Girard0327

3 May 1844 — Bishop Jean-Baptiste François Pompallier to Father Jean-Baptiste Épalle, Kororareka

According to the original sent copy, APM OOc 418.2.

One sheet forming four written pages, together with an additional leaf written on one side only (p. 5); the sixth page bears only Poupinel’s annotation.

Translated by Merv Duffy and ChatGPT, August 2026.

[p. 6]

[In Poupinel’s hand:] New Zealand — Kororareka, 3 May 1844 — Bishop Pompallier.

[p. 1]

No. 9

Jesus, Mary, Joseph

Mission of the Assumption of Mary,

New Zealand, Port Nelson, 3 May 1844.

To Reverend Father Épalle, Pro-Vicar of Western Oceania.

My Reverend and dear Father,

[1]

Since 3 February last, when I wrote to you from the Bay of Islands, I have finally been able to make journeys which the lack of a ship had prevented me from undertaking, to the great detriment of the dear New Zealand mission. These journeys had been greatly delayed, were extremely urgent, and were made necessary on every side both by our desires and by the needs of the peoples. At the Bay of Islands I hired a schooner of approximately seventy to eighty tons for £55 a month. By this first means, within approximately three and a half months, I hope to have completed many pastoral visits and missionary works and to have travelled, including my return to the Bay of Islands, some six hundred leagues. I left the Bay of Islands on 18 February last and am now on my return journey. Since that time, accompanied at all times by one or two priests and a catechist, I have visited the following places and performed the ordinary works of preaching, baptising, hearing confessions, and confirming: 1º Auckland; 2º Tauranga; 3º Matamata; 4º Tamarakau; 5º the two tribes of Matata; 6º the three tribes of Whakatane; 7º Opotiki; 8º Warekaika at East Cape; 9º Port Nicholson; 10º Akaroa; 11º Port Cooper; 12º Port Levi; and 13º Pigeon Bay.

[2]

I am now becalmed in Nelson Bay and shall be unable to enter the anchorage until tomorrow morning. I am taking advantage of this evening aboard ship to write the present letter to you. During all the visits I have just made, I saw what I had expected: the mission becoming green again and bearing fruit. The appearance of the epikopo’s ship, with the bishop himself aboard, followed by graces from above, soon brings everything back to life. I am going to write a letter to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith which may be of interest to it. All my visits since Port Nicholson have been made in the company of Reverend Father O’Reily, an Irish Franciscan priest who is very devout, very learned, and very experienced. I am extremely pleased with his assistance. He displays simplicity, faith, and docility in everything I recommend to him concerning the direction of the mission’s work. He is approximately forty years old and possesses an excellent religious spirit, [p. 2] which accords perfectly with the apostolic life. After arriving from Ireland at Port Nicholson, for which I gave him jurisdiction, he was unable to see any one of us until March, when I visited him and all the faithful of that fine settlement. He had arrived there in January 1843. He has done good there—genuine good. God blesses his ministry. On his own he has received ten Protestants of various sects into the bosom of the Church, and several more from England or Ireland are among the same company. Our New Zealand mission will be greatly favoured in regard to faithful people of English or Irish nationality.

[3]

I would need another ten or so men from those same countries, but it is unnecessary for you to concern yourself in Europe with choosing them for me. I have taken every measure here to obtain excellent and reliable men from those countries. Mr O’Reily, who is thoroughly acquainted with the clergy in those places, together with other ecclesiastics and bishops who possess the complete esteem and confidence of the Holy See, are attending to this important matter at present. If you and I were both occupied simultaneously with selecting these men, there would be no unity of action; we might become overburdened and create confusion. It will be sufficient for you, using the funds of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, to meet the expenses I am about to specify: 1º £40 sterling annually to the seminary for Oceania in Ireland, near Dublin, at the request of the president of that college, for a period of five years; 2º the passage of the eight to ten men whom the gentlemen of that seminary are willing to prepare for this mission, in accordance with the letter I wrote to them and the special authorisation I have received from His Eminence the Cardinal Prefect of Propaganda Fide to seek several Irish or English men for our missions; 3º their ecclesiastical equipment, their small portable missionary chapel, and their passage from their country to the Bay of Islands, the latter having already been mentioned under item 2º; and 4º the same expenses for the two or three men whom Reverend Father O’Reily has been charged by me with selecting in Ireland. He is going to write to them. If they consent to come, they will communicate with you by letter, having been invited by me through Mr O’Reily. You will then need only to provide for the matters specified for them under item 3º. This is what I wished to [p. 3] communicate to you today, as my letters for Ireland will soon depart.

