Why is bishop pompallier famous

Bishop Pompallier travelled extensively by schooner around both North and South Islands, setting up mission stations, sixteen in all, by This was made possible by the arrival of more missionaries — priests, sisters and seminarians — from Europe and by considerable financial aid from France.

At Waitangi in when the Treaty was being debated, he made an important contribution, obtaining from the future Governor Hobson a guarantee of religious freedom for all beliefs in New Zealand; there was to be no established church, as there was in England.

For most New Zealanders, he is an unknown. History remembers him as a failed idealist. A devout man but a poor administrator, defeated by the size of the task given him.

The question I've come north to ask is: why have the Catholics and northern Maori gone to so much trouble to exhume the bishop's bones from his French grave and bring them halfway round the world?

The past, it is said, is a foreign country. Perhaps Pompallier should have been allowed to remain there. Why bother his rest if his adopted country isn't bothered about him? In the tavern I order a beer from the young Maori barman.

Town's busy this weekend, I say. He just shrugs and, barely audible above the music, mumbles something about a fishing contest. No mention of bones. A three-piece band - two guitars and a tambourine - is playing old rock songs like Satisfaction and I'm a Believer. In fact, the true believers don't arrive until the morning or are sound asleep dreaming of big fish.

He's curious at the fuss being made about Pompallier's homecoming and the four-month hikoi that has brought his remains up the country from Dunedin, stopping at marae, churches and schools along the way. He's not a figure of the stature of [Anglican bishop George] Selwyn, even though you could raise a few questions about Selwyn too. When British Protestants were annexing the country, he was a French Catholic with less money and fewer missionaries than his spiritual rivals.

His claims to fame are that he successfully demanded Hobson include a clause in the Treaty of Waitangi guaranteeing religious tolerance and that he forged a close, respectful bond with Maori. Freedom of thought and the separation of church and state are no small things, and his presence ensured those. His impact, Lineham concludes, was broad but shallow. A PR jaunt for the church, then?

An attempt at a resurrection of his reputation via the return of his remains? Maybe a revival of the medieval veneration of relics or something just a bit creepy?

Such are my thoughts on Saturday morning as I stand on the roadside, waiting for the car ferry to cross from Opua to the Russell landing. The bishop's remains will be on board. There are only about 12 of us gathered, plus a film crew from France. They're making a documentary on the bishop's return, from his exhumation in Puteaux and farewell from Notre Dame to his interment at Motuti on the Hokianga.

As the ferry pulls out from Opua, escorted by four waka with paddlers chanting, a light veil of rain begins to fall. The waiting group grabs umbrellas and tries to interpret the omen. A woman from Ponsonby notes that at least two of the waka are fibreglass. The cars carrying the bishop's casket and his support crew drive off the ferry and up the road to Russell and the waiting marquee. As they round the corner and disappear, the rain stops.

Ignatius of Loyola, the Jesuits were key players in the Catholic Counter-Reformation and later served as leaders in the modernization of the church. The first Catholic missionaries arrived in New Zealand in They began their work in Northland, and were led by Bishop Jean-Baptiste Francois Pompallier , a handsome and charismatic year-old. Why is bishop pompallier famous?

Asked by: Ashleigh Grady. Pompallier died at Puteaux, near Paris, on 21 December When did Bishop Pompallier born? Who was Bishop Pompallier assisted by? Did James Busby signed the Treaty of Waitangi? When was the Pompallier House built? The schooner went as far as Otago Harbour, and returning anchored at Moeraki, and spent several days with the people there. Pompallier by this time was able to speak Maori freely.

Port Nicholson was the next place of call; there he spoke in English and Maori, and was well received by the citizens of infant Wellington. Fitzgerald, the Bishop set sail for Akaroa again, and visited the principal Maori villages in the bays of Banks Peninsula. Resting awhile in pleasant Akaroa, he employed himself in writing a Maori catechism for the use of the missionaries and natives. Up anchor once more, and cruising northward to headquarters at the Bay of Islands, the Bishop visited some of the people in the East Cape district.

It was March of before he finally stepped ashore at Kororareka after his voyagings; he had been away six months. Several more assistants arrived from France, and Pompallier was able presently to station priests and catechists at various large settlements of the tribes along the coast. This was Bishop Pompallier's residence at the time of Hone Heke's war, in , and it was one of the few buildings that the Maoris spared when they burned Koro areka town. The house is now over ninety years old.

Father Chanel, one of the priests the Bishop had stationed on Futuan Island, in the tropic seas, had been killed by order of the native king of the island; the mission on Wallis Island was also in peril. The French captain, Bouset, acted with mingled firmness and discretion at Futuna.

He impressed on the natives the need for cultivating the friendship of the white people. The Bishop remained in the islands until he had established satisfactory relations, and when he departed again for New Zealand, after about five months, the whole of the inhabitants of Futuna and Wallis were Catholics, at any rate theoretically. When he anchored again in Kororareka Bay, in August, , he had completed an anxious but successful voyage of fourteen months.

That summary of the pioneer Bishop's voyaging by sea and land over a period of less than four years, conveys some idea of the enormous burden of work which devolved upon him as a missionary leader in primitive lands. But it is necessary, also, in order to realise adequately the nature of his task, to remember that he had to grapple with a vast variety of problems ashore and afloat; to be not only a religious teacher but an ambassador to savage peoples, a diplomat, a linguist, a financier, an architect and builder, and a good deal also of a seaman.

The discomforts were as great as the perils, the long voyages in small schooners and the anxieties of navigation in uncharted or all but uncharted seas and among labyrinths of coral reefs. No missionary in the South Seas a century ago had a soft or easy life. Letters on record from Bishop Pompallier to Hone Heke and others, show that he made efforts to prevent the conflict which he saw looming in the North of New Zealand.

He suggested that Heke should write to the Colonial Government and to the Queen of England with regard to his claims concerning lands and authority. The words and writing of a man of honour are better than the bloody sword. Wilson in his history of the Catholic Church in New Zealand. But war came, and Kororareka went up in flames—all except the English and Catholic Church establishments. The Bishop's house was one of the few buildings spared by the triumphant Ngapuhi when the Pakeha people evacuated the town.

The Bishop remained, with two members of the mission and some faithful Maoris. The ship sailed from Akaroa on April 16, , and arrived at Toulon in August. He returned to New Zealand in , landing at Auckland on the 8th of April. He brought with him a number of Irish and French priests and the first contingent of the Sisters of Mercy, who rendered such noble service in New Zealand in caring for the orphans and the sick and helpless and distressed.