Historic Suva Ceremony
p. 25 · Read in the full issue
The new Archbishop of Suva, the Most Rev. George Pearce, was enthroned before a crowded congregation in the Sacred Heart Cathedral, Suva, on October 22. It was a history-making ceremony because, for the first time in a Roman Catholic church in the Southern Hemisphere, the most solemn part of the ceremony, the canon of the Mass, was recited in English instead of Latin. It followed recent reforms in parts of the Mass procedure made at the Second Vatican Council.
Archbishop Pearce was born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, in 1921. He was ordained a priest in 1947; assigned to Samoa as a missionary in 1949; and consecrated Vicar Apostolic of Samoa in 1956. He lived in Apia until his Fiji appointment.
Another enthronement in October was that in Honiara of the Right Rev. John Chisholm as 10th Bishop of Melanesia.