Marists in Oceania: A Mission Without Borders
Fr Jean-Claude Colin, the founder of the Society of Mary, was strongly convicted the the Society was called “to do great things” and to work “in any corner of the world”. When, in 1836, the Society of Mary received from the Holy See the responsibility of evangelising Oceania, Jean-Claude Colin, freshly elected Superior General, started sending missionaries. Between 1836 an 1849, 15 groups left France to go to the missions in Oceania: New Caledonia, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinee, Fiji islands, Wallis et Futuna, Tonga, Vanuatu, Samoa and New Zealand. The mission was undertaken with great spiritual conviction and human courage. Many of the Marist Missionaries recorded what they observed, they kept their logbooks, they said how they were received, they stated the difficulties they met, they recorded the works they undertook. Their vast collection of letters and logbooks are conserved in the Society’s General Archives in Rome. They have been and still are an important source for historians and anthropologists studying the cultures on the Islands in the South Pacific. In 2009 the Society published “Lettres reçues d’Océanie”: a critical edition with annotations – 10 volumes – containing 1365 letters written by the Marist missionaries to the General Administration of the Society of Mary between 1836 and 1854.
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Lettres reçues d’Océanie
These letters echo stories of gifts received, of conversions, of missionary instructions, of encounters with the navy, and even of tensions with Protestants. Yet beyond the obvious, they also open a window onto daily life: the discovery of languages and customs, the rituals of death and marriage, and only rarely a mention of martyrdom.
The first decades of Marist evangelization in Oceania must be understood within a double horizon: on the one hand, the Oceanian context—remote islands, far from Europe, discovered late and scattered in the vast immensity of the Pacific; and on the other, the religious and missionary awakening that set the Christian world ablaze, inspiring generous apostles to dedicate their lives to the salvation of peoples at the ends of the earth.
Fr. Charles Girard, a member of the Society of Mary and a native of Louisiana, USA, holds a doctorate in medieval French from Tulane University, New Orleans. He transcribed, annotated, and indexed the 1,365 letters received from Oceania by the General Administration of the Marist Fathers between 1836 and 1854. Preserved in the archives of the Marist Fathers in Rome, these letters are now available in a ten-volume critical edition.
Today, the mission continues!
Oceania is not just a chapter in our history—it is a living testament to the courage, faith, and dedication of the first Marist missionaries. Their footsteps still echo across the Pacific, reminding us that the mission continues today. The Marist presence in Oceania remains a vital expression of our call to bring Christ’s mercy to every corner of the world.