The Visit of the Bishop of Tonga

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LI, Issue 36, 3 September 1924, Page 39

The Visit of the Bishop of Tonga

-> 7-Rtt tp. r> V / r \±*j ■*-»• ij 'i It is curious how little we in New Zealand know about the Islands that outly us. This fact was brought home to one New Zealander at least by the visit of the Bishop of Tonga. A few months ago the Bishop of Samoa came to attend the Jubilee celebrations but in that great procession of stately names and figures the full significance of each was lost. We were like children lost in gazing and the time was too short to obtain individual impressions. But since I have listened to the quiet story of the Bishop of Tonga I am slowly beginning to wonder if our ignorance is not sin. We, with the pioneering days grown far from us, find it hard to realise that such works of charity and love as happen in the Marist Missions in the Pacific and in our own Maori Missions are things of to-day at all. One can read the lives of the Saints with the comfortable reflection that such sacrifices are not possible in our times, as things have changed. But the things of which his Lordship speaks are happening in our day and time.

I wish to tell them so simply that Anne may tell her friends of the Children’s Circle to read them, for children are best.able to understand such faith and such love. They, too, have the faith that lifts mountains.

Let them know then that in these outlying Islands the Marist Missioners toil and pray among the dark races of the Pacific. They have schools and they have a seminary where the natives are trained in the Latin and are ordained priests. Sometimes a priest lives alone on an island, sometimes he has a native priest to assist him. Cut off from his kind, from his race, from his kindred and country, he endures that solitude for. the love of God and of his dusky neighbors. To support him the Propaganda gives him £3O a. year on which to live. It is in many cases insufficient for his wants and he goes hungry. This, remember, is just outside our doors.

Tonga is the Tand of perpetual summer. There are no seasons there. No Spring comes in with buds and sap to stir the heart. A heavy brooding heat lies changeless on the land, a humid heat that brings a torpor on the stranger.

Tonga has only a few lepers but the other dioceses have more and two islands are set apart for the care of them. They are tenderly nursed by the devoted daughters of the Third Order of Mary, of which the Very Rev.. Dean Regnault is the chaplain in' this country. The sacrifices made can scarcely be realised. One old French priest, bowed under many years of labor, was offered a rest. “Where would you wish to go?” asked his superior. He thought awhilethen shyly—“ Fr....;. is alone with his lepers. Let me go and keep him company for awhile. I may, not be much use, but I could dig in his garden, and it might please him to have me there!” The Superior was troubled —“At least go to ......Island and have a reunion with your friends whom you have not seen for years before you go to him!” “A full gift is better than .a halfgift,” said the old priest,- “If you permit I shall go to him at once!” That is a. typical example of the French faith. The hard thing is the best because it is the hard thing. : ;

So he went among the , lepers. Very easy to write down, but let one remember' what are the lepers, those pitiful creatures whom the hand of the Lord hath touched and who in the old lands cowered by the pools ringing their mournful bells and crying 'out ' “Unclean!” Alas, that Stevenson is dead! There are new Damians and more than one Molokai.

In Tonga the congregation of natives are wonderfully faithful and the Island of Wallis is/ all Catholic. They stream into church, the Tongans, and their singing is a wonder to hear for they sing the services themselves in four parts, an achievement we may envy. Their singing differs from our singing as the briar rose differs from the rose. There is in it a wild note, a wailing note, that strange echo that springs from children and from natives of all sea swept islands, the sum of . all the sorrows of the world.' The attendances are always large morning and evening. It is their delight to, enterinto church and sing their simple lilts of praise, in the Alow .hot- nights- while the stars seem near, enough to seiitjr oolllß

on the sand. A strange life, but how peaceful after the troubled roar of cities!

His Lordship told a story of his visit to one of the islands in his Vicariate- As he was about to say Mass he was informed that the volcano on the island was in eruption. The priest in charge i mentioned unemotionally that an eruption occurred usually every twenty-five years so that this was not an unexpected visitant. Mass went on as if no mountain were in torment. Afterwards the Bishop took his. bearings as regards the volcano. The sight that met his gaze was appalling—earth and sky met in fire and .tumult, and red rain. And yet in that island, in that nest of craters, a Marist Missioner lives on. Verily he is faithful to the Marist motto —Iqnotus et quasi occultus (Unknown and as if hidden).

His Lordship the Bishop of Tonga has had in his Vicariate to learn three tongues. All show traces of resemblance to the —perhaps the magic and mysterious Hawaiki was their common homeland. Wallis Island is a great centre of Catholicity and Futuna is the island where fell in blood, that blessed martyr, Peter Chanel. New Zealanders should remember that Blessed Peter Chanel is our nearest Saint and Intercessor.

New Zealand has, too, another bond with the Marist Missions in the South Seas. It was for the conversion of the Western Pacific tliat the Marist Society was formed. With characteristic humility the first.Marists chose a secular to guide them, not desiring" for themselves the honor of a bishopric. Bishop Pompallier on his way to New Zealand left Father Bataillon at Wallis Island', and was much troubled in spirit to leave him in that wild and lonely place. He left the seed of a mighty harvest. In Futuna Peter Chanel was not four days dead when a wave of remorse swept the island and the natives crept to the strange God's knees for pardon. All these things Bishop Blanc told simply as if they were not miracles but natural things. He is proud of Tonga with its spreading avavas, its iron woods, and palms, and of Neiafu with its orange groves and kopa, with its fairy cave, The Swallows. He is litterateur, scholar, theologian, yet he has chosen this life of all others, this life of poverty and toil. The unending summers, the coarse native foods have left their mark upon him, but there is no rust-on the blade of his spirit. His journey here proves it. It was to go to Niue that he came here for that was his only route—three thousand miles to reach one of the islands of his own vicariate which two of his predecessors had been unable to enter. It came to him suddenly that Niue was now under New Zealand and that he might succeed where they had failed. A certain sectarian society is supreme in the Island and has opposed Catholic entry. His Lordship Bishop Blanc then came to Auckland and thence set sail for Niue. His dignity did not save him from hostile, demonstrations. They shouted at him angrily, "Pope! Pope! cry sprung from that hate that is in very truth both deaf, and blind. The doctor of the Island, an old St. Pat's boy, hailed his advent with delight, and: the courtesy of the non-Catholic Commissioner helped to salve the sore "of such : a'reception. Their shouts he bore in silence though his name, is old. in his country's wars, and words are swift as swords in Provence. "Almost I answered!" he said, "but I thought of the future!" And the result is that a priest is to be sent to Niue. And now the question arises, is France to do all? Surely we in New Zealand who help so many missions can do something to helpjfjKis one so near our door—" Unknown and as if hidden" -j$ fnie\and very fine, but it is not good to think that here' in the Pacific, Marist Missioners, brethren of the Marists who did such , pioneering work in this country, brethren of own , noble Maori Missioners, should know hunger arid death and..a, shortage of helpers. We are hearer than France—can nothing be done?. It is no idle story. One member of the Mission at least gives up his yearly dole to a priest on a poorer islandj. and lives himself on offerings for Masses" May' this visit of the Bishop of Tonga see the beginning of a closer union and co-operation between New Zealand and the far-flung lesser islands of the Southern Seas! « " -U '