Jean-Baptiste Pompallier

Jean-Baptiste François Pompallier (11 December 1801 – 21 December 1871) was the first Catholic bishop in New Zealand and, with priests and brothers of the Marist order, he organised the Catholic Church throughout the country. He was born in Lyon, France. He arrived in New Zealand in 1838 as Vicar Apostolic of Western Oceania, but made New Zealand the centre of his operations.

In 1848, he became the first Catholic Bishop of Auckland. He returned to France in 1868 and died in Puteaux, near Paris, on 21 December 1871, aged 70. His exhumed remains were returned to New Zealand in 2001, and they were re-interred under the altar at St Mary's, Motuti, in 2002. People can visit his remains.

Jean Baptiste François Pompallier was born in Lyon, France, on 11 December 1801, the son of Pierre and Françoise Pompallier. Pierre Pompallier died less than a year later. His mother then married Jean-Marie Solichon, a Lyon silk manufacturer. François received the education of a gentleman. For a time, he served as an officer of dragoons. In 1825 he entered the Lyon seminary, was ordained in 1829, and served for seven years in the archdiocese of Lyon, becoming closely acquainted with the Society of Mary founded by Jean-Claude Colin.

On Trinity Sunday 1835, Pope Gregory XVI created the Vicariate Apostolic of Western Oceania, splitting it from the territory entrusted to the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary {Picpus Fathers} as the area had proven too large. On 29 April 1836, he formally approved the "Priests of the Society of Mary" or Marist Fathers as a religious institute and assigned to it the mission of Western Oceania. Pompallier, who had been closely associated with the Marists, was named Vicar Apostolic, and consecrated Titular Bishop of Maronea on 30 June 1836.

On 24 December 1836, Pompallier sailed from Le Havre on the Delphine. He was accompanied by five Marist missioners. Two of Marcellin Champagnat's Petits Frères de Marie (Little Brothers of Mary), led by Peter Chanel. They arrived in early January at the Canary Islands, where Father Claude Bret caught a fever and died at sea some two months later. They arrived at Valparaíso on 28 June, where the "Picpus Fathers", who had care of the Apostolic Vicariate of Eastern Oceania, had their base.

On 10 August 1837, Pompallier and the remaining priests and brothers embarked on the Europa. The Europa stopped at Mangareva in the Gambier Islands on 13 September where Pompallier met Bishop Rouchouze, Vicar Apostolic for Eastern Oceania. On 21 September they reached Tahiti.

They left Tahiti on 23 October on the schooner Raiatea to drop off Father Pierre Bataillon and Brother Joseph-Xavier at Wallis, the main seat of the mission in Tonga. The missionaries arrived at Vava’u but rumours of an ambushed scared the men into hiding. A woman by the Kalisi Tuipulotu hid the men in her house until it was safe enough to continued their journey to Futuna, arriving on 8 November 1837. There Chanel, a French lay brother Marie-Nizier Delorme, and an English Protestant layman named Thomas Boag, who had been resident on the island and had joined them at Tonga seeking passage to Futuna, left the group.

Pompallier travelled to Rotuma but was unable to leave anyone there. On arrival in Sydney in New South Wales he learned much about the New Zealand mission from Bishop John Polding.