{"story":["When Pompallier arrived, Protestant missionaries had been in New Zealand for more than two decades. The Church Missionary Society had come in 1814 and the Wesleyans in 1823, and neither had worked beyond the far north before the early 1830s. A few Catholics were already living in the Hokianga, among them Thomas Poynton, a former convict who ran a store and sawmill there with his wife Mary from 1828. Pompallier was born in Lyons on 11 December 1801. He spent a time as a dragoon officer, entered the priesthood in 1829, and became closely linked with the young Society of Mary, the Marists. Rome appointed him the first vicar apostolic of Western Oceania, and he was consecrated a bishop on 30 June 1836.","He left Le Havre on 24 December 1836 with seven Marists, four of them priests and three of them brothers. Fever killed one priest during the voyage, and others were left at Wallis and at Futuna. From Sydney, Pompallier went on with the priest Louis Catherin Servant and Brother Michel Colombon, and on 10 January 1838 reached the Poyntons' home on the Hokianga. Three days later the party celebrated their first Mass at Tōtara Point. None of the missionaries had spoken English or Māori on leaving Europe, but Pompallier picked up both quickly. He was 36, about six feet tall, and the first bishop Māori had seen. They called his faith Pikopo, from the word 'episcopal'.","His arrival worried James Busby, the British Resident, who took it as a sign that France might try to colonise New Zealand. The Protestant missions disliked the newcomers on religious grounds, and the fact that the priests were French added a national rivalry. Māori made their own use of the competition. When one hapū (kin group) turned Catholic, a rival group would often turn Anglican, and some communities spread their members across all three churches. Pompallier told his priests to build Catholic teaching around existing Māori custom, and not to dismiss Māori ideas as un-Christian merely for being non-European.","In 1839 he moved his headquarters to Kororāreka, and by 1844 there were stations from Hokianga to Akaroa, Wellington and Ōtaki. A printing press arrived from Europe in 1841 and turned out prayer books and hymns in Māori. By 1843 the mission claimed about 45,000 Māori converts. At Waitangi in February 1840 Pompallier pressed William Hobson, the lieutenant-governor, for a promise to protect Catholics. Henry Williams then told the gathering that the faiths of England, of the Wesleyans and of Rome, \"and also the Maori custom\", would be protected alike. That pledge is sometimes called the unwritten 'fourth article' of the Treaty. Pompallier left New Zealand in 1868 and died near Paris in 1871. His remains came home in 2002 and now lie at Motutī, on the north side of the Hokianga Harbour."],"sources":[{"title":"Jean Baptiste Pompallier","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1p23/pompallier-jean-baptiste-francois","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Catholic missionaries arrive in Hokianga","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/arrival-of-bishop-pompallier-at-hokianga","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Jean Baptiste Pompallier","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/people/bishop-jean-baptiste-francois-pompallier","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Wesleyans and Catholics","url":"https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/missionaries/new-arrivals","publisher":"NZHistory, Manatū Taonga"},{"title":"Catholic Church – First Catholic missionaries","url":"https://teara.govt.nz/en/catholic-church/page-1","publisher":"Te Ara — the Encyclopedia of New Zealand"},{"title":"Jean-Baptiste Pompallier","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Pompallier","publisher":"Wikipedia"}]}