A Guide to Recourds on Microfilm
This catalogue assembles information on the
microfilmed
records of the Catholic Church in islands of the Western Pacific
entrusted to
the Marist Order as a field of evangelisation. Since 1966, the islands
have
been subdivided into two archdioceses and six dioceses. The
archdioceses,
called Suva and Noumea,
respectively cover the islands of Fiji,
including Rotuma, and New Caledonia
and its dependencies. The dioceses are those of Wallis and Futuna,
Tonga, Samoa
and Tokelau, Vanuatu
(formerly New Hebrides), North Solomons (with
Headquarters at Kieta) and South Solomons (with Headquarters at Honiara).
The Marist Order (Society of Mary) which was canonically approved in
April 1836 after the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the
Faith in Rome
had sought means of evangelising the western half of the Pacific. The
eastern
half had been entrusted to the Sacred Heart (Picpus) Order in 1833. The
Marists,
originally an informal grouping of diocesan priests, accepted the task
in the
Western Pacific provided they were recognised as an independent
religious
order.
The first Marists sailed for the Pacific in December 1836
under the leadership of Bishop Jean-Baptiste Pompallier. The Bishop
established
his headquarters in New Zealand
while some of his missionaries were left on the islands of Wallis and
Futuna. However,
the huge vicariate under Pompallier's care soon proved too large to be
practicable and in 1842 part of it was carved off to form the Vicariate
of
Central Oceania. This new vicariate comprised the islands of Wallis, Futuna,
New Caledonia, New
Hebrides, Samoa, Tokelau,
Fiji,
Rotuma, Niue and the Gilbert Islands.
A few years later, before any Marist missionaries had set foot there,
the Gilbert Islands were made part of a new
vicariate of Micronesia.
The records described in this catalogue cover the islands embraced by
the
Vicariate of Central Oceania excluding the Gilbert Islands,
plus the North and South Solomons which were reinstated as Marist
responsibilities in 1897-98.
As will be seen, the catalogue contains eight separate
inventories. Seven of them relate to records of the Marist Order copied
on nearly
400 reels of microfilm under a project carried out by Father Theo B.
Cook, SM,
while serving as archivist of the Oceania Marist Province Archives, Suva,
Fiji. The
other inventory
concerns similar records microfilmed in 1972 by the Pacific Manuscripts
Bureau.
The microfilms containing the material described in the
first seven inventories are numbered OMPA 1 to OMPA 400 inclusive
except that numbers
OMPA 75 to OMPA 79 were not used. The microfilms of the remainder bear
the
prefix PMB. The inventories are individually paginated. They appear in
the
volume as follows:
OMPA
1 - 25: Diocese of Tonga
26 -
74: Diocese of Samoa
and Tokelau
80
- 100: Marist Fathers, Rome
101 -
126: Diocese of Wallis and Futuna
127 -
178: Diocese of Port Vila
179 -
360: Archdioceses of Noumea
361 -
400: Oceania
Marist Province
Archives
PMB
(various): Archdiocese of Suva
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