Phillippe Calinon

Philippe Calinon

Provincial of the Missions of the Central Oceania Vicariate 1844 - 1847

Philippe Calinon was born on April 12, 1806, in Vieille-Loye, Jura, in the diocese of Saint-Claude. After his ordination to the priesthood, he was appointed assistant at the cathedral, and later became parish priest of Pupillin, in June 1836. He wished to work in the foreign missions and attempted to join the Jesuits. Since he wanted only to go to the foreign missions, his application was declined. Resigning from his curacy effective 31 December 1841, he entered the novitiate of the Society of Mary on 5 March 1842.

Professed on 11 March 1843, Jean-Claude Colin appointed Calinon Provincial of the newly erected Vicariate Apostolic of Central Oceania. Permission to appoint a provincial had been given by pontifical decree of 16 September 1842. After Jean-Baptiste Epalle’s arrival in France in February 1843 and his report on the mission in New Zealand, Colin drafted a regulation listing the principal duties of the provincial to be fulfilled towards the Society, the Superior General, the Vicar Apostolic, the Procurator of the Society and of the Mission and the priests and brothers in that order.

In announcing Calinon’s appointment to the newly consecrated Bishop, Pierre Bataillon, Colin wrote:

Father Calinon has shown good judgement and great reserve. I believe him to be prudent and of solid piety. We have chosen him to represent us as provincial. As far as we are able to judge, we have reason to hope that you will be satisfied and that he will deserve your confidence.

Missionaries (Jean-Baptiste Bréhéret, Jean-Victor Favier, Brother Annet Pérol, Brother Jean Raynaud) under Calinon’s leadership left from Toulon on 25 April 1843 aboard the Phaeton. An old vessel, which did not run well either under steam or sail leading to the crossing taking nearly ten months. After a three-month stay in Tahiti, they embarked on the Adolphe, a French merchant ship and finally arrived in Wallis on 17 May 1844. At Wallis, one of Calinon’s first applications of the regulations was to appoint Charles Mathieu, with whom he had been in novitiate, Vice-Provincial for Wallis and Futuna.

Bataillon arranged to make his first pastoral visit of the newly erected vicariate on board the Adolphe. In Tonga at the end of June, Calinon and Brother Jean Reynaud were left at Pea on the island of Tongatapu to share the work of Joseph Chevron and Jérôme Grange, who had been there for two years.

The Provincial’s regulations and likely Calinon’s manner in attempting to apply them had soon caused some tensions between him and Bataillon, with both writing to back to France within weeks of Calinon’s arrival. This reaction led to Colin expressly stating Calinon’s three-year term to be from the date of his arrival in the vicariate, i.e. 17 May 1844 to 16 May 1847, with Bataillon then taking over the Provincial’s responsibilities, as provided for in the regulations.

While waiting for Colin’s reply, some points of the regulations were applied, such as having the priests write to Colin after the provincial being in office for 18 months with the name of whom they think best to fill the position. He also appointed two further vice-provincials, Bishop Guillaume Douarre in the New Hebrides and Jérôme Grange in New Caledonia.

In replying to Bataillon’s complaint, Colin responded,

It is not surprising, Bishop, that Father Calinon and your grace have encountered some difficulties in practice concerning the regulations for the provincial. Our thinking is not completely and clearly enough formulated for either of you to have been able to grasp it at first sight. Prudence had suggested this kind of reserve. The idea of a provincial and its regulations had been imposed on us by what was happening in New Zealand. We wrote these regulations at the time of the departure of the Bishop of Amatha and under the impression of all the complaints we were receiving from New Zealand. Even though you had given us every proof of your attachment to the Society, your charity and your prudence, we thought it useful to appoint a provincial, as we have the right to do, and to outline his main duties. However, we did not wish to effect and indicate for your vicariate the separation of the temporal affairs of the fathers and brothers of the Society from those of the Vicar Apostolic; we wanted to wait and find out more specifically the true intentions of your grace. Nevertheless, we should have warned Father Calinon to leave to you until further notice the full administration of the finances. Today I am somewhat pleased about this oversight; it has given you, my lord, and Father Calinon, the opportunity to provide us with a fine example of prudence, charity and good spirit.

Calinon, recounting in 1846 of Mathieu’s resignation from the position of vice-provincial among others, wrote,

[Mathieu] is convinced that neither vice-provincial nor provincial could carry out his duties without coming into conflict with [Bataillon], which would always have more disadvantages than advantages.

Poupinel was to later write:

It is true that Father Calinon was invested with the title of provincial, and even that the Very Reverend Father had been authorised by Propaganda to appoint a provincial of the Central Oceania mission. The time was not right, and as a consequence, the provincial did almost nothing and was soon put aside.

