The Founding of the Roman Catholic Church in Melanesia and Micronesia, 1850-1875

Wiltgen

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9781498275439
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The Founding of the Roman Catholic Church in Melanesia and Micronesia, 1850 to 1875 is the result of Father Ralph Wiltgen's years of archival work in Rome and at the headquarters of religious orders who worked in Micronesia and Melanesia. It follows his first historical book on the subject, The Founding of the Roman Catholic Church in Oceania: 1825 to 1850, but narrows the focus. The first book dealt with the whole of Oceania and emphasized developments in Polynesia. This book concentrates on Melanesia and Micronesia from 1850 to 1875, the period immediately before the work of large numbers of Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, Marists, and Divine Word Missionaries assumed great momentum in the period between 1875 and 1914. Micronesia is a huge area of the world, made up of numerous culturally and politically distinct groups of atolls ranging over about 1,400 miles from the northwest to the southeast. Its peoples speak scores of mutually unintelligible though related languages on such island groups as the Marshalls, the Gilberts, Nauru, and Kiribati. Far more heavily populated is Melanesia, another huge area of the Pacific where as many as one thousand distinct languages are spoken in an arc of islands extending from just below the equator in a boomerang shape from today's Indonesian controlled Papua and independent Papua New Guinea on the island of New Guinea in the northwest all the way along the Solomon Island chain to 25° south latitude to the southeast. In this book, Wiltgen shows himself the undisputed master of the archives of the Propaganda Fide, the Vatican's chief mission agency and the religious orders that provided missionaries, all of which is supplemented by his attention to the lives of key people of the period. He shows the Propaganda now prodding missionary orders to take on the difficult work of evangelizing these areas and on other occasions struggling to keep up with and understand fast-moving events and the colorful characters--both ecclesiastical and among colonial administrators, rogue sea captains, and indigenous leaders. Wiltgen lets the contemporary records speak for themselves, though one can imagine his arched brow and mischievous grin as he selects exactly the right quote to describe now an act of missionary heroism and now an act of self-promotion. It is a masterful book, making available the early history of one of Catholicism's greatest missionary successes, helping the reader understand both the idealism of the vision and the way in which concrete events and people affected the outcome.

1

Supriès, a French Carthusian, Interests Lombardy Clerics in Micronesia

1845–47

In early July 1843 a French Carthusian monk, Father Thaddée Supriès (1800–1888), clashed with Giacomo Filippo Fransoni (1775–1856), an Italian cardinal twenty-five years his senior. The monk was vicar to the prior of the Carthusian monastery attached to the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels in Rome. The cardinal was prefect or director of the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, a branch of the Roman Curia founded in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV to supervise and direct Roman Catholic missionary work around the world.1 They clashed over Northern Oceania, better known as Micronesia, in the cardinal’s office in Palazzo “de Propaganda Fide” near the Spanish Steps in Rome.

More precisely they clashed over the rank that Supriès was to receive on being placed in charge of missionary work in Micronesia. He had suggested to Fransoni on 6 April 1843 that the vast expanse of islands in the Pacific Ocean north of the equator and south of Japan, between Hawaii and the Philippines, should be made an independent mission called Northern Oceania. This was no idle dream of a pious monk. Paul-Laurent-Marcel Supriès was a veteran missionary of the Paris Foreign Mission Seminary, having served for almost ten years in India, Siam (now Thailand), and the Nicobar Islands. When later he became a Carthusian monk at La Grande Chartreuse in France on 29 June 1839, his Christian name was changed to Thaddée. Fransoni seemed ready indeed to give him the rank of prefect apostolic over Micronesia, which meant that he would be in charge of the mission as a priest. But Supriès insisted on being named vicar apostolic with the rank of bishop, since otherwise he would not have enough prestige to attract personnel, he said.

Vital statistics of Father Thaddée Supriès, the Carthusian monk who inspired Milan seminarians with interest in foreign missionary work. He himself had served earlier in the Nicobar Islands as a member of the Paris Foreign Mission Seminary. Source: CART: Catalogue des Religieux, 148.

Some two weeks after his clash with the cardinal, Supriès wrote from his monastery in Rome telling Fransoni that he no longer experienced “some repugnance . . . at being named a prefect apostolic,” because “Divine Providence has given me personnel for the mission of Northern Oceania in an altogether unexpected way.” But by that time Fransoni had a new problem: he had to find quickly an alternative territory for Bishop Jean-Baptiste-François Pompallier (1801–71), vicar apostolic of Western Oceania with headquarters in New Zealand. Because of his French nationality, Pompallier was being threatened with expulsion by the British, who were fast taking over New Zealand.

