Jean-Baptist Poncelet

Fr Jean-Baptist Poncelet SM

A translation of the text in Gigi René, Hols L, Carnet de Bord d’Une Épopée Mariste En Lorraine Belge Differt: 1887-2000. Imprimerie-reliure Michel frères: 2001

Renowned entomologist and political prisoner of the Japanese

Father Poncelet was born in Izel-sur-Semois to a deeply Christian family on June 24, 1884. He was the youngest of five children, who included a Marist Brother and a Christian Doctrine Sister who taught for fifty years in Musson.

From 1899 to 1905, he received his secondary education at the Nazareth school in Differt. He made his novitiate in Italy at Santa Fede from 1905 to 1906. He made the most of being there to study foreign languages, and continued his studies in philosophy and theology at the Marist scholasticate in Differt from 1906 to 1912.

On December 25, 1909, he made his perpetual profession in Differt, and on June 29, 1912, he was ordained a priest there.

On September 18, 1912, he sailed from Marseille for Oceania on the Polynesian.

In 1913, he disembarked on the island of Buka (northern Solomon archipelago). He was curate at Buin Turiboiru. In 1916, he was appointed parish priest. He took charge of its evangelization until 1925. In that year, he completed his second novitiate at Villa-Maria in Sydney.

In a handwritten letter dated January 18, 1925, he describes his island home and his missionary work:

Not all the stations of the Apostolic Prefecture of the Northern Solomons cost the life of a missionary in their early days.

But the founding of the first three stations required the same sacrifice: Kieta lost Father Meyer, Poporang Father Liogier and Buin Father Perpezat.

Father Perpezat arrived in Buin on April 15, 1903; the name used for the entire southern part of the island. (The island was discovered in 1568 by the Spaniards and explored again two centuries later by the Frenchman Bougainville.)

Unlike the rest of the island, which is mountainous both near the sea and inland, Buin is a vast wooded plain stretching 80 kilometres along the shore and 20 to 25 kilometres from the shore to the mountains. This forest was home to numerous villages and thousands of natives, generally two or three hours' walk away. Only Kangu, an isolated mountain on the edge of the sea, breaks the uniformity of this immense plain.

It was at the foot of this mountain that Father Perpezat arrived. It was here that he built his first house, or rather his leaf hut, which he didn't have time to finish. Caught with a fever in the first fortnight, he was taken back by canoe by a few faithful natives to Poporang, where he had come from.

He died after a few days, in May 1903.

The station was started again in 1905, this time on the plain. The Buin mission was then definitively founded. The history of its development comprises two periods: that of the single station on the shore, and that of the foundation of three inland stations that derive from it.

I. The very fact that the villages were so far from the shore and hidden away in the great forest, suggested a great deal about the character and habits of the natives. The reputation of the Buin (or Teleis as they call themselves in their own language) as a warlike people, hostile to all foreigners, was all too justified.

The state of warfare between the various clans continued unabated. Isolated murders in the villages visited by the missionaries alone numbered between 25 and 30 a year. In those days, it was not uncommon to find collections of 40 to 50 human skulls on display in meeting houses. They represented as many dead or decapitated enemies, so that the vast majority of men died violent deaths. Given the savage state and hostile disposition of the inland population, the mission had to consist for a long time of training young Christians in the station’s schools. As many of the scattered settlements hidden in the bush as possible had to be visited.

These visits to these populations along winding native paths, tree-lined, with roots and puddles, brought immediate and more visible results.

The missionaries thus sought to change people's habits. The mentality was evolving, mores were softening. The missionary had won the natives’ trust.

Even then some villages had a chapel and a house where the father could stay longer. During the period of the sole shore station, 950 baptisms were performed. It was a fine figure, but it was little compared with the work that remained to be done.

II. As the natives began to settle down, many tracks were marked out, making communications easier. The time had come for the mission to leave the sea and settle inland.

So in December 1920, the shore station spread to Borobere, where a station (Marist fathers and sisters) was founded. Borobere, in the local language, means “eastern region”.

The following year, a new foundation was set up at Motuna, on the far west side of Buin, where a well-disposed population, eager to escape the efforts of the Protestants, awaited the arrival of the Catholic missionary.

Finally, six months later, what remained of the old shore station became the Rerebere station, in the central district. Henceforth, the mission's action reached a greater number of souls. The number of annual baptisms increased five-fold.

Chapels, numbering 60 for the entire region, sprung up in the main villages.

Currently almost all young people are now baptized.

Even the elderly have little more than the memory of old customs, and keep up with the times.

But alongside these consolations, there are apprehensions: firstly, the difficulty of taking on the task alone; secondly, the Protestant threat. For each of Buin's three districts, there is only one missionary for thousands of natives. This is why we ask God for the great grace of the arrival of new missionaries

P.S. As you may have guessed, the founding father mentioned in the letter is Father J.B. Poncelet himself.

