UPSTAIRS / DOWNSTAIRS
Part 1
The Marist Brothers in the Life
of the
French Catholic Mission
This paper was delivered by Brother Bryan Stanaway on behalf of its author, Brother Edward Clisby, to the Symposium organised by the New Zealand Historic Places Trust on “The French Place in the Bay of Islands” held in Russell in January 2004.
When Bishop Pompallier
decided to move the centre of his missionary vicariate from Hokianga to
the Bay of Islands, he intended to found an establishment which would
serve as the religious, administrative, and supply centre for an area
embracing most of the central and western South Pacific. When in 1843
this vast territory had been reduced by Rome to the confines of New Zealand,
the station at Kororareka continued to serve these functions, for the
bishop, the Marists, and the various people connected with the Catholic
mission. For the Marist priests and brothers it was also the residence
of a religious community, and the closest institution to a monastery in
New Zealand in the first part of the nineteenth century.
For the smooth and efficient functioning of this establishment, commonly
referred to as the procure, a great deal depended on the work of the brothers
of the community. This paper looks at these men and the part they played
in the life of the mission at the Bay. More particularly, it focuses on
one of them, Emery Roudet, who was stationed here from 1841 to 1848, that
is, from its real beginnings as a procure to its end as such, with the
transfer of the centre of the diocese to Auckland.
Pierre Roudet was born on 28 January 1819 at Bevenais, a village to the northwest of Grenoble, in the department of Isere. Both parents died while he was quite young, but they left him well-provided for. After his primary schooling he was apprenticed to a tailor. At the age of 20, inspired by reports coming back from the recently founded Catholic missions of the South Pacific, Pierre decided that he had a vocation as a catechist in the missions. He was not looking towards priesthood.
So in June 1839 he applied for admission to the religious congregation of the Little Brothers of Mary which had already provided men for the first two missionary groups which the Society of Mary had sent out to Oceania. He was familiar with the brothers from their school in nearby La Cote-St-Andre.
The Little Brothers of Mary, also known as the Brothers of Mary, and more simply as the Marist Brothers, was one of a number of congregations of teaching brothers (ie men in religious vows but not ordained) founded in France in the wake of the Revolution and the Napoleonic wars to help repair the shattered primary school system and reclaim the rural areas of the country for the Church.
Pompallier House at Russell, Bay of Islands
Pen and wash sketch by John Pearse of
‘Roman Catholic priests in the Colony’.
(Sketch: Alexander Turnbull Library