LAST week we looked at the arrival of the Catholic missionaries on Lakeba, Lau, in August of 1844 on board the Adolphe. They included Bishop Bataillon, Father Breheret, Father Joseph-Francois Roulleaux, Brother Perol, the two Wallisian catechists and the Fijian catechist Mosese Monatavai. They found themselves facing rejections, uncertainty, and opposition. The missionaries were refused a place on Lakeba, turned away from Namuka and eventually returned to Lakeba, where the struggle to establish the Catholic mission continued. But what did those first 15 months actually look like for the missionaries? One of the clearest answers comes from a letter.
On 12 November 1845, Father Joseph-Francois Roulleaux wrote to Father Jean-Claude Colin who was the Superior General of the Society of Mary.
Writing from Lakeba, Father Roulleaux gave an account of the Catholic mission during its first 15 months — not from the perspective of history looking back, but from the middle of the struggle itself. This letter tells us what survival really looked like.
It was not simply about remaining on the island.
It meant living with uncertainty. It meant sickness and hunger. It meant watching converts come and go. It meant trying to maintain a small Catholic community with little food, little security and almost no certainty about what the following day would bring.
Father Roulleaux began his letter without celebration.
“I have nothing truly consoling to tell you of our little mission in Fiji, except a lot of suffering and contradictions,” he stated.
He went on to describe their daily existence – scorn, insults, persecution, sickness, hunger and loss.
Then came an extraordinary admission.
“We have been really small, and we are still small, or to express it better, we are still nothing.”
His numbers told the story. Six people had been baptised. Three had died. Six potential baptists had been instructed, but four had returned to their former faith or to paganism. The mission was tiny. But it was there.
A mission within a mission
Father Roulleaux’s account takes us back to the beginning.
After leaving Tonga on July 30, 1844, the missionaries reached the eastern islands of Fiji and first attempted to establish themselves at Lakeba.
As mentioned in part II, they were met by an existing religious influence that had already warned the chiefs against them, and the missionaries soon found themselves having to leave and search elsewhere.
They travelled to Namuka, where they were eventually received by the people and celebrated Mass for the first time on August 15, 1844.
But Namuka was not considered suitable for the mission after the villagers had been warned by Tui Nayau under the influence of King George of Tonga that the Catholic missionaries were not welcome on the island.
So Father Roulleaux and the others returned to Lakeba. There, he said, he found the Catholic catechist Mosese Monatavai, who had already been left on the island years earlier in anticipation of the arrival of priests.
He said Mosese had endured persecution, isolation and hunger because of his faith.
Father Roulleaux described the place where he was living as a poor shack. But what he did not know was that this humble dwelling would become the mission house and chapel of the Catholic mission for the next 11 months. Inside that hut, the missionaries created a small altar.
Father Roulleaux celebrated Mass there for the first time on the feast of St Joachim.
He described the poverty of the place by comparing it to the stable at Bethlehem. But there was something else there – the prayers of the small community that had already begun to form.
He was moved to tears hearing Mosese and his companion Filipo Biu praying and singing hymns in iTaukei.
Survival became physical
The mission’s struggle became one for food and health.
When opposition intensified, orders were given that nobody should bring the missionaries food or assist them in building. Their supplies were cut off.
Their main source of food at the time were yams which was planted by Monatavai and his convert, but that was cut off too when it was stolen one night while the missionaries were asleep.
The Wallisian catechists went whole days without eating.
Father Roulleaux wrote that they were reduced to pawpaw which was something people normally ate in times of famine, which their converts searched for in the bush. Eventually, the hunger led to sickness.
Both Father Roulleaux and Father Breheret became ill.
For Father Roulleaux, the condition became serious. His strength had already been weakened by poor food and hunger, and he believed his life was in danger. Yet the mission continued.
Survival of the faith
The pressure also fell heavily on the converts.
Two young potential Baptists who had shown interest in Catholicism were subjected to pressure from their relatives and chiefly authorities.
The missionaries watched as their small community was tested again. The struggle was no longer simply whether the French priests could remain in Lakeba.
It was whether the small Catholic community around them could survive. Father Roulleaux’s letter repeatedly shows how closely religion and chiefly authority were connected.
The missionaries needed permission to remain.
Their converts needed protection. And powerful individuals could influence whether Catholic teaching was accepted or rejected.
Father Roulleaux’s letter described the intense hostility shown by the Tongan chief Finau, who stood at the centre of the opposition to the Catholic mission.
He attempted to persuade the missionaries to leave, encouraged opposition against them and used his influence to pressure their converts.
Then Finau died.
And Father Roulleaux wrote words that marked a turning point, “So, a new order of things began.”
For the first time, the missionaries felt able to breathe.
The people of Lakeba, freed from the fear of Finau’s authority, began to reconsider their treatment of the Catholics.
The mission could begin to take hold. But survival had already changed them.
They had learned that establishing a mission was not simply about preaching. It required endurance.
It required relationships. It required protection from the people of the vanua. And sometimes, it required simply refusing to leave.
By the end of his letter, Father Roulleaux was already describing another stage of their struggle — the construction of a new house and the St Martin de Porres Catholic Parish on the land that was gifted to them by Tui Nayau Taliai.
The missionaries and their converts went into the mountains and among the rocks to find timber. They carried the heavy pieces on their shoulders and worked together to build.
The little mission was beginning to acquire substance. It had survived its first 15 months. But 15 months of change is one thing. Navigating what comes next is another.
n In Part Four next week, we’ll explore what survival could look like for the Catholic Church.