Colin was relying on Calinon's frankness to tell him the whole truth about the Missions and the conditions in which the missionaries lived. This he did in his first letters to Colin and Victor Poupinel, two months after his arrival in Oceania. The following year, he again reported to Colin.

His first letter started,

In accordance with article 3, paragraph 5 of my regulations, I am required to write to you twice a year, in April, to tell you about first about each of the subjects in particular and then about the state of the Society in the missions.

Leaving Tonga in October 1845 for Sydney, arriving on 9 November he turned up at the procure to request material support for the Tongan mission. Not long after Calinon’s arrival, Bishop Jean-Baptiste Pompallier received a letter from Rome indicating that the Friendly Islands [Tonga] were to be returned to the Vicariate Apostolic of Western Oceania. This affair, as well as objects to deliver to Bishop Guillaume Douarre, and then the need to come to an agreement with Bataillon, so that the missionaries in Tonga would not find themselves short of food and clothing, led to Antoine Dubreul, who had been appointed procurator general and had been based in Sydney from 1844, accompanying Calinon. This voyage also allowed Calinon to visit the other missions and provide the spiritual welfare expected of the provincial.

On 7 December, they left Sydney for New Caledonia on board the Columbine, which had brought Calinon from Tonga. From New Caledonia, they sailed to Tonga, there 1-8 February, onto Wallis, Savai’i and Upolu in Samoa, finally returning to Tonga on 26 March 1846, where Calinon returned to missionary duties at Pea.

Religious tensions in Tonga led to the village of Pea, where the founding Tongan mission was based, becoming an entrenched camp and it was besieged in 1852. It was decided that Calinon would go to Tahiti to inform the Governor of the danger that the mission and the missionaries of Tonga were facing and to request support. The corvette Moselle was sent to Tonga to investigate. The investigation relied heavily on the testimony of the perpetrators and there was no resolution to the conduct the missionaries and their congregations were facing. At the same time, it was decided that Charles Nivelleau needed to be taken to Sydney for health reasons. The Moselle took him and Calinon as companion. Calinon cared for Nivelleau during the voyage; however, Nivelleau’s condition weakened, and he died on 10 December 1852 and was buried at sea.

Calinon left Sydney with the Moselle for Tahiti, where he arrived again on 16 March 1853. He was still trying to obtain some protection for the missionaries in Tonga and their congregations. While waiting for a resolution, he placed himself at the disposal of the Bishop of Axiéri, Bishop Florentin-Étienne Jaussen Tepano, SS.CC., Vicar apostolic of Tahiti, dividing his time between prayer and the exercise of holy ministry. Things looked more positive with the arrival of Admiral Febvrier Despointes, but the admiral left unexpectedly to take possession of New Caledonia. Having sailed with the French fleet, Calinon was in Valparaiso, then in Lima in May 1854, finally on the Obligado, one of the ships of the Pacific squadron sent to pursue Russian frigates; the Crimean War had begun. The Sacred Heart Fathers everywhere gave him a fraternal and cordial welcome and Calinon assisted with their various ministries while he lived with them.

Calinon was back in Tahiti, when the marquis Eugène du Bouzet, the new governor of the French Establishments in Oceania, arrived in late 1854 to take up his post. Du Bouzet was already known to the Society, having saved the missionaries in New Caledonia from death in August 1847, after the destruction of the Balade mission. Calinon arrived back in Tonga in January 1855. With du Bouzet’s intervention, a treaty was signed between King George and France on 9 January 1855, which provided for protection for the missionaries and freedom to practise their religion.

Pea had been destroyed after the siege, and the missionaries were not allowed to reestablish a station there. Instead, Calinon started another at Ma’ufanga, near King George’s village.

In 1858 Bataillon decided to establish a mission at Lifuka, in the Ha’apai Islands. When Calinon and Pierre Guitta arrived on 30 June 1858, the local governor would not allow them to land their possessions, and they returned to Tonga. The treaty was enforced by the commander of the Bayonnaise, and compensation for the mission arranged. They returned to Likufa on 25 August 1858 to their newly constructed station.

There, Calinon daily spent several hours in prayer. He also devoted part of his days to carpentry: he made furniture for the chapel, for his house. People would ask him to make them a piece of furniture, a tool or any other object they needed, which he did willingly and recognising in these requests the opportunity to make the population more favourable towards Catholicism. He was happy to receive in exchange an object he needed or foodstuffs.