The Vicariate Apostolic of Micronesia (or Northern Oceania) was created one year later on 16 July 1844, exactly as Supriès had suggested, but Rome did not entrust it to him. It was entrusted instead to a missionary group in France called Marists, officially known as the Society of Mary (S.M.), with headquarters in Lyon. Fransoni instructed the Marists, who supplied all of Pompallier’s staff, to hold the new vicariate in reserve for the bishop in case he and his men should be expelled from New Zealand by the British. As for Supriès, Fransoni showered him with praise for having suggested the Micronesia Vicariate, but gave him no other role than “to recommend this important affair to the Lord.”2

The Order of Carthusians (O. Cart.) transferred Supriès on 10 August 1843 from Rome to the Certosa di Pavia in northern Italy, extolled as the most celebrated religious monument in Lombardy.3 This Carthusian monastery, founded in 1396 by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, is somewhat north of Pavia and about fifteen miles southwest of Milan. Clerics from Milan and Lombardy came to enjoy its beauty and stillness and to spend days of prayer and recollection called retreats. They all met Supriès, who had been put in charge of retreats.

“When I arrived in this part of Italy,” Supriès later wrote to Cardinal Fransoni, “I was really grieved at finding so little interest among the clergy in taking up holy missionary work.” He tried to understand why among so many priests in the province of Lombardy “not one could be found generous enough to abandon his homeland and cross the seas with the aim of bringing the knowledge of the name of Jesus Christ to nations without faith.” He shared this disappointment “with some good priests” who visited him, and he examined the problem deeper with those who arrived “at various times to make here the spiritual retreats of which I am in charge.”4

These explanations of the vital statistics of Father Thaddée Supriès were supplied on 23 July 1987 by Father Luc Fauchon, Archivist of La Grande-Chartreuse Monastery at St. Laurent-Du-Pont in France.

Seminarians studying philosophy and theology in Lombardy also found their way to the monastery, especially during the summer holiday period from June to September. They felt attracted by its prayerful atmosphere. Meeting Supriès was a treasured experience, and they quickly became enamored of this man whose eloquence set their hearts afire with new purpose. He described for them his experiences in the mission field and explained the organization of the Paris Foreign Mission Seminary to which he had once belonged. He also awakened their interest in the Vicariate Apostolic of Micronesia that he had envisioned, but for which he had volunteered in vain. The province of Lombardy ought to have a foreign mission seminary of its own, he told the young men, and its mission field ought to be the Vicariate Apostolic of Micronesia.5

One of the many seminarians inspired by Supriès was Giovanni Battista Mazzucconi (1826–55) from Rancio di Lecco in the Archdiocese of Milan. He was nineteen and had completed his first year of philosophy at the Monza seminary when he accompanied some seminarians to the Carthusian monastery during the summer vacation of 1845. Like others, he began corresponding with Supriès. Those with a budding interest in foreign missionary work found in this monk a wealth of information and inspiration; he was also a champion for their cause. In clerical circles the Certosa di Pavia fast became known as a nucleus of missionary animation. At the core of it all was the director of retreats, Father Supriès.6

Federico Salvioni, a theology student at the Milan major seminary, also visited the Carthusian monastery in the summer of 1845. When Supriès learned that he and a fellow seminarian were going to Switzerland on business, he prevailed upon them to extend their journey to Lyon in France and to spend a few days there at the Marist headquarters. He wanted them to learn more about Micronesia and other Marist missions in Oceania and so “imbibe the true apostolic spirit.” Supriès, then forty-five, wrote a letter of introduction for Salvioni and his companion to fifty-five-year-old Father Jean-Claude Colin (1790–1875), the founder and superior general of the Marists.

By the time Salvioni and his friend were ready to leave for Switzerland and France, another seminarian had joined them. On reaching Lyon they found Colin engrossed in giving his society members their annual retreat, which lasted from 12 to 19 September. Colin therefore delegated the provincial superior of France, thirty-four-year-old Father Pierre-Julien Eymard (1811–68), to be one of their hosts. (This was the same Eymard who would be declared a saint on 9 December 1962 by Pope John XXIII.) On their return to Milan they were “full of admiration for what they had seen and heard” and “even more eager” to take up a missionary vocation. This made Supriès believe that the Lyon visit had produced “excellent results.”7