[4]

Fairly lengthy manuscripts giving a detailed and precise account of all our missions have been entrusted by me to a reliable ship to be sent to Lyon and Rome, or to Rome and Lyon.

[5]

From the letter I received here from the Very Reverend Father Colin, in which he reproduced a letter from the Society for the Propagation of the Faith—its reply to another letter addressed to it by either him or you upon your arrival in Lyon—it appears that you had rendered an account of our missions according to which our schooner had spent nearly 100 francs a day. Alas! How deeply I regret that the administration of this Apostolic Vicariate lacks unity of action and communication. It is dangerous for you in Lyon, or for anyone other than the Vicar Apostolic—or, at the very least, without his having seen and approved it—to render an account of the ecclesiastical administration of this mission. Even if you succeeded in presenting what was true and correct, there would always remain the difficulty of having two persons at the helm of this administration and two principles of action. While you were rendering one account, another might precede it or closely follow it on my behalf. It might then fail to agree with what you or the Very Reverend Father Colin had said, and our benefactors would be left anxious and distressed. Be sure to await the documents I have to provide before rendering an account to the central councils. My accounts are based not upon conjectari—conjecture—as yours must have been on several points, particularly concerning the schooner Sancta Maria, but upon facts and genuine certainty. When all the accounts are properly settled, that schooner did not even spend fifty francs a day. You can see the error committed in the account you could only have rendered by conjecture on this subject in Lyon. In any event, I earnestly ask you to send me as soon as possible a written copy of the calculation by which you arrived at an expenditure of nearly 100 francs a day for the Sancta Maria, so that I may see for myself the causes of your errors and enable you to recognise them. I say that you could have rendered the ship’s accounts only by conjectari, because you did not have the administrative ledger concerning it. That ledger always remained aboard the schooner, which I had outfitted and whose affairs I continually supervised. But send me your calculation as soon as possible. [p. 4]

[6]

Remain in Lyon so that you may always act in perfect harmony with me. You will accomplish more good there than if you were here on the spot. For the transmission of our funds from the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, follow carefully either my letter of 6 November 1842 to the Central Council in Lyon, or the letter I sent you recently, in which I designated the Bank of Australasia in Sydney exclusively to receive our funds from a reliable bank in England—its correspondent bank—with which you would deposit them so that they might be sent immediately in my name every six months, or better still every three months, if possible. The amount of funding required for our remittances, including that for a ship belonging to the mission, is certainly important; but the regularity and promptness with which those funds are sent are even more important. Send me as many members of the Society of Mary as possible, both priests and Brothers, but do not yet send religious Sisters or companies of labourers and farmers. On that subject, be sure to await my very specific letters. Furthermore, when priests and Brothers are sent, it must be carefully remembered that the sums required for those already here must not be used for the travellers’ expenses and missionary preparations. We must first provide for those who have already departed before providing for those about to depart. Thus, if there are insufficient allocations to assist those who have already departed—according to the account in my letter of 6 November 1842 to the Central Council—the departure of those preparing to leave must be delayed, or only the number for whom our funds are sufficient should be sent, after provision has first been made for those already here. These funds must be sent to us regularly and promptly, as already stated. For the moment, this is what I urgently needed to communicate to you. With my approval, the mission procurator’s office should have sent you notes concerning temporal affairs and the things we require. The mission here is returning to life; I hope it will be completely restored if many workers can reach us and, above all, if I have a missionary ship at my service which I can purchase here.

[7]

Here is the itinerary for my return to the Bay of Islands, together with the one I have already written: 1º Nelson, which I shall enter tomorrow and where I shall spend eight days; 2º Port Nicholson, where I shall take Reverend Father O’Reily and where Father Comte is stationed; 3º Mahia; 4º Opotiki and Weinia; 5º Whakatane and Kupanga; 6º Rotorua and Taupo, followed by Maketu; 7º Tauranga, Matamata, and Waikato; 8º Auckland; 9º Ngangara; and 10º the Bay of Islands. I administer large numbers of baptisms and confirmations everywhere. My catechism books are being learned by heart in every place. This is what facilitates the mission, together with the labour, courage, peace, and prayer [written crosswise in the margin] of most of the workers. Matters are beginning to proceed well, and the impetus I am providing on every side is beginning to be properly received. Convey my greetings in Our Lord to the Very Reverend Father Colin and to all our friends and my acquaintances whom you know. Pray greatly, and have many prayers said for us and our work. Vows and tributes of love and confidence to Our Lady of Fourvière.

