the more remarkable when contrasted with the quiet tenor of the Bishop’s early years. The Voyage to New Zealand 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 regarding 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. 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 les; single-minded apostle. In leaving Havre the keel of the vessel was damaged and she was forced to put in for repairs at Teneriffe. Between Tener- ( iffe and Valparaiso, owing to 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 this island, 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 Wahis Island and Futuna, where the first two missions were established, and finally, by way of Rotuma and Sydney, to New Zealand. Thus Hokianga was reached more than 13 months after the departure, from France. At Totara Point. Hokianga, the Bishop and his two remaining assistants, Father Servant and Brother Michael Columban, were welcomed by

Thomas Poynton, an Irish timbermerchant and storekeeper 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 this rough-hewn 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 realised. 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 sacks of Kororareka during Heke’s war, it stands to-day as a monument to the Bishop’s enterprise and, incidentally, as singular evidence of his admirable taste in architecture. The Bishop and Waitangi The Bishop’s arival, marking as it does the foundation of the Catholic Church in New Zealand, will appropriately form the occasion of celebrations at Auckland and Hokianga in February and March of this year. In view of the near approach of 1940 and our National Centennial it is timely to recall also the part he played in the drama of Waitangi.

Somewhat to the surprise of the gathering, as |he Bishop narrates, he attended the great meeting of chiefs at which the principles of the Treaty were explained. During the speech making he remained silent, deeming that political matters lay outside his province. To continue in his own words—“ Before the last meeting broke up and it became a question of signing the treaty. I broke my silence. I addressed Captain Hobson, begging him to make known to all the people the principles of European civilisation which obtain in Great Britain, and which would guarantee free and equal protection to the Catholics as to every other religion in New Zealand. My demand was immediately acceded to by Captain Hobson, who made a formal notification of it to all the assembled people.”

Thus was the principle of religious toleration given official recognition on that historic occasion. It was an action typical of the man who, to use th’ words of a recent writer, was “patterned as to zeal, courage and sanctity to the type of Augustine, Patrick and Francis Xavier.”