Young Priest Gets Five Years’ Gaol

Unfortunate Victim of Uncontrolled Sectarianism

A SERIES of extraordinary incidents in New Guinea ended at Rabaul on May 8 when Rev. Father Anthony Crans sen, a young Dutch priest, and a member of the Society of the Divine Word Mis sion, which has its headquarters at Alexishafen, was sentenced to five years imprisonment for the crime of arson.

Father Cranssen arrived in New Guinea in 1932, and in 1933 he was sent out from Alexishafen into the Ramu country, at the back of Madang, where he opened a mission station for work among the recently-discovered tribes.

It appears that last year Father Crans sen’s mission came into conflict with the Lutheran Mission, in the same locality, and there appear to have been quarrels and bitter jealousies between the mis sionaries and their adherents. Finally, Father Cranssen heard of a plot against his life, and about December 25 he sent an armed party of natives to attack two Lutheran native mission teachers, and burn down their houses.

Proceedings were taken against the priest and he was brought to trial in the District Court at Madang early in April on a charge of incendiarism. He was committed to the Supreme Court in Rabaul, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to five years in gaol by Chief Judge Wanliss. It is reported that the Judge in passing sentence “made scathing re marks on the priest’s actions as un becoming to a member of a religious order.”

Sectarian Strife In Papua

It is a coincidence that in the same mail we have received information about an equally deplorable condition of affairs in one of the districts of Papua. It ap pears that difficulties are being created there by the zeal of certain Seventh Day Adventist missionaries, who insist that Saturday and not Sunday shall be ob served by the natives as “the day of rest and worship.”

The S.D.A. missionaries, of course, have a right to teach their own peculiar be liefs—the imminent end of the world, observance of Sunday on Saturday, and so forth —but when they teach their native adherents to jeer at the native converts of other missions who observe Sunday on Sunday, and persuade the former also to refuse to work for planters and other European employers on Satur day, then a certain amount of irritation is created: and the intelligent natives of Papua are privileged to witness the de

lightful spectacle of so-called Christians squabbling among themselves.

Sir William Macgregor, when he was Governor of Papua, established a system of dividing Papua among the different missionary bodies, and not allowing one to trespass upon the territory of the other. Sir Hubert Murray has followed that wise plan—but it seems to be break ing down. We have heard, on two or three occasions lately, of industrial trouble and bad feeling caused in Papuan communities through missionary jeal ousy, and especially of trouble caused by S.D.A. missionaries and their mixed-up week-ends.