Entirely yours in Jesus and Mary,

+ Jean-Baptiste François Pompallier, Bishop,

Vicar Apostolic of Western Oceania

[8]

Postscript. I am sending you several letters which I ask you to have delivered to their destinations. + François [p. 5]

[9]

Postscript. It is possible that, following my previous correspondence, you may have found several English men for this mission and reached a complete agreement with them concerning their journey to join me at the Bay of Islands. If you have reached such an agreement, my present letter should not be understood as preventing you from sending those men in accordance with what was decided between you and them. But as soon as you receive this letter, take no further steps to send other men of that nationality unless they are willing to enter the Society of Mary purely and simply. If they are unwilling to enter it, refer applications from Irish men wishing to work in our New Zealand missions to the examination and care of the gentlemen who direct the seminary established near Dublin by His Holiness to supply workers for the missions of Oceania. I have asked those directors to attend to this matter. The men selected will depart directly from their country for the Bay of Islands, where they will be kept for a time so that they may become thoroughly acquainted with our work. These measures will simplify matters concerning both travel and expenses, while unity in ecclesiastical work and missionary action will be perfectly maintained with the Vicar Apostolic.

[10]

I stated in my letter that the schooner I have hired costs me £55—fifty-five pounds sterling—a month. This expense must not be made to alarm the entire world through exaggeration, as happened with the Sancta Maria. Aboard are one captain, one first mate, four sailors, and one cook: seven persons in all to operate the ship. All of this is the responsibility of the merchant who rented the ship to me. In addition, I have the right to be fed aboard with three members of my company, if I wish and if my work requires it. Thus, upon paying the stated price of £55 a month, I have no other expenses to pay for the ship. From this rental price, the owner—the proprietor—makes a profit of at least £18 sterling a month. Nevertheless, the personnel aboard are approximately the same as those aboard the Sancta Maria. Two conclusions may therefore be drawn: 1º you seriously miscalculated the expenses of the Sancta Maria in Lyon; and 2º if the present ship belonged to the mission, we would not spend even £40 a month to maintain her in the mission’s service, including every expense. It should also be remembered that there is a great difference between a ship owned by the mission and a hired ship. A ship owned by the mission produces better moral and salutary effects and, above all, provides much greater freedom and facility for our sacred ministry. Work with me, therefore, to win the support of our benefactors for maintaining a ship as the property of the mission. [Written crosswise in the margin.]

+ Jean-Baptiste François Pompallier

[11]

[Written crosswise in the margin.] The ship to which the manuscripts containing a lengthy and detailed account of our missions were entrusted is called the Rhin. Captain Bérard at Akaroa, that good commander, has undertaken to give special protection to all the sealed correspondence I entrusted to him.

[12]

[Written crosswise in the margin.] I also inform you that I am establishing a school of agriculture and industry to train New Zealand catechists. With the grace of God and the assistance of Mary, it will become a seminary capable of doing as much good as all of us together. + François

[p. 1]

[13]

[Written crosswise in the margin.] Postscript. A few days after writing this letter to you, without having found an opportunity to send it, I learned that the Society had just sent six men to Ireland to establish a missionary house there. This news, whether true or false, leads me to send you my letter to the directors of the Dublin seminary unsealed, so that you may acquaint yourself fully with it and forward it only in proportion to the number of men whom the Society’s establishment in Ireland may itself be able to provide for me. If this establishment of the Society does not take place, then forward my letter without restriction to the Catholic seminary in Dublin. + François

Textual notes

• Paragraph 3: The source edition notes collège pr + 2º p; aussi is preceded by the deleted words tous les frais (“all the expenses”).
• Paragraph 5: pendant que (“while”) and pas (“not”) were written above the line.
• Paragraph 6: pas (“not”) and les (“them”) were written above the line.
• Paragraph 7: déjà écrit (“already written”) was written above the line.
• Paragraph 9: décidé (“decided”) and reçu (“received”) were written above the line; établi replaces établis.
• Paragraph 10: à (“aboard/at”) was written above the line.