Butterflies that pay off

• Oceania developed his taste for the natural sciences. His small observatories provided government employees with meteorological information and details of the frequency and severity of earthquakes.

Bougainville's beetles, rats and butterflies fascinated him. Our missionary acquired a truly international reputation as a knowledgeable naturalist. His collecting of large butterflies (Victoria Regis, ornithoptera urvilleana, etc.) were of great interest to American, English and Australian collectors. They didn’t hesitate to compensate this father generously for his shipments. This enabled him to buy books, religious objects and utensils, and build schools and chapels.

He was a regular correspondent for the Natural History Museum in Sydney and the British Museum in London. He frequently sent them some sixty specimens of Bougainville's fauna. Several species of new varieties are named after him: snails, beetles, etc. He discovers a hitherto unknown species of rat. It's a giant rat: the nagora of the Buin natives, which including its tail measures over 67 centimetres and is now called << Unicomys Ponceleti >>. London and Sydney each have a specimen. At the Vatican Museum, you can admire white longhorned beetles with green-speckled elytra from the same source. The males’ horns are almost 20 centimetres in length.

• This specialist of the natural sciences is also a renowned linguist. He can claim credit for restoring life and form to Bougainville's indigenous language of the Southern Telei.
• After 21 years as a missionary, he was granted his first leave of absence in Europe. There, he met up again with his family and friends, including Fathers Alexandre, parish priest of Musson, and Lambert, parish priest of Gérouville.

During this leave, he was received by H.S.H. (His Holiness) Pius XI and H.H. Prince Leopold, a great butterfly collector.

• On December 11, 1933, he left for a second time. He returned to his beloved Buin-Turiboiru mission, where he was in charge of forty villages.

Pacific War 1941-1945

The destruction of the American fleet at Pearl Harbour (in the Hawaiian Islands) on December 7, 1941 triggered the United States' entry into in the Second World War.

Anticipating the invasion of July 1942, Father Poncelet managed to set up an Australian radio non-commissioned officer, Paul Mason. Mason would continue to transmit messages throughout the Japanese occupation. In this way, he informed the Americans of the enemy's maritime movements. Despite enemy pressure, none of the natives would betray him. As General MacArthur himself declared: “Without Mason, we wouldn't have won Guadalcanal.

It was in the middle of the Solomon archipelago, between July and September 1942, that the extreme advance of the Japanese invasion took place. While the material damage caused by the bombardments and fighting was great, as was the moral damage caused by the prolonged stay of the troops, the loss of missionary personnel was particularly heavy. Bishop Wade lost thirteen apostolic collaborators. The Japanese demolished churches and houses to make shelters in the bush and build airfields on their sites; the Americans burned the rest.

It was in September 1942 that the Buin fathers and sisters of South Bougainville were taken prisoner, abducted from their various stations and taken successively to three Japanese camps.

We know the names of the first captive missionaries. They are Fathers Boch (French), Lepping (American), Schank (Luxembourger) and Poncelet (Belgian). They were accompanied by a brother and seven Marist sisters. They were taken by boat to the Rabaul camp (New Guinea), 500 kilometres away.

They stayed there for five months. These were the hardest months of their internment: insufficient food (no meat, no fish, no salt, only a meagre portion of rice), forced labour, no doctors, daily raids by American planes, the proximity of numerous troops, a complete lack of news, never being allowed to celebrate mass even at Christmas.

On February 28, 1943, this group was sent to the Vunapope camp, a short distance from Rabaul. There, behind barbed wire, housed in huts and tents, were 272 people: 140 fathers, brothers and sisters of all nations, a few Europeans, many part Europeans and natives of the Mission.

The Vunapope station was destroyed by an American air attack at the end of February 1944. The internment camp itself was demolished. However, the prisoners had to remain there for another three long months, without shelter of any kind except the underground shelters.

On June 6, 1944, the survivors were led into an 80-meter-deep ravine in a corner of the primeval forest known as Ramale. The internees had to dig 600 meters of trenches in the hillside to protect themselves against air attacks. In a confined space, 300 people were parked, new missionaries and other internees having been brought in. No clothes or shoes were distributed, and there was never any news from the outside world. Throughout the camp's existence, 25 missionaries died.

On September 13, 1945, the first Australian soldiers arrived: liberation after exactly 3 years of captivity. The army provided supplies and the Australian Red Cross provided relief. Gradually, the repatriations began to take place over several months, due to the work involved in evacuating the Japanese prisoners (20,000 in Bougainville and 100,000 in New Britain) and the lack of available means of transport. The medical authorities demanded a long rest for most of the missionaries before they could resume their activities.

