THE PASSIONIST MISSION ON (1843-1847)

STEFANO GIROLA EXAMINES AN EARLY, ILL-FATED CATHOLIC MISSION ON STRADBROKE ISLAND. tradbroke Island or Minjerribah occupies Then there was the problem of getting an important place in the history of Roman accustomed to living in a recently colonised SCatholicism in . It was here, in area, in a sub-tropical climate that was very 1843, that the first Catholic mission among different from the climate of southern Europe. Australia’s Indigenous peoples was founded.1 These priests had always lived in the sheltered life of European seminaries or convents and had At that time, the was beginning contemplative or intellectual habits; they lacked to establish its own hierarchy in the Australian practical skills that were necessary for their colonies. The Church had been dependent until enterprise. then on the far-away bishop of Mauritius, but on 5 April 1842, Pope Gregory XVI appointed Moreover, Moreton Bay was not the English Benedictine John Polding (1794- ‘uncontaminated’ place, far from European 1877) as the head of the new metropolitan and influence, which they thought would have offered archiepiscopal See of . The new prelate the best conditions for the announcement of believed that his Church had overlooked for too the Gospel and the teaching of the Catechism. long the evangelisation of Aborigines.2 The missionaries quickly realised that contact between Indigenous peoples and the Europeans In 1842 Polding travelled to Rome to discuss living in the Bay had begun to produce the same his plans with the Pope, who was a strong negative effects as in the south of the colony. supporter of missionary work. Polding was able to recruit for his mission four priests of the There was conflict about the status of the Congregation of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus mission, its dependence on Rome, and the Christ (Passionists): the Italians Raimondo Vaccari extent of the Sydney archdiocese’s authority. of Rome, Luigi Pesciaroli of Canepina (Viterbo), The Passionists, for instance, would only baptise Maurizio Lencioni of Lucca and the Swiss Joseph children on the verge of death, whereas Polding Snell.3 The four missionaries arrived in Sydney argued for a more flexible interpretation of the on 9 March 1843, and then travelled north to moral theology taught in the seminaries. Stradbroke Island, opposite the small town of Brisbane, still part of the colony of New South Besides these factors, which were recognised Wales. The wooden pier at Dunwich where they at the time, today we focus on other causes of landed in May 1843 had been built by convicts, the failure of this Catholic mission: in particular who had recently left the island. an underlying incapacity to overcome the great intercultural barriers. The mission was undertaken with exaggerated expectations of easy success, but these did By the time the Passionists arrived on Stradbroke, not last long. Pesciaroli, Lencioni and Snell Aborigines were wary of the Europeans. Even abandoned the island in 1846, when the failure though they felt that the motivations of the of their efforts ‘to convert and civilise the missionaries were different from those of the Aborigines’ became evident. Vaccari stayed on other colonists, regarded alone for another year, spending more time in the missions mainly as an opportunity to obtain obtaining police protection against the growing resources for their survival, which was ever hostility of the Aborigines than in spreading the more threatened by the advancement of the Word.4 From the missionaries’ point of view, their colonial frontier. When the missionaries were experience ended with a bitter sense of failure.5 able to satisfy their demands, the Aborigines What were the reasons for this outcome? First appeared to be friendlier and willing to listen to and foremost was their lack of preparation. Only religious instructions; otherwise they showed Fr Snell could understand English and all had indifference if not downright hostility. The fact great difficulty trying to communicate with the that the missionaries accused the Aborigines of three different groups of Aborigines (Noonuccal, ingratitude and opportunism reveals that they did Goenpuls and Nughie). not understand that for Indigenous peoples in that context it was hard to distinguish between

FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 17 the missionaries and completely forgotten by the local Aborigines. other colonisers. One hundred and fifty years after their arrival on the island, in 1993, a group of Indigenous people Also the Aborigines’ celebrated this anniversary with a Mass and a reluctance to give up public ceremony, dedicating a plaque to the four the semi-nomadic life priests, which can still be seen near the small of hunter-gatherers port of Dunwich. in the bush they had practised for thousands John Mackenzie-Smith has stressed a positive of years to adopt a aspect of the legacy of the missionaries: ‘the sedentary, tedious honest and earnest Passionist presence life as small farmers encouraged the Aborigines to regain their was viewed by the confidence in Europeans who had hitherto missionaries as inborn betrayed, deceived and maltreated them’.8 laziness and lack of a Also for this reason, the story of the first ‘work ethic’.6 Moreover, Catholic mission in Australia should be part of according to the the historical memory of Stradbroke Island or Passionists, Aboriginal Minjerribah. cultural expressions such as body painting REFERENCES or propitiatory 1. O Thorpe, First Catholic mission to the Australian Aborigines, ceremonies before Pellegrini, Sydney, 1950. hunting and fishing 2. J Harris, One blood: 200 years of Aboriginal encounter with expeditions revealed Christianity: a story of hope, 2nd. ed. Albatross Books, a barbarian nature Sutherland, NSW, 1994, p. 114. which was impossible 3. Raimondo Vaccari was born in Rome in 1801 and became a Passionist in 1823. When he met Bishop Polding in Rome in the Above: Father to eradicate. It should be noted that it would early 1840s, Vaccari was the Rector of the Retreat of St. Angelo Maurizio Lencioni, one take more than a century before strategies such at Vetralla, near Viterbo, in the region of Latium. Luigi Pesciaroli of the Passionists sent was born at Canepina, in the province of Viterbo, in 1806. A as the ‘enculturation of the Gospel’, based on a former diocesan priest, he was thirty-four when he became a to Stradbroke more positive view of Indigenous cultures, were Passionist. Soon after this, he responded positively to Polding’s accepted as a viable missionary methodology. appeal for missionaries to Australia. Maurizio Lencioni was born Image: © Adelaide in Lucca, Tuscany, in 1814. He joined the Passionists when he Catholic Archdiocesan was eighteen and made his religious profession in 1833. He Archives, kindly The missionaries saw the children as their best was ordained as a priest in 1837 in Ancona, central Italy and supplied by Co.As. hope. The priests were convinced that if they was living in Rome when he met Polding. The oldest of the four managed to separate them from their parents men was Father Joseph Snell. He was born in Lyons in 1802 to It. Italian Historical non-Catholic parents but converted to Catholicism when he was Society, . in order to educate them, slowly but surely they twenty-three. Soon after this, he joined the Passionists at Monte would be able to create a stable, Christian, Argentario in Tuscany. After his ordination in 1830 he was sent ‘civilised’ community. In 1844 they built a little to Bulgaria where he stayed in the diocese of Nicopoli for the next eight years (Thorpe, pp. 23-9). school and during some periods, probably 4. When Pesciaroli, Lencioni and Snell left Stradbroke, they when the scarcity of resources made it difficult intended to go to Western Australia. However, they had to to support the children, the adults would leave change their plans and initially they all remained in the diocese of Adelaide. In 1848 Pesciaroli went to Mount Baker as assistant them at the mission, but they would return to priest. Lencioni went to reside at Bishop Murphy’s House in reclaim the children when conditions improved. Adelaide and Snell went to Morphett Vale as priest-in-charge. This situation was frustrating for the four priests In 1849 Pesciaroli returned to Europe. He died in Italy in 1874. Fr Snell remained in the diocese of Adelaide as a parish priest and also for Polding, who even reached the point and died in 1861, while Fr Lencioni died in Adelaide in 1864, of taking some children of mixed descent with when he was about to return to Europe. In 1847 Vaccari also him to Sydney, provoking the anger of family left the Stradbroke mission forever, disillusioned and mentally exhausted. Nothing was heard of him for 13 years, until he was members who threatened to kill the missionaries found working as a gardener under an assumed English name if they did not bring them back.7 The idea of in a Franciscan convent in Lima, Peru. He eventually joined the separating children from their parents to ‘convert Franciscans (Thorpe, pp. 147-71). and civilise’ them had grave consequences on 5. ‘Of the failures, the largest in scale and the most persevering was that of the Passionists at Moreton Bay. It also had most Australian society, as is evident from the tragedy repercussions for the general morale and organization of the of the ‘stolen generation’. Church in Australia’ (TL Suttor, Hierarchy and democracy in Australia 1788-1870: the formation of Australian Catholicism, Eventually, a climate of mutual mistrust between Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1965, p. 98). The failure of the Passionist mission on Stradbroke is also discussed in RM the Passionists and the Aborigines developed Wiltgen, The founding of the Roman Catholic Church in Oceania on the mission, which certainly contributed to its 1825 to 1850, Australian National University Press, Canberra, early demise. 1979, pp. 360-7. 6. According to the missionaries, Aborigines were ‘by nature inconstant and prone to laziness’ (PF Moran, History of Nothing remains today of the little wooden church the Catholic Church in Australasia: from authentic sources: and the school that the priests built at Dunwich, containing many original and official documents in connection but the Passionist fathers have not been with the Church in Australasia, besides others from the archives

