The Church in New Zealand

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 5, 4 February 1925, Page 19

The Church in New Zealand

THE CHURCH IX TARANAKI: A SKETCH PREPARED FOR. THE JUBILEE OF THE PARISH OF HAW ERA.

The province of Taranaki was singularly fortunate in the priests and people who laid therein the foundations of the Faith. The priests were sons of that “Gentle France” which had for centuries been carrying on the Divine Apostolate among the Native races of the world, even among the most barbarous peoples. The priests who, went out from France gathered in harvests of souls, so rich in every generation that they might well claim for their race the title adopted for his History of the First Crusade by their illustrious countryman, Guibert de Nogent, in the twelfth century.— Gesta Dei per Francos.

the bushthat is to say, to follow the Maoris into the trackless mountains that, covered with enormous forests, constituted the interior of the North Island and surrounded Alt .Egmont. . . Sir Trevor Chute, however, saw the absolute necessity of carrying the war into the Natives’ own country and compelling them to sue for peace. “He had, therefore, determined to force his way due North through the bush to Taranaki and show the Han Plans that the difficulties of their natural fortifications were not insurmountable. By this march ho would pass to the East of Mt. Egmout, and penetrate a country that had never previously, except on one occasion, by Father Pezant, been crossed by a European. On another page he goes on to say: ‘ Every yard of the journey ran through dense bush, and leather Pezant had, with the assistance of Maori guides, walked the distance in two days. . , The Natives themselves rarely used the route. Father Pezant declared the. country to be quite deserted.’ ” He had the whole district from Wanganui to New Plymouth under his charge; and his many journeyings were always on foot, his own shoulders taking the place of packhorses to carry necessaries for Mass and for his personal use. The country was very rough, and the Natives, who almost exclusively inhabited it, were far from friendly with Europeans. Before this time several Catholic families came to the province, but finding no - schools in which their children could receive a sound Christian education, they left one after another for more favored districts. They rightly believed that no* schools could be called educators, which ignored the first essentials of education. Herein above all lies the chief glory of the Irishman in New Zealand, herein lies his chief contribution to civilisation in Taranaki. The exile from Erin is a traveller for Christ; Saint Brendan’s motto is, his —Peregrinnri pro Christo. He is a missioner whose zeal is unbounded; he is an apostle rather than a colonist, and he lives and labors for the things of the spirit rather Gian for those that appeal to sense. He cultivates his fields and feeds his flock, but he knows that he and his family have souls to nourish, and before he gathers into his own house what is necessary for the first demands of .social comfort he builds a modest school into which be brings one or other of the many Sisterhoods in which the Church is fruitful to train his little children in the ways of purity and

The people to whom these first priests ministered in Taranaki were Irish, sons of heroes who had fought the good fight and kept the Faith in face of persecution and atrocities lasting for centuries, and which, on the testimony of England’s leading statesmen and historians, had been unparalleled in the history of the human race. What Guy IT. Scholefield wrote of the Irish is particularly true of the early Irish settlers in Taranaki:

“If ever political despair and economic necessity, extending not over one year or a decade, but over centuries, could drive a people from the land of its birth and traditions, to renew its institutions and its glories under different skies, these motives were present as a goad to the Irish. Possibly there never went forth to the making of new nations so potential a body of men —such a force of character and individuality. Irish ability and common-sense have been at the root of democratic institutions in every-part of the new world; Irish bravery and industry have carried entrenchments of difficulty and despair unsuspected by soldiers Irish intellect lias been in the van of culture wherever leisure has succeeded to the arduous struggles of the pioneer.” NEW PLYMOUTH. Father Pezant of the Society of Mary was the first priest to visit New Plymouth, and this in the year 1852, when there were not more than forty European Catholics in the whole province. He has the distinction of being the first European to travel from Hawera to New Plymouth by the direct route. In his book, With the Lost Legion in New Zealand, Colonel G. HamiltonBrowne has the following reference: “The late ( General had nob deemed it expedient for the regular troops to enter

grace. Round about the slopes of Mt. Egmont, that stands like a monarch in the midst of the province, there are in this year 1925 thirteen convent-schools, crowded with happy, bright-faced children, who arc in fa 1 ! enjoyment of their Christian heritage, and whose increasing knowledge and love of God encircle with a spiritual beauty our monotain and our fields already so enriched by the lavish hand of nature. If nature and grace are made to- commingle in every acre thanks are due to the Irish builders of the Christian schools.

