Canterbury

tales- or Solomons stories

By Alan Gill

What should an Archbishop of Canterbury say when greeted by spear-carrying warriors rattling their spears (and making threatening gestures to match) about two inches from his chest?

“Dear me,” the 101st Anglican Primate, the Most Reverend Donald Coggan. observed in his first public utterance on Solomon Islands’ soil. As if to lend authen ticity. one of the warriors called out: “I’m a pagan. I'm a pagan . . . why you come here?” To which the Archbishop replied tactfully; “Oh. I’m sure you’re not really,” and ‘Tve come to see you.”

Dr Coggan. spiritual leader of 66 million members of the world-wide Anglican Com munion, was making the first visit by an Archbishop of Canter bury to the independent province (until two years ago it was a diocese) of Melanesia.

The Archbishop was greeted at Honiara airport by the Deputy Governor, Mr A. T. Clark, and the Archbishop of Melanesia, the Most Rev Norman Palmer.

A minor kefuffle surrounded the absence of the Governor of the Solomons, Mr Colin Allan, who was reported to be angry at Dr Coggan’s polite refusal of an offer of accommodation at Government House. (An aide to Dr Coggan explained that it was

a “family visit” and the Primate wished to stay with his fellow archbishop.) The Archbishop’s flight by charter plane from Papua New Guinea was also not without adventure. A panic arose when a sister plane carrying the Archbishop of Brisbane and Bishop of Carpentaria, piloted by Canon Tony Matthews of the Carpentaria Aerial Mission, re ceived a radio message that its wheels had fallen off. In fact, the door to the baggage com partment had been inadequately sealed, as a result of which the VlPs’ luggage was strewn over the Pacific.

Although he had not pre viously visited the region.

Archbishop Coggan has a long history of involvement in mission and an indirect connection with the Solomon Islands.

He studied at St John’s Col lege, Cambridge, where Bishop George Augustus Selwyn, first Bishop of New Zealand (and pioneer Melanesian missionary) had also studied and declared himself a life-long admirer of Bishop John Patteson, who was martyred on Nukapu, in the San ta Cruz Islands in revenge killing for an Australian “blackbirding” raid.

The Archbishop’s week-long

Above, the Archbishop and the pipe-smoking woman, and (below), a situation "the Pope himself would have envied".

tour included visits to the Bishop Patteson Theological Centre, Selwyn College, and the head quarters of the Melansian Brotherhood. all on Guadalcanal; also visits by air and on the Melanesian mission vessel, Southern Cross to the islands of Malaita and Santa Ysabel.

By the time he had been in the Islands a few days he was able to greet with aplomb bare-breasted maidens (some of whom, hands held in strategic positions to guard their modesty, were reluc tant to drop their guard for the brief seconds necessary for a handshake), not to mention the Malaita “mud men” and “wild men” of Ysabel.

Three years ago the Malaita “mud men” had arrived stark naked to greet the Queen. This was considered just a trifle too realistic and the men wore loinclothes (suitably caked with mud) for their performance before the Archbishop.

By the time he reached Ysabel, Dr Coggan was sufficiently ac customed to the novel greetings

to join in. Entering into the spirit of the occasion, he warded off the spears of the “wild men” by raising his pectoral cross in the manner of a full-blooded virgin warding off Dracula and received spontaneous applause.

He jested about another spearcarrying warrior; “Don’t worry about him. He’s a churchwarden.”

Asked why he had come to the island, he replied, brandishing his Bible, “To bring you the Good News.”

Television viewers, recalling the flow, mane and sage-like appearance of his predecessor, someti complain that Dr Coggan looks “ordinary” more like a local rector than Archbishop of Canterbury.

Dr Coggan would regard such a criticism as a compliment. Repeatedly, during his Melanesian tour, he told island congregations; “Christ came as a servant, and I am the servant of the servant.”

The Archbishop was greeted at Auki by the Bishop of Malaita, Bishop Leonard Alafurai, whose

grandfather was a kanaka in Queensland, and at Santa Ysabel by the Bishop of Ysabel, the Rt Rev Dudley Tuti, who is also Paramount Chief of Ysabel.

Probably the most eventful ar rival was at Ysabel, where the Southern Cross was escorted to its mooring by a flotilla of war canoes which took the Archbishop through a triumphal arch of reeds to the shore, On arrival, we were greeted by singers and drummers, pounding out a moving song relating the exploits of Bishop" Patteson and the Archbishop was carried aloft on a sedia gestatoria (portable throne) which the Pope himself would have envied, At all stages of his tour the Archbishop mingled with village people. He posed for pictures with a bare-breasted woman who puffed at a pipe while de monstrating her garden produce and was treated to a starkly realistic island baby-rearing custom from a woman who stuff ed a cushion up her skirt to portray the condition of pregnan cy.