18 UQ LIBRARY of Rome, Westminster, and Dublin, which are here presented to DR STEFANO GIROLA obtained his BA at the the public for the first time, Frank Coffee, Sydney, 1896, p. 412). University of Milan in 1994. In 2007 he received 7. GM Forster, ‘To Protect, to instruct, to make disciples of Christ: Aborigines, Islanders and Doctor Polding.’ Australasian Catholic his PhD in Studies in Religion from UQ. His Record, vol. 56, no. 2, 1979, pp. 166-7. thesis was on ‘The policies and attitudes of 8. J Mackenzie-Smith, ‘Dunwich: convicts, Passionists and the Catholic Church with regard to Australia’s shattered hopes’, in Brisbane: Moreton Bay matters, Brisbane Indigenous peoples, 1885-1967’. He lectures in History Group, Brisbane, 2002, p. 8. Church History at Australian Catholic University and teaches Italian at the Institute of Modern Languages. He has recently been awarded the ‘Abbot Placid Spearritt Memorial Scholarship’ by the Benedictine Community of New Norcia.

DELVING DEEP INTO AUSTRALIAN NEWSPAPERS WITH AND SUBJECT INDEXES

The National Library’s service Trove (trove.nla.gov.au) has been described as ‘the search engine for all things Aussie’. It offers the ability to search and sort millions of records from libraries and cultural institutions across the country.

Included in Trove is the National Library’s groundbreaking digitised newspapers service. Since 2008 the Library has been making digital images of Australian newspapers, dating from 1803, available online. But what is most remarkable about this service is that special computer software was used to convert the letters on the newspaper pages to searchable text. Of course this automated process is prone to errors, so anyone who uses the service is encouraged to submit corrections. This has proven to be popular, with tens of thousands of corrections submitted daily.

No longer faced with the difficulties of dusty volumes or microfilm readers, readers have delved into the newspaper content for a wide variety of reasons. Stories range from rail enthusiasts uncovering details of little- known railway lines to knitters all over the world trying out patterns first published decades ago.

Historians have long appreciated the historical worth of newspapers and have worked hard to make them more accessible. For example, the subject index Moreton Bay in the news 1841–1860, complied by Rod Fisher and John Schiavo and published by Above: Extract from the Brisbane History Group, was a helpful reference used in conjunction with Trove to identify and locate Moreton Bay in the information for the accompanying Passionist Mission article. Such resources may prove to have new and news, dealing with expanded uses in conjunction with the newspaper service in Trove. Stradbroke Island.

AMANDA WINTERS is a librarian in the Fryer Library. She holds a BA from Valparaiso University in Indiana, USA, and a Master of Information Management from QUT.

FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 19