In 1856 a grant of a town section in the eastern, end of New Plymouth was made to the Catholic Mission by the Government. This was supplemented by a donation of four sections adjoining it from Mr. Richard Brown, a local merchant. Air. Brown was treacherously shot in 1860 by a surprise party of Natives, the man who killed him being Tawatiki, who had been recently in his employ. About this same year one or two companies of the Fifty-sixth regiment were sent from Auckland to deal with the Puketapu Feud, and being composed of a number of excellent Irish Catholics, signs of active life soon began to appear in the little mission. The soldiers built a little church out of their pay on the land in Courtney street. These pioneers must have been proud of their new church which was large enough to seat thirty persons, and the one day in each month "when Mass was offered must have been a, red-lettered day for them.

FATHER TRESS ALET. In 1860 when the Maori Rebellion broke out and a large number of troops, amongst them many Catholics, were stationed in New Plymouth, it was found necessary to appoint a resident priest; and so in 1860 Father Tressalet came to attend to the spiritual needs of the people. The soldiers, finding it inconvenient to march to Mass from Marsden Hill to Courtney Street, lifted the church in their own hands, set it down on the present elevated site on Devon street, and then enlarged it. Father Lynch would be now

glad to have back the sections in Courtney street, but in 1860 the priest and the soldiers did not foresee how the town would extend. The congregation still increasing, the church was again enlarged by Father Pertuis, who relieved father Tressalet in 1863

FATHER LOUIS ROLLAND. In 1865 came Father Louis Holland a man of martial bearing and vigorous intellect, whose name was a household word with the soldiers and their families, and whose memcry is still revered throughout the province.

His parish extended from the White Cliffs to Kai Iwi, and he travelled it several times a year from end to end. He was not only parish priest but military chaplain also,.for he loved the troops and was with them whereever there was a likelihood of fighting. He knew no fear. More than once his hat was riddled with bullets, but he would continue his ministrations with that same smile which in after years continued to charm his friends. I often tried to get the old bullet-riddled hat, contending that the church in Taranaki had a right to it. “I am no saint,” the old priest would reply, “and I intend to leave no relics behind me.” He was the subject of a classic eulogy from Major Von Tempsky; it was published simultaneously with the account of the gallant Major’s death, which took place a few days after he had written it: “On that grey and rainy morning, August 21, 1868, when the snoring water of the Waingongoro were muttering of floods and fury to come, when our 300 mustered silently in column on parade ground, one man made his appearance, who at once drew all eyes upon him with silent wonder. His garb was most peculiar: scant, but long skirts, shrouded his nether garments, and an old water-proof sheet hung loosely over his shoulders. Weapons, he had none but there was a “warlike cock” in the position of his broad-brimmed, old felt hat, and a selfconfidence in the attitude in which he leaned on his walking-stick, which said here stands a man without fear. Who is it? Look

underneath the flap of bis clerical hat and the frank, good-humored, brave countenance of Father Roll and will meet you. There he was, lightly arrayed for a march, of which no one could say -what the ending would be. With a good-humored smile lie answered my question as to what on earth had brought him there? He said that in holding evening service he had told his flock he would accompany them on the morrow, and there lie was. True, there stood a Good Shepherd ! Through the rapid river, waist deep, along the forest track, across ominous looking clearings where at any moment a. volley from an ambuscade could have swept our ranks, Father Holland marched cheerfully and manfully on, ever ready with a kind word, a playful sentence, to any man who passed him. And when at last in the clearings of Ngnlu-o-te-Manu the storm of bullets swept upon us, lie did not wait in the rear for men to lie brought to him, but ran with the rest of us forward against the enemy’s position. So soon as any man dropped, he was by his side. He did not ask ‘ Are you a Catholic, or are you a Protestant?’ but, kneeling, prayed for his last word. Thrice noble conduct in a century of utilitarian tendencies! What Catholic on that expedition could have felt fear when he saw Father Holland at his side smiling at death, a living personification of many a text preached? What Catholic could have felt otherwise than proud of being a Catholic on that day on Father Holland’s account?”

(To be continued.)