Bishop Pompallier was born in Lyons, France, in 1802 and ordained a priest in 1829. In 1836 he was consecrated a bishop in Rome
and appointed Vicar Apostolic of Western Oceania - a vast expanse of
the Pacific ocean, amounting to about one-sixth of the globe.
On January 10, 1838, the bishop and two assistants, a Marist priest
and a Marist brother, sailed up the Hokianga harbour on New Zealand's
west coast. They were welcomed by an Irish-born (but French-educated)
timber merchant, Thomas Poynton, and his Australian-born wife.
In the Poynton's home at Totara Point the bishop celebrated the first Catholic Mass in New Zealand on January 13, 1838.
Bishop Jean Baptiste Francois Pompallier ministered to indigenous
Maori and European settlers from 1838 until 1868. He then returned in
ill health to his native France where he died in 1871.
In 2001, at the request of Maori Catholics, the bishop's remains were
exhumed from his grave at Puteaux, on the outskirts of Paris, and,
following a requiem Mass in Notre Dame Cathedral, returned to New
Zealand.
During a 16-week sacred journey throughout New Zealand in 2002,
crowds gathered to pay their respects to the bishop in each of the six
Catholic dioceses. Then, before a large gathering - including Catholic
bishops from New Zealand, France and the Pacific Islands, and the French
ambassador to New Zealand - the remains were reinterred beneath the
altar of St Mary's Church.
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thanks for the journey thru history! Pompallier seemed to have been way ahead of his time ministering to the Maori. Are the Stations of the Cross made of stone?
ReplyDeleteActually I think they were concrete but I'm not sure. I was hoping that Pauline's blog would tell me. I'll try and find out.
DeleteNow, that's how a church should look! Yes Grams, I noticed the stations too. Are they headstones too?
ReplyDeleteNo, Katherine, they are just stations of the cross. They have their stations services outside. Quite novel: perhaps unique.
DeleteThanks for the very interesting background story. I have to say though, I've always had difficulties understanding the importance of relics, and hence also the act of moving the remains of anybody's bones across the earth after 130 years. I'd have found it so enough to just raise a memorial stating the facts. (But then I'm not Catholic...)
ReplyDeleteI suspect, Monica, it's as much to do with being Maori as being Catholic.
DeleteThat it might be but there have been plenty of saintly relics spread over Europe too. Sometimes not even all of them kept together in one place! ;)
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