Father Poncelet rested for several months at Villa-Maria in Sydney. During this enforced rest, he received news from Buin. The news was not good.

Some Buin catechists wrote to me:

“What desolation! Nothing remains of our stations but the bush, which is growing back and covering everything. Seven of the catechists I counted on are dead. Around my station alone, a third of the population has died, mostly from epidemics. Our poor little native sisters had the greatest ordeal imaginable: their father in charge (myself) having been taken away by the Japs, the Marist Mother Superior in charge having had to leave them to be taken away by an American submarine.

Bishop Wade released the sisters from their promises and sent them back to their families. The bishop himself was taken aboard another American submarine. The little sisters endured the yellow invasion for more than three years. There were eight of them. In all, two died; three stayed with their families and another three found a way to reunite with the village chief catechist. And the fathers, sisters and brothers who were left behind in Bougainville, prisoners of the Japs, have told me only of their great satisfaction with the people of Buin: not one traitor, and all of them secretly helping and feeding the fathers as much as they could.

The lists of the dead grow longer: the surviving catechists put the registers in order...

The resumption of our mission ministry is not imminent: firstly, because the military authorities have not yet granted permission to the whites to return, and secondly, because the country is still under military administration and the Japanese have not yet been removed.”

Despite his failing health and the reappearance of malaria, he returned to his mission in Buin in 1946. In the absence of Bishop Wade, he was appointed Provicar Apostolic. In Australia, Bishop Wade was busy reorganizing the North Pacific missions. He set out to visit all the stations in the vicariate, which was then under full reconstruction. He saw the mission staff, a total of 90 people spread over 25 stations.

This reconstruction took up the years 1946-47-48. As usual, Father devoted himself to it with admirable tenacity.

As a result, 1949, the fiftieth anniversary of the mission, was a true golden jubilee celebrated by all the rebuilt stations. That same year, he was granted his second holiday in Belgium and transferred from the North Solomons to Differt, where he was appointed superior.

Father General simultaneously appointed him Superior of Differt and Provincial Delegate for Belgium and Luxembourg.

As soon as he arrived, he insisted on the quality of the studies. Belgian curricula were followed in their entirety. He organised official school inspections. He ensured the quality of the teaching staff and sent several fathers to study at the University of Louvain.

The first officially recognized diplomas were awarded in 1952.

On July 10, 11 and 12 1954, he organized a triduum in honour of Saint Peter Chanel, canonized in April.

In 1956, he organized a triduum dedicated to the recently beatified Father Champagnat.

Through the intervention of the Royal Australian Navy, his status as a political prisoner of the Japanese was finally recognized. He was the only Belgian in this situation. He receives a pension, the arrears of which he spent entirely to the faithful restoration of the chapel's paintings. Mr Prosper worked diligently and skilfully for a whole year.

Several Marist missionary bishops (Bishop Wade, Bishop Bresson, Bishop Aubin, Bishop Martin, Bishop Mangers) were fraternally welcomed throughout his term of office. He encouraged the fathers to serve small parishes deprived of a resident priest, such as Bébange, Wolkrange, Turpange, Insenborn, Mecher etc...

Father Gonner was appointed chaplain to the Niedercorn hospital.

In 1956, he completed his term as superior at Differt. Father General retained him as provincial delegate, with residence at Notre-Dame du Buisson in Gembloux, where Father Damiany was superior.

He accepted for the Fathers the service of the parishes of Sauvenière in the diocese of Namur, and Petit-Rosier in the diocese of Malines, while taking on the role of Sunday vicar at Grand-Leez for himself.

His health deteriorated. Faced with the impossibility of treating him effectively at home, the faculty and his superiors sent him to the south of France, to Mar-Vivo near Seyne-sur-Mer (Var), where the Society owned a retirement home. After a few months' improvement, his condition suddenly worsened. He was suffering from leukemia.

On December 29, 1958 he died surrounded by confreres at around 3 o'clock in the afternoon. He was in his fiftieth year of religious life, and had served the Pacific missions for over forty years.

His funeral took place on December 31 at Mar-Vivo, with members of his family, the provincial fathers of Paris and Lyon, and many friends attending. Father Govaerts represented Differt.

As soon as school was back from the holidays on January 8, Nazareth remembered him by organizing a funeral service, with a great turnout of priests from the region.

An old boy, among others, recalled his endearing personality:

“By his kindness, by his constant welcoming attitude, by his indulgence of our antics, he compelled us all to love him. Remember, when we were received in his office, how delicate he was. He was constantly concerned for others. His attachment to the Gaumais region and to his good Maison de Differt was as solid as a rock. It was a visible pleasure for him to speak his dialect on occasion.”