Revision as of 12:43, 2 September 2007

Doc. 91 - 17 May 1841.

Letter from Jean-Baptiste-François Pompallier to Jean-Claude Colin. D’après l’expédition, APM OOc 418.1.

Partial translation by Virginia Spencer

[1] Your delay in writing and dispatching subjects, and in sending the allocations of the Propagation of the Faith is a real disaster for this mission, such an enormous calamity that it will ruin it. I suffer more pain over this than I do from all the troubles that come from elsewhere. All the dangers I have risked, all the wearying apostolic work, all my care to protect my flocks from attacks of heresy, against the lures of passion and the snares laid by the devil have not crushed my reserves of strength as much as the terrible ordeal of being deprived of the help that Divine Providence created in [the form of] the Church to bring to life and to perpetuate the vast work – so vast and so dear to me – I hold in my feeble hands; nor as much as the failure to carry out (whatever the reason may be) the requests I make of you or the errands I entrust to you is fatal to this mission! For over three years I have been asking for printing presses to be bought with the funds for the propagation of the faith; [also] large pictures of Our Lord’s mysteries and of the Most Holy Virgin and copies of the portrait of the Holy Father, the Pope, and still I have received none of those things.

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