Salvioni wrote to Colin from the Milan major seminary on 16 January 1846, nine months before his ordination to the subdiaconate. After reminding Colin of his visit the previous September, he explained that a reputable religious journal edited in Milan now wished to publish for the edification “above all of the clergy,” the information that he and his two friends had obtained from the Marists. He asked Colin’s consent to publish this material and requested additional data to complement and correct what had been learned by word of mouth from several Marist priests. Questions “of particular interest to us,” he said, “are these: How did the Society of Mary begin and what is its present status? With what spirit and for what purpose was it founded? What are its principal rules, particularly those for the novitiate? In what pious works is it engaged? Where do foreign missions fit in among these works?” Hopefully Colin would answer these questions, Salvioni said, because such an article published in Italy could be “a seed that would be able to bear fruit in due time.”8

Colin gave great importance to Salvioni’s letter and asked Eymard, his closest collaborator, to answer it. Eymard explained how a handful of seminarians began meeting periodically in 1815. In late 1816 they were allowed to hold their meetings in a hall of the Lyon major seminary. There were “delays, refusals, contradictions and humiliations of every kind” that had to be endured for twenty years before the Society of Mary received papal approbation. When it was formally approved by Pope Gregory XVI on 29 April 1836, the society had only twenty priests, Eymard said. But by 1846, the current year, it already had ten foundations in France and had sent ninety of its priests and brothers to Oceania. Four priests had been made bishops by Rome and were in charge of vicariates in New Zealand, Central Oceania, New Caledonia, and Melanesia-Micronesia.

The letter ended with Eymard admitting that a wish had constantly filled his heart while he was composing the letter. “And now I dare to tell you about it,” he said. The wish was that “you may become the instrument of Providence for transplanting the Society of Mary to your beautiful Italy which is so Catholic and so filled with devotion to the Queen of Heaven.” Eymard said he would pray to the Virgin Mary “so that my wish may be fulfilled.”9

Milan at this time was part of the Lombard-Veneto kingdom ruled by Austria. Since 1818 it had had an Austrian-born archbishop, then seventy-six-year-old Karl Gaetan Cardinal Gaysruck (1769–1846). This cardinal had forbidden the founding of new religious organizations in his archdiocese, a ban that extended to missionary organizations as well. E...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Supriès, a French Carthusian, Interests Lombardy Clerics in Micronesia
• Chapter 2: Pope Pius IX Approves Lombardy’s Seminary for Foreign Missions
• Chapter 3: Melanesia and Micronesia Vicariates Are Reduced to the Status of Missions
• Chapter 4: Fransoni Offers the Melanesia and Micronesia Missions to Lombardy’s Foreign Mission Seminary
• Chapter 5: Pope Pius IX Suggests Training in a Nearby Mission
• Chapter 6: Fransoni Sternly Reprimands Prefect Apostolic Reina
• Chapter 7: French Marists Decide to Remain at Woodlark
• Chapter 8: Rome Grants Numerous Faculties to Melanesia Missionaries
• Chapter 9: Reina Declines Fiji and Chooses Melanesia and Micronesia
• Chapter 10: Is Reina or Frémont the Prefect Apostolic of Melanesia?
• Chapter 11: Sickness, Language Study, and Customs at Rooke and Woodlark
• Chapter 12: Mazzucconi Urges Reina and Marinoni to Abandon Rooke and Woodlark
• Chapter 13: Reina Abandons Rooke and Woodlark and Awaits New Orders in Sydney
• Chapter 14: Gazelle Massacre at Woodlark
• Chapter 15: Cuarterón, a Spanish Sea Captain, Offers to Reestablish Reina in Melanesia
• Chapter 16: Polding, Pompallier, and Bataillon Compete for the Milan Missionaries
• Chapter 17: Reina and Cuarterón Meet in Manila to Discuss Plans
• Chapter 18: Reina Leaves Labuan for Dorei Bay in New Guinea
• Chapter 19: Reina Reaches Singapore en route to Dorei Bay
• Chapter 20: Why Barnabò Sends Reina to Hong Kong
• Chapter 21: Barnabò Suppresses the Melanesia-Micronesia Mission
• Chapter 22: Decline of Cuarterón and His Labuan Mission
• Chapter 23: Bataillon Tells Barnabò: Send Elloy to Micronesia
• Chapter 24: Picpus Missionaries Refuse Melanesia and Micronesia
• Chapter 25: Marists Refuse Micronesia for the Third Time
• Chapter 26: Raimondi Becomes Vicar Apostolic of Hong Kong
• Chapter 27: Mill Hill Will Attempt to Reach New Guinea via Labuan