Religious Dissension

On Niue

11THEN the Rev. C. C. Craig, ff foreign secretary of the London Missionary Society, arrived in Auckland in mid- January from a tour of Islands missions under his control, he said that the Niue islanders were dis turbed at the presence on the island of the Mormon missionaries.

The people, he said, contended that when they came under the British Crown they were promised that there would be one religion only on the island. They have con sequently protested to the New Zealand Government.

The Minister had denied receipt of any such petition, but it was recently stated that the reason that the petition had not been placed be for the Minister was because it was not framed according to Parlia mentary Standing Orders. It had consequently been returned to its sponsors for reframing. When this is done the Minister will present the petition to Parliament, prob ably somewhere about April.

President Sidney J. Ottley, head of the Mormon Church in New Zealand, the Cook Islands and Niue, defended the activities of his Mission on Niue in a letter to am Auckland newspaper on January 15. He acknowledged the “disturb ance” of Mr. Craig, the Rev. Mr.

Check (of Niue) “and their cohorts” but claimed that a visit to the island and conversation with the officials of the NZ Government, conversant with the facts, would be ample conviction that it is not the feeling of the much-belied and] oppressed Niuan people.

“If education, sympathy, love and direction to clean and wholesome lives is disturbance, then we have; disturbed some of them in the last! few months,” wrote Mr. Ottley. (There was, later, considerable NZj newspaper correspondence on the* same subject.)