Already known for his practice of medicine on Tongatapu this also assisted with his integration into the community on Lifuka. He had no formal studies, but he had acquired a remarkable knowledge in the art of healing, and his long practice in the missions had made him a famous doctor. At Ma’ufanga and at Lifuka, twice every day, except Sunday, he would ring the Talavai (“distribution of water”. Water is the generic word to mean any remedy.). In ordinary cases, for sores were so common there, he gave more advice than remedies, dealt more with illnesses of the soul than with those of the body; but in serious cases, he treated his patients with skill and dedication. Among his patients was even the Tongan king when Calinon treated a wound on one of his hands. Even his strongest detractor, the Methodist minister, John Vercoe finally called on Calinon’s services when he could no longer bear the pain from a tic; nearly all his teeth were removed as treatment.

He continued providing medical services until his health no longer allowed it. One of his last treatments was for the mate of the ship which brought him back from Vava’u to Tongatapu, in October 1876. This sailor had a leg affected by cutaneous anthrax [charbon]; the surgeon of the Prussian corvette Hertha had simply wanted to amputate, Calinon cured it.

From late 1861 Calinon lived alone at Lifuka. Poupinel had earlier written,

Father Calinon certainly has qualities, piety, zeal; but he is strangely exaggerated in his judgements; his ardent and black imagination leads him. ... Father Calinon has the unfortunate talent of crushing those who work with him; he demoralises them. He told me himself that, if he could go alone to Lifuka, he would go, because he knew that his companion would suffer a lot with him.

His financial and provisioning arrangements also caused the Sydney procure difficulties. When visited by Poupinel in 1865, the visitor reported:

Father lives like a miser, like a beggar, and this because he wants to or because he does not want to do like the others.

Believing he was near death Calinon returned to Tonga; but then feeling better was back at Lifuka by June 1866. By 1867, isolation and health had affected him and he sailed for Sydney with Bishop Louis Elloy, coadjutor to Bataillon, arriving on 5 September. While taking a rest that he urgently needed, Poupinel found,

You would not be able to believe how amiable he is here, how reasonable and good-natured; so true it is, as experience has already shown me several times, that climate and hardship are more to blame than willpower for what happens among our missionaries.

At Bataillon’s request, he accepted the direction of the native school at Clydesdale. He held a licence to distil brandy from the vineyards, and some was sold to departing missionaries. He also sent wine back to Tonga.

At the closure of Clydesdale in January 1872, Calinon returned to Villa Maria in Sydney and by the end of February was back at Ma’ufanga, where he saw out his days with Armand Lamaze. Old, infirm and supernumerary, he would regularly travel to visit Breton on Vava’u, passing through Lifuka. On one trip he attempted to sell the large church to build a European-style chapel, which would be less expensive to maintain. The church was later destroyed in a hurricane in January 1912.

In July 1876, during Bataillon’s visit, he asked Calinon, although his health was far from good, to go to Vava’u to replace Marin Breton who was called to the common retreat. On his way there and back Calinon again stayed in Lifuka, where he received a kind welcome. He was away for two and a half months, and he returned to Ma’ufanga weakened.

Lamaze was to inform Poupinel about Calinon’s last months, who quoted from the letter in the latter’s obituary.

Father Calinon was still able to celebrate solemn mass on All Saints’ Day. He ministered until the Immaculate Conception; but it was not without difficulty that he managed to say Holy Mass at Christmas. He continued the Breviary and his spiritual exercises as long as he could. Always with the Rosary in his hand, he did not omit any of his numerous rosaries. Moreover, reciting rosaries, made up of acts of faith, hope and charity, or various other prayers enriched with indulgences, had been his great occupation for many years already. He had himself administered to the Septuagesima: we were not in the mood to do it immediately, but we had to give in to his pressing and repeated requests. “I feel very well,” he said, “that I will not get up again, and I can leave all at once.”

His heart palpitations were sometimes frightening. Dropsy had declared itself in the legs, which produced more than a litre of water every day; the pain gradually rose to the region of the heart. As a doctor, he knew his illness and explained the different phases to us in technical terms. Our brave brother Jean looked after him with admirable dedication and greatly eased the suffering of this long illness.

The good Lord, in order to embellish the crown that he prepares for his friends, is pleased to sanctify their last moments through the cross. Father Calinon did not like noise, he suffered greatly from it during his illness; because on one side was the girls' school, on the other our boys' school; and everywhere, but especially in Oceania, this world of schools is noisy and garish. In addition, his illness coincided with the major work of our church; masons, carpenters, valets shout like schoolchildren. Everyone, unwittingly, contributed to making our dear patient suffer.

As if this noise had not been enough, a frightening storm, no less disastrous than that of 1870, came to fall on us on 19 March. The first gusts of wind broke down the door of the Father's room: our house was not overturned, but it was flooded everywhere, for a whole day and a whole night. Father Padel and I were in Mua, for the feast of Saint Joseph. Brother John was alone here, having to protect and cover the tabernacle, the altar, our ornaments, our statues, etc., as best he could. It was not without difficulty that he was able to find, in a corner of the house, a small shelter where poor Father was still very ill. On my return, I had his first cell repaired as soon as possible. For several months he had not been able to go to bed; he did so on returning home, slept peacefully and felt noticeably better: he thought he was almost cured.

