PAPUAN MASTERPIECE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 April 1940, Page 7

PAPUAN MASTERPIECE

STATUE FOR NEW CATHEDRAL. A proud man was sitting in a handsome new building in Papua the other day. glancing slyly at a little wooden figure which had become part of his life. He was a teacher, and around him were many of his pupils, proud of their master and happy themselves because they too had helped to create the shrine in which his little masterpiece stood. It was consecration day. for Papua has copied Liverpool and given itself a new cathedral. The little wooden figure, the Papuan artist’s masterpiece, is a statue of Francis of Assisi, carved for this new cathedral of St Peter and St Paul, which has just been consecrated at Dogura. on Goodenough Bay. in the east o! Papua. The statue and the cathedral have both been fashioned so that they will endure for centuries, and it may be that St Francis will be sheltered by more than one new roof as the ages pass. For he has been carved from a block of the korelan tree, one of the hardest woods existing; and the surprising thing is that the only tools used by the native craftsman was a six-inch nail which he had flattened and sharpened. With one hand the saint presses a bird against his heart, while at his feet and' on his shoulder stand other birds representing the life of the great island’s' forests. The cathedral is 180 feet long, with twin towers flanking it. Altogether it weighs 20,000 tons, all of which were hauled by truck or carried on the backs of the native Christians to the lops of the 220-foot hill from which the building looks out over the bay. Practically all the plumbing, engineering, and building tasks have been done by native worshippers and so the actual cost has only been £4OOO. No appeal for funds was made outside the island, the natives giving generously from their scanty incomes; the average wage of a Papuan is ten shillings a month. One boy insisted on giving three pounds, half his year’s income. to the cathedral. The mountain folk bring down gum from their trees to be burned as incense, and coconut oil for the lamps in the sanctuary. Those who worship in this far-off-cathedral are puzzled, writes their priest, at what is now happening in Europe. They cannot understand why the wise people on the other side of the world, with all that they have in wealth, beauty, music, art. and learning, simply smash it all to pieces.