France Honours Pioneer Archbishop

de Boismenu (Contributed)

ALTHOUGH he retired quietly to his Papuan mountains several years ago, to wait quietly for the end of his life, the aged Archbishop Alain de Boismenu has twice been sought out for honours.

The first occasion was on his retire ment, in 1945, when the Pope created him an Archbishop: and the second occa sion was more recently, when the French Government, through the French Am bassador to Australia, granted him its highest decoration—the Cross of the Legion of Honour.

The Archbishop has spent most of his life in Papua serving the natives de votedly. Their welfare and advancement have been his sole concern for 50 years.

But although such men are above nation alism, he kept a warm love for his native land which has now honoured him.

France is proud of such achievements, al though they were not performed directly in the service of France.

ALAIN Marie Guynot de Boismenu was born in St. Malo, Brittany, at the end of 1870, the 11th child of an old and noble Breton family. He entered the Order of the Sacred Heart when he was 18 and was ordained a priest in 1895.

Two years later his religious superiors asked him to go as a missionary to Papua—then British New Guinea. He ar rived at Yule Island, Papua, the head quarters of the Catholic Mission, on January 25, 1898.

Two weeks later. Father de Boismenu was appointed deputy-superior of the

mission and vicar-general to Archbishoo Navarre who founded the Catholic Missions in New Britain, the Torres Straits and finally, in 1885, in Papua.

Father de Boismenu started immediately to organise the Mission on lines that are still followed and began almost at once to penetrate into the hinterland of the

mainland. On June 9, 1898, he was nominated Titular Bishop of Gabala, by Pope Leo XIII but the new bishop him self, that day, was repelling the attacks of primitive Papuan mountain villagers.

Bishop de Boismenu ruled his Papuan diocese with zeal and wisdom for 45 years.

But then, failing in health and growing old, he asked to be relieved of the burden of office and the charge given into the keeping of a younger man. This was granted in January, 1945, but in recog nition of his services to the church in Papua, the Pope raised him to the dig nity of Archbishop, and on the date of Archbishop Boismenu’s jubilee praised him

in a public letter for his work as a mis sionary, as a builder oi the Church in the outpost of Christianity, the founder of the Native Order of Nuns (the Handmaids of the Lord) the promoter of native clergy and native brothers, and for the develop ment of civilization through the establish ment of schools and churches.

The Archbishop, now a tall, thin, frail figure, retired to his beloved Valiev of Kubuna about 20 miles inland. There he lives in his small hermitage not far from the convent of the Little Papuan Sisters.

It no doubt will be pleasing to him to think that France has reached out to him in the far-off Papuan jungle to pre sent him with her highest honour. But he will certainly take it much more as a recognition for work done in Papua by French missionaries, during the past 63 years, than for himself.