This better was not to last. The night of 7 April was very bad, we kept watch. After my mass, at the time when Father Padel was preparing to say his own which was that of the people, around 7:30 a.m., Father Calinon entered into agony. Our neophytes gathered to recite the rosary; For our part, Father Padel and I recited all the prayers of the ritual. After reviewing the plenary indulgence again, a final absolution, the Father gently returned his soul to God. He held the blessed candle in his hand; he was dressed in his scapulars and carried his rosary, his medal and his cross. It is the death of a true Marist. May my death be like his!

During the people's mass, helped by Brother Jean and three of our children, I buried the deceased. Dressed in his priestly ornaments, he was beautiful to see: his emaciated face had something celestial. We lifted the body, which remained exposed in the church. From that moment until 4 a.m. the next day, the church was never empty. The stations of the cross, the rosaries, the hymns and the prayers did not stop. At the solemn mass, we were five Marist Fathers. The burial took place in the evening. The church was all hung in black, thanks to the dedication of our sisters who had also improvised a beautiful catafalque. There was a considerable crowd inside and out. There were all those of our neophytes who had been able to arrive, many Protestants, almost all the whites on the island, who liked to call Father their friend; several government representatives in full dress attended; everyone seemed moved. To give this numerous audience the opportunity to deploy in procession, we were obliged to make a fairly long detour. The funeral procession opened with a large black banner which we also owed to our good sisters. This procession was a triumph for Father and for the Catholic Church. The songs in Latin and Tongan had a very good effect. The following Sunday, numerous communions were made for him in our three parishes. Every day, Catholic women and even those who are Protestant, bring beautiful, selected sand to his grave. Father Calinon is buried in the front choir of our future church. We talk a lot about our dear deceased and his burial. Nothing like it had ever been seen in Tonga.

Calinon had stopped writing to his relatives despite many requests from them and confreres; however, on 20 January 1877, he wrote to Poupinel:

When these lines reach you, I will probably have ceased to live. They are to reveal to my family the reason which, for several years, has prevented me from writing to them.

This reason, can you believe me? is the excessive love I have for all of them, including even the deceased. A singular anomaly, if you like, but not without example. I found cases of it in France, and even here among the natives of Oceania. For me, it has reached the point that a word, a sign, a thought that reminds me of my relatives makes me flinch; I need violent efforts to contain myself. It keeps me in a state of constant struggle. It is to this mental tension that I attribute the palpitations that you know. They determined dropsy of the chest from which I am soon expecting my final blow.

May my family, distressed by my long silence, not learn the cause before my death; but, once the latter has been established, let them know everything. Even send them this, the last writing from my hand. They will willingly believe its contents; because they know that I love them: the proofs are in our former relationships.

I ask my brother François and my sister Elisa to organise with the pastor of our local parish a funeral service for the repose of my soul. I would like, if possible, for other priests to be summoned there, but at least our relatives, either from the locality or from the surrounding areas.

Then, for the purpose expressed below, I would be very obliged to you, my Reverend Father, to send them a short notice; you would mention the countries where I carried out the mission, those where I was delegated in its interests. This notice, read to the audience during the above-mentioned service, would have the effect of dissipating the umbrages that my obstinate silence, it is said, has given rise to in certain minds about me and which, as a result, may have caused harm in opinion to these same relatives who are loved beyond measure.

Among them are some who have never seen me because they were not born when I left France. No matter how much they hold the same rank in my heart, their souls are extremely dear to me. I often pray for them, and if, after my death, I have any credit with divine mercy, it is in their favour that I will use it. May they not be any less faithful in fulfilling their duties as Christians; that they often remember that, if they have a relative at the ends of the earth, working for the salvation of poor savages born into idolatry, it would be dreadful if they themselves, born in the splendours of faith and with so much of means of salvation, are lost for eternity. What welcome could they expect from the sovereign Judge on the day of the major demonstrations! what an interview with their missionary parent, he who would so willingly give his life to see them ascend to heaven!

I would like to add something to this chapter; but I feel weakened under the weight of the illness. Farewell then, world that is ending! Hello, world that never ends! Soon I will have moved from one to the other. Farewell, relatives and friends of France. Pray for me, I will return the favour.

Farewell! dear Society of Mary, which has showered me with your benefits during the long years I spent on mission. Thank you for all your maternal kindness.

Farewell! venerable Superior, Reverend confreres, and you in particular, dear Father Poupinel. Keep me in your affections and remember my soul in your holy sacrifices.