first indigenous bishop

Michael Visi becomes Vanuatu's first indigenous bishop

It was a national event throughout Vanuatu: April 13, the whole country cele brated the ordination of Michel Visi, the first indigenous bishop of the Roman Catholic was appointed last December by Pope John Paul 11.

From northern Ambae Island (250 kilometres north of Port Vila), he takes over from American Francis Lambert, who has reached 75, the age limit set by canonic law.

The new Vanuatu bishop, who studied in seminaries in neighbouring New Caledonia and Fiji’s Pacific Regional Seminary (of which he was rector until last year), obtained a degree in canonic law in Canada and will be in charge of a diocese covering the 80 scattered islands of this Y-shaped archipelago.

Vanuatu’s Catholic mission has 14 local priests and now, over 110 years after its arrival in Vanuatu, an indigenous bishop.

On the eve of this historic event, Visi said he was ready.

“I prepared myself especially. I spent a 30-day retreat in Australia with the Jesuits. I think the mission of a bishop requires a lot of tranquility in heart and mind.”

On the said day, over 1000 people from every outer island of Vanuatu and over 200 overseas visitors converged on

the capital.

Tribal dancers from all over the

archipelago (including Visi’s home

island of Ambae) came in hundreds to perform before the new local bishop.

Vanuatu’s linguistic and religious

legacy is strongly related to the presence of missionaries who were often, in the early last century, the first permanent white settlers in these South Pacific islands.

The celebrations were a harmonious mix of liturgy and traditional tribal dances, once labelled “evil” and banned by the missionaries.

The celebrations, which lasted two

days, started with the official ordination on Port Vila’s largest open ground, the Independence Park. On Sunday, Visi said his first mass.

In Vanuatu (170,000 inhabitants for some 80 inhabited islands), which defines itself in its constitution as a Christian country, churches are grouped into a council with the prominent ones being the Roman Catholic (around 22,000 believers), Presbyterian and Anglican churches.

The Catholic church, in Vanuatu since 1887, makes its presence known through its primary and secondary mission schools. Over the years, it has developed a reputation of tolerance: the first priests were much more tolerant than Presbyterians or Anglicans, who often banned tribal and traditional practices, saying they “belonged to the Devil”.

Former Deputy Prime Minister and a pastor with the Presbyterian Church, Sethy Regenvanu, after watching this weekend’s celebrations and profuse trib al dances, admires this tolerance.

“One thing the Catholic church has been able to do which we [the Presbyterians], for example, haven’t been able to do as effectively is to go to the grassroots and live and share and be involved with the local people, without telling [them] to do away with their cus toms, culture and tradition,” Regenvanu said.

“What they [Presbyterians] did was to tell the people that their way of life their culture - was not compatible with Christianity, therefore they had to make a complete break with those before they could be accepted into the church.”

The nuncio, Irish Wellington-based

Archbishop Patrick Connevey, officially

represented Pope John Paul 11. He saw in the event a sign of maturity in the Roman Catholic Church.

“The episcopal ordination of a son of this country shows an acknowledged maturity [of the church],” he said, adding “papa god i blessem Vanuatu ” (God blesses Vanuatu) in the local pidgin. ■