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Pompallier returns
The remains of Bishop Jean-Baptiste Pompallier were exhumed from his grave in France and returned to NZ about 160 years after he left NZ to return to France . After a lengthy pilgrimage, his bones were finally interred at the Church of St Mary ‘s at Motuti in the Hokianga in April 2002.
Bishop Pompallier occupies an important slice of New Zealand history including his presence at the historic 1840 signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, the founding document of the New Zealand nation. He established his headquarters as leader of the Catholic Mission to Western Oceania in Russell, described as the hell hole of the South Pacific Today in Russell, Pompallier is our oldest industrial building in New Zealand and is named after Bishop Pompallier.
The sole survivor of a once-crowded mission compound, Pompallier Mission is a piece of French provincial architecture, unique in Australasia . It was here that French Catholic missionaries printed religious texts in the Maori language. Visitors to Pompallier today are given hands-on experiences of pioneer printing and tanning while they hear the fascinating stories of the people who first worked here and their relationships with Maori, English settlers and Protestant missionaries
Contact: Kate Martin, NZ Historic Places Trust, www.historic.org.nz
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