Rome: Second Journey – 1842

1.    The Background to the Journey
Colin returned to France in February 1834. It would be eight years before he was to make another visit to Rome and during that time significant developments took place in the Marist project. The reasons for his second visit were rather different, then, from those of the 1833 visit. Let us recall some of the principal historical developments that occurred during this time:

  • The Society was canonically approved in 1836.
  • Colin was elected Superior General and soon afterwards moved the Society’s administration from Belley to Lyons.
  • The Society had grown considerably by 1842.
  • Colin was effectively Superior General of a group of approximately 100 priests, 400 brothers, and 100 sisters, spread through-out a dozen dioceses.
  • By 1842, 41 priests and brothers had already departed for the missions of Oceania. One of the first to set out, Father Bret, had died at sea before ever reaching his mission destination. News of Father Chanel’s death had reached France and people were already talking of a martyr in Oceania.
  • Signs of tension with Bishop Pompallier were beginning to emerge.
  • Father Marcellin Champagnat, Founder of the Marist Brothers, died in 1841.
  • The Society of Mary held its first General Chapter in April 1842 just before Colin left for Rome.

This gives an image of a Society bursting with life, moving, as it were, from its foundation phase to a stage of consolidation. Jean Coste describes these as the “years of calm” during which Colin, now aged 52, was working to consolidate the Society.

And so, Colin who came to Rome with Father Victor Poupinel in the summer of 1842 was in a very different situation from the man who had come in 1833. Then he was simply a priest from France with a rather expansive idea for a religious enterprise. Now he was the Superior General of a new and flourishing religious congregation. He would have preferred to be known simply as “Fr Colin” or as “a Marist Father” (OM 218:2) and didn’t care for the rather plush quarters he had been given on the boat to Rome. (QS 347:14) It was more enjoyable, he said, to have slept on ropes on the open deck, as he had done with Fathers Chanel and Bourdin in 1833. But there was no turning the clock back. S. Hosie writes of Colin’s second voyage:

Within hours of his arrival in Rome, a footman delivered an invitation to dinner with Cardinal Castracane…. Roothan, the Jesuit General, went out of his way to show courtesy, finding in Colin one of the few men who seemed to understand the educational conflicts between the Church and the university in France. The two Generals became good friends while Colin was in Rome, and made a pact that their societies would cooperate in the service of faith – “like big and little brothers” Colin said. Discreetly worded messages reached Colin that Gregory XVI would welcome a chance to discuss the Pacific with him..(Hosie p.l61)

Oceania was very much on Colin’s mind as he made his second journey.  He was very conscious of the fact that one of his companions on the first journey to Rome had died as a martyr on the island of Futuna. When Colin arrived in Rome he became aware of a letter circulating among the Cardinals describing the heroic life of Peter Chanel. It was openly said that he was a saint. But this was not the only aspect of the Oceania mission on Colin’s agenda. Certain problems were beginning to emerge in the Pacific mission and this was one of the issues he needed to resolve in Rome.

The Reasons for the Journey
The main items on Colin’s agenda for this voyage to Rome were: (A)  questions relating to the missions of Oceania, (B)  the rule and constitutions,  (C)  the teaching brothers and the union of branches of the Society.

A. The Missions of Oceania
By 1835 the Roman authorities saw the urgent need to set up a mission in Western Oceania. Propaganda regarded Oceania as a continuation of the islands adjacent to Africa, and so selected for the mission of Western Oceania Father Pastre, a Picpus priest who had been Prefect Apostolic of Reunion, near Madagascar. Pastre had returned to Lyons on account of ill health, but Propaganda thought he may have been available for the new mission of Western Oceania. Cardinal Fransoni wrote to him (OM 337) but Pastre replied that age and ill-health prevented him from accepting the offer. At the same time, Pastre looked to find someone else. Being in Lyons, he consulted one of the Vicars General, none other than Father Cholleton, who immediately thought of Father Pompallier, who at that time was the chaplain to the boarding school of La Favorite. Cholleton thought highly of Pompallier who had expressed a desire to go to the foreign missions. Pastre had a meeting with Pompallier, found him satisfactory, and told him about the proposed mission.

Pompallier had lived apart from the Marist aspirants for two years, but still considered himself part of the group. He consulted his confrères, and then wrote to Colin telling him of the proposal. Colin encouraged him to accept, foreseeing the possible results for approbation of the Society. He also asked that the letter to Propaganda should include explicit reference to the branches of Fathers and Brothers, because these could provide men for the mission.

