An Edict of Toleration was decreed by King Kamehameha III of Hawaii on July 17, 1839. This allowed for the establishment of the Hawaii Catholic Church. The religious traditions of ancient Hawaii were preferred by Kings Kamehameha and Kamehameha II, with the Catholic Church being suppressed in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Later, during the regency of Kaahumanu and the child king Kamehameha III, the Congregational church was the preferred Christian denomination.

By the 1830s, Catholicism was illegal in Hawaii. In answer to the expulsion of French priests, the French government sent Cyrille Pierre Théodore Laplace on the frigate Artémise to use diplomacy and force to reverse the new laws.

Kamehameha III issued the edict under the threat of force by the French government, as the French were seeking to protect the work of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. The 1840 Constitution later enshrined religious liberty. Under this threat from the French, King Kamehameha III paid $20,000 in compensation for the deportation of priests and the incarceration and torture of converts.