Mother Suzanne Aubert 1861 -1870

Pompallier’s break with the Marists meant he no longer had a steady supply of clergy and brothers. In 1850, after four years’ absence, he had returned to New Zealand with diocesan priests recruited from France and Ireland as well as the first congregation of religious sisters in New Zealand, the Irish Sisters of Mercy. Conditions continued to be difficult and by the end of the decade his staff was very reduced in number. So in 1859-1860 on his ad limina visit back to Rome and Lyon he actively recruited among diocesan seminarians, the Clercs de Saint Viateur, the Franciscan Friars Minor, and his own family and associates. Suzanne responded to this call with three other young women: Lucie Pompallier, Antoinette Deloncle and Marthe Péroline Droguet.

Suzanne was still under the impression that she and the other women were to be affiliated with the Third Order of Mary but they arrived in Auckland in December 1860, after a crowded, arduous four-month journey on board a whaling ship, to find they would be postulants with the Sisters of Mercy, and their French language, singing, sewing and embroidery accomplishments as young bourgeoises were highly desirable assets in the education of the up-and-coming daughters of the then capital city of New Zealand. Suzanne especially resisted this and they were transferred to run the Nazareth Institute for girls of Maori and mixed-race birth, which suited better their missionary vocation to indigenous people. In 1862 they and two Maori women, Peata and Ateraita, were established in a separate tiny diocesan congregation for this purpose: the Sisters of the Holy Family.

Auckland suffered through the 1860s war years when Maori fought against encroaches by the Crown and settlers on their autonomy. At first an influx of thousands of imperial soldiers brought an ephemeral prosperity but this was soon followed by a severe economic depression when they left. This was exacerbated by the transfer in 1865 of the capital, along with the business created by its infrastructure, to Wellington. The Maori suffered even more, psychologically and economically, with their death tolls, the destruction of their prosperous trading economy and confiscation of vast tracts of productive land to be redistributed to new settlers. They withdrew from Christian mission and this, of course, affected all Anglican, Wesleyan and Catholic-run Maori educational institutes.

By 1868 Pompallier’s diocese was in total financial collapse and once more extremely depleted of staff. Old and in ill health, he returned to Europe with his niece Lucie, ostensibly to seek extra financial and human support but probably in the realisation he was unlikely to return. He died in Paris in 1871. In 2002 his remains came back to Aotearoa-New Zealand, to lie near the shores of the Hokianga Harbour where he first entered New Zealand.

Suzanne’s mentor in the customs and knowledge of Maori society – very importantly in medicinal lore – was Peata (a baptismal name from Latin Beata). Peata Hoki was a very influential and gifted woman of the powerful Ngä Puhi tribe of Northern New Zealand. Pompallier had baptised her in 1840, significantly just prior to the all-important signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Through the 1840s and 1850s she continued in her dedication to the Catholic mission and in 1862 was professed as one of the Sisters of the Holy Family along with Suzanne, who took the religious name of Mary Joseph in English and Meri in Maori.

By the end of the troubled 1860s, only Suzanne and Peata remained from the small community of French and Maori sisters, yet they continued courageously, with no financial support from the diocese and in considerable deprivation, to care for their little family of girls, and to plan for the future. When Pompallier’s administration came under censure and a canonical visitation of the diocese by Australian Bishop Goold in 1869 revealed the extent of its problems, Suzanne and Peata by then had rallied support for their work from lay and even non-Catholic people in Auckland, and from Maori communities in the north.

However, a new Irish diocesan bishop, Thomas Croke, was appointed. He was determined to make a clear break with the past and in January 1871 Suzanne, refusing to give up and return to France, left Auckland Diocese and went south on the invitation of veteran Marist missioner, Father Euloge Reignier, to live and work at the Marist Maori mission at Meanee in Hawke’s Bay. Peata, now blind, went home to the north and Suzanne heard that she died not long after.

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