As happened earlier in the story of the Society’s involvement with Rome, the precise course of events remains somewhat unclear. However, a decisive moment was reached on 23 December 1835 a report was presented at a plenary session of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide recommending the establishment of a Vicariate of Western Oceania. The report, which noted Colin’s offer to provide men for this mission, ends with two questions to be considered:  First: Is it necessary to create a new Vicariate of Western Oceania? The recommendation: Yes. Second: To whom shall this new mission be entrusted? The recommendation: To the priests of the Marian Congregation of Lyons and Belley.

As a direct result of these recommendations, the Society of Mary was recommended for approbation. Father Jean Baptiste Pompallier was nominated as bishop, called to Rome by Cardinal Fransoni, and was consecrated in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Via Veneto,  on 30 June 1836.

Meanwhile men were being selected for the missions. Fathers Bret, Chanel and Servant had already volunteered and Father Bataillon was invited to join them. Three brothers were chosen: Marie Nizier, Xavier, and Michel. Father Marcellin Champagnat had also volunteered for this first group but Colin asked him to stay in France.

The Society was approved; the election of Superior General and the First Professions took place on 24 September 1836. The missionaries packed their bags and prepared for departure. They represented exactly one quarter of the Marists in France at that time. On 15 October, Chanel and Bataillon consecrated the mission to the Blessed Virgin at Fourvière. After several hitches, the eight missionaries left Le Havre for Oceania. It was Christmas Eve, 1836.

Even by the time the group had reached Valparaiso, however, tensions had risen between Pompallier and the missionaries. The mistrust and distance became more marked after Pompallier had landed in New Zealand. Colin had already some misgiving about Pompallier as Vicar Apostolic on account of his tendency to be arrogant and authoritarian in his treatment of men. But he put off taking any action for as long as possible, hoping that things would sort themselves out in time. As a matter of fact, they worsened, and Pompallier began to isolate himself from his men, complaining of their lack of trust in him.

Colin received a letter from Pompallier in mid-October 1841. It was 15 pages long and plunged right into business. Pompallier claimed he had endured perils and fatigues, and had fought against heresy; but that the greatest obstacle to progress in the mission was Colin himself. “The greatest blow given to the works of this mission comes from the lack of your concord with me.” This, according to Pompallier, was the “sole evil”, and from it everything else flowed. The basis of the disagreement was two different conceptions of authority and power between Pompallier as Vicar Apostolic and Colin as Religious Superior. “The mission cannot go on as it has been without accomplishing its ruin or at least falling into a state of lethargy”. Colin would have agreed with that, but would have seen both the cause and the remedy quite differently from Pompallier.

Colin replied in a letter to Pompallier. He made it clear that Pompallier was free to dispense with the services of the Society if he wished; that Pompallier should try to have greater confidence in the missionaries and not regard them as incapable. He recommended a good superior and provincial for the religious; and challenged the bishop to show that either by word or in writing he had asked the missionaries to be anything but obedient. Colin in fact never sent the letter. But he did send Father Forest as Visitor to New Zealand at the end of 1841. He was “persona grata” with Pompallier, having worked with him in Lyons, and had been asked for by Pompallier.

Colin waited further, and did not act until March 1842 when he wrote to Cardinal Fransoni explaining that for three years there had been friction between Pompallier and the missionaries.  Pompallier also wrote to Fransoni at around the same time complaining that he was in danger of losing most of his converts because he had been completely abandoned by Colin and had no missionaries to follow up his own evangelization. Pompallier begged the Cardinal to send him 100 priests immediately. Fransoni’s letter to Colin was conciliatory: he admitted that Colin and the Marists had good reason for dissatisfaction with Pompallier. The Cardinal’s letter to Pompallier was sharp. It attributed to him the greater responsibility for the discord with the missionaries, and concluded by urging Pompallier to show himself a father and a companion rather than a superior.

This was the state of things as Colin left Lyons with Victor Poupinel on 28th May 1842 and made his way to Rome. Colin’s difficulties were focussed on two issues: Pompallier’s  style of evangelization, and his financial management.

It could be argued that 19th century evangelization was based more on a sense of urgency to rescue people from Protestant missionary endeavours than on a formulated policy. Propaganda was applying pressure to open up mission areas in as many places as possible. The policy of the first Marist missionaries, and their mandate, was very vague. When they set out from Valparaiso they had no idea where they might end up. Pompallier wrote from Tahiti: “I am obliged to follow God’s designs step by step, and they disclose themselves only from day to day in the opportunities it pleases Him to offer me.” Peter Chanel and Marie Nizier were left at Futuna by Pompallier, almost on impulse; Bataillon and Brother Xavier were left on Wallis; and Pompallier was 1500 miles away in New Zealand with only one priest and one brother. Pompallier had promised the chiefs of Futuna and Wallis that he would return after 6 months. When he did not return after a year, Chanel lost face with the people who thought they had been abandoned. Interest in Christianity waned, a situation that  contributed to Chanel’s death.

