The links between Maori and Pakeha, New Zealand and France, Catholicism and the Bay of Islands have just become a little stronger.

The angel of death released Lyon from the grip of a plague in 1643 and, according to local stories, those who escaped gave their gold rings to be melted down, in thanksgiving, to gild the statue of Mary. It is from here that a cord of Catholic zeal has stretched as far as the Bay of Islands, wound its way to Whanganui and Wellington, and, in April 2007, bound all these communities into a tangible expression of a common past.

One of the country’s pre-eminent historic places, Pompallier Mission, has been a conduit for the passion, a culminating point for the pilgrimage that has been manifested in an inspired collaboration. In 1835, Suzanne Aubert was born in Lay, to the north-west of Lyon. It was the year that, in Aotearoa, the Declaration of Independence was signed by a group of northern Maori chiefs. Parallel fibres had begun to lay themselves down.

The Pope, in that same year, recognised the Society of Mary, and charged it with missionary responsibilities in the Pacific. Within a year, the first Marist missionaries had left for the Pacific under Lyonnais Vicar Apostolic Bishop Jean-Baptiste François Pompallier. Soon, the Association of the Propagation of the Faith was sending pennies as well as prayers from its base in Lyon to his Kororareka mission headquarters.

The first book the original printer Jean Yvert prints at Pompallier Mission is Ako Marama and includes the hymn which Bishop Pompallier has just written, and that everybody’s singing, called ‘Mo Maria’. That was the very first book printed on the Gaveaux press.

The pervasiveness of the hymn “Mo Maria” today is illustrated by Sister Sue Cosgrove, present head of the Sisters of Compassion at Jerusalem on the Whanganui River. “A group of us, Sisters, went onto a marae further up the Whanganui River. We were looking a bit bedraggled because we’d been canoeing. They welcomed us on and we had to sing a waiata, and the only one we knew in common was ‘Mo Maria’. This woman stepped forward and said ‘I don’t know who you are, but we do know you’re Catholics, because you know that hymn.’ From one end of the country to the other, it’s the most well-known hymn.”

So Marty and Marilyn Vreede, as Whanganui printers, decided they would pick up that hymn. They set the type and used the Gaveaux Press to print it. Their artwork that interprets each verse explores the relationship between Suzanne Aubert and Bishop Pompallier, Kororareka and Whanganui, and France. The shapes and fibres of the book bind Jerusalem on the Whanganui River, Lyon on its twin rivers and Pompallier Mission on the Bay that baptised a nation.

By Michael Hooper

read more in Heritage New Zealand, Winter 2007.

A great event took place in January; an English warship came to the Bay of Islands. It brought a lieutenant-governor subordinate to the English Governor of Sydney; he is called Capt. Hobson…

So wrote Bishop Pompallier in May 1840, in the course of a long letter to Father Colin, head of the Marist Order. Pompallier, with his accompanying priest Louis-Catherin Servant, was present at Waitangi on 5 and 6 February, just before the signing of the treaty - an event that has proved even more important for New Zealand history than he then realised. This article focuses on the role he played at that time.

Jean-Baptiste François Pompallier was then thirty-seven years old, having been born in Lyon in December 1802. His mission to the Pacific had the approval of King Louis-Philippe, Queen Amélie and Madame AdéLaide, the king's sister. His main allegiance, however, was not to France but to the Catholic Church. After entering the priesthood in 1829, he had been ordained bishop in Rome in 1836 and given the task of evangelising Oceania.

The two years he had spent in New Zealand had not been idle. Within six months he had learnt the Maori language well enough to preach in it, and had baptised his first chiefly convert. By 1840 he had formed clusters of Catholics around Hokianga and the Bay of Islands, established a centre at Kororareka (with a printing press), and become one of the more notable and controversial pakeha in the country. Though he had not ensured that New Zealand would have more Catholics than Protestants - something that has still not occurred - this tall man had certainly given his Church a high profile.

He was controversial for two reasons: religion and politics. The Protestant missionaries, notably Henry Williams, saw him as a scheming papist newcomer competing with them for Maori souls.

By Peter Low
The French and the Maori, The Heritage Press 1990.

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Te Hokinga Mai o Pomaparie: The Return Home of Bishop Pompallier
13 & 14 April 2002

Only a few weeks after taking up the position as Manager of the Historic Places Trust property Pompallier at Russell, Bay of Islands, Kate Martin found herself being quietly quizzed by two unassuming-looking men who had walked in by the staff entrance. It turned out that both were Catholic priests, one from the Hokianga, one from Paris. They finally spilled the beans, what did Kate think of the idea of digging up Bishop Pompallier's remains in France and bringing them to this place?

Years of museum debate about human remains had never once involved this kind of scenario. Remember those moko mokai still on display in the 1980s? Remember removing remains from storerooms for reburial amongst their own people? Remember those collections still in museums, confused and unidentified? More recently there's been news of Auckland War Memorial Museum's bid for the Unknown Soldier.

One purpose of Te Hokinga Mai o Pihopa Pomaparie to New Zealand was the renewal of faith amongst Catholics, which is not part of the mission of the Historic Places Trust. However, the Church's other purpose of spreading knowledge about Pompallier, his work and his place in history, certainly is. Therefore, the Historic Places Trust welcomed this invitation for one of the events associated with the return of the Bishop's remains to be a "lying in state" at the property Pompallier.

By Kate Martin

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Politics, print and prayer were intertwined in all mission experience in the Bay of Islands at the crossover era of TeTiriti o Waitangi. These three elements of history are pulling researchers increasingly to the Trust's Pompallier Mission in Russell. Why? Because it is an authentic and ideally situated survivor of that crucial era in our history, and is also dynamically engaged in the ongoing story.

That is how, one serene April evening in 2004, I found myself with other pilgrims, traders and storytellers of history on board the Bay's tall ship R.Tucker Thompson. The Tucker happens to be the exact replica of the schooner that Bishop Jean-Baptiste François Pompallier bought in 1840 to be the French Catholic mission ship, the Santa Maria. Just right to give an 1840s feel at the start of three days at the "French Place", "te urunga mai o te iwi wiwi". (Yes,"wiwi" is how Maori named the French, from the "oui, oui" they kept hearing.)

By Jessie Munro

Read more in Heritage New Zealand Spring 2005