50 Years

Jubilee of Holy Trinity Church at Suva

From Our Own Correspondent.

Suva, Oct. 2.

ON September 18, the Holy Trinity Pro- Cathedral at Suva celebrated its Golden Jubilee, being the 50th anniversary of the dedication of the present wooden church.

Special services were conducted by His Lordship the Bishop in Polynesia (Right Rev. L. S. Kempthorne), and the Ven.

Archdeacon H. Harris (Vicar of Suva). At a social gathering in the evening, the Acting-Governor (Hon. Juxon Barton, 0.8. E.) delivered a message of congratu lation from the Government.

Early in 1886 the Society for the Propa gation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts sent out from England Rev. J. Francis Jones, 8.A., to be the first Vicar of Suva, and he induced the Right Rev. Andrew Suter (Lord Bishop of Nelson, in New Zealand) to cross to Fiji in the Arawata to officiate at the dedication service of the newly completed Church. It was a red-letter day for members of the Church of England in Fiji.

One of the most treasured possessions of the Pro-Cathedral is an historic carved stone font, 500 years old, which was pre sented to the Church by the Governor of Fiji Sir John Thurston, in 1891.

The following parish pioneers, who were members of the congregation when the present Church was dedicated in 1886, are still living around Suva and most of them attended the Golden Jubilee celebrations: Hon. T, E. Alport Barker, Messrs. George Barker, Collins (the first male baptized in the new Church), C. A. Bentley, W. Bent ley, Morey, and Sturt; Mesdames Ander son, Butler, Forster, Garrick, Gault, R. T.

Huon, J. T. Johnson, Livingston, Nichol son, Riemenschneider, Spence, and Swann: Misses M. C. Anderson, E. Coward and Sturt.