Pompallier cut a fine figure among the people, but he was unable to take advice from others, or delegate authority. His enthusiasm for conversion and gaining a foothold over the Protestant missionaries outstripped his prudence. His methods of gaining converts were at times more than questionable. Colin had written to Cardinal Fransoni in 1837 asking if subsequent bands of missionaries could spend some time at Propaganda studying and preparing themselves for this mission work. Such a course was unknown, and Rome protested that time and money did not permit such a venture.

Pompallier’s weaknesses as an administrator was another cause for concern. Desiring to make an impression in order to gain converts, the bishop tended to spend lavishly and imprudently. Where the Anglicans gave gifts, Pompallier gave better gifts. He built large headquarters and planned a huge cathedral. The crowning blow was his decision to buy a schooner whose upkeep drained away the mission resources already drastically depleted by the collapse of Wright’s Bank in London. Missionaries had no food; they were forced to join the local people at the wharves, begging for biscuits.

Colin’s generosity to the missions was unquestionable. In 1841 he wrote to Cardinal Fransoni with the information that  in a period of five years the infant Society had sent 42 missionaries to the Vicariate of Western Oceania—of whom 35 had been assigned to Bishop Pompallier in New Zealand.

B. The Rule
Apart from dealing with Cardinal Fransoni and Propaganda, Colin also had to negotiate with the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars on the question of the Rule.

Recall that on his first visit to Rome, Colin had presented the plan of the whole Society with all its branches, a plan which Castracane had rejected as “grotesque and monstrous” and unacceptable as a plan for a Religious Congregation. Recall, too, that while in Rome on this occasion, Colin had made friends in the Curia who were able to give him advice, and that he had discovered the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, and had been significantly influenced by them. After returning from the 1833 trip to Rome, Colin worked hard on the Rule, recasting it in line with the advice he had been given and the model he had found in the Jesuit Constitutions. He “first ideas” were recast in a more flexible way. At a later date he was to say:

Everything in the Rule of the Society is set in general terms. To get too particular, to get too detailed, would be to encumber those who have to apply it. It was on my first trip to Rome that I learned to appreciate this way of doing things and these ideas. Then I set about recasting the whole Rule. It was too perfect. (OM 637)

Colin worked hard on the Rule at the time of the approval of the Society in 1836. He spent a long time working on the text again between December 1841 and April 1842. From this work emerged the text known as the 1842 Constitutions. Before engaging in this work, Colin took a month’s rest “to place his soul in a state of great calm, to unite himself to God” (Mayet 5:721) and during this time, he seemed to enjoy a state of consolation similar to the Cerdon years of “extreme sweetness”. It was a period in which he was full of confidence, seeing a great future for the Society and its apostolate; a Society called to go “in quavis mundi plaga” (to every part of the world) like the Company of Jesus.

This is the text which Colin brought to Rome for presentation. He showed the manuscript to Father Rosaven, Jesuit General Assistant. Rosaven reacted positively to the manuscript, adding that he could hardly do otherwise since it largely followed the Jesuit rule! Colin agreed, but later said to Poupinel: “It’s true, the approach is the same, but I had conceived the whole plan of our rules before I had read a single rule of the Jesuits” (OM 544).

Rosaven told Colin that if he presented the manuscript as it was, it would be approved. Colin replied that he didn’t wish to take such a step so soon. He wanted time for these Constitutions, which contained the “marche” and the spirit of the Society, to be tested by lived experience.

Rosaven’ s principal objection was with Colin’s plan of a many-branched Society. He said that the branches would need to be autonomous. Colin was back to the situation of 1833. And he still had to deal with the same people who had rejected the proposal then. It was going to be difficult to make headway; and again we will see Colin acting in a characteristic way. He withdrew his request for approval, and contented himself for the moment with a request for some privileges (OM 544).

C. The Branches of the Project
The question of the Society of many branches was a key issue on Colin’s second trip. At the 1839 retreat Colin had asked members of the Society to vote on the situation of the Brothers who joined Champagnat as teaching Brothers, and the Brothers who had joined the priests to act as co-adjutors. Despite strenuous opposition from Champagnat and some of the the senior priests, the vote favoured separation of the two types of Brothers.

Champagnat died in 1840, and had been replaced as superior of the Brothers by Brother François. Colin invited Bro François and Jeanne Chavoin to join him in Lyons for discussion on the matter during the General Chapter of 1842. Bro François sent two Assistants to present a petition on behalf of the Brothers. The petition was read to the Chapter, and recalled the long-standing connection between the Fathers and Brothers. It went on: “Divine Providence from the first willed that the Society of the Brothers of Mary began with the Society of the Priests, that they develop side by side and continue in accord together”. The petition reminded the priests that Champagnat had been one of the first Marists, and that many Marist priests had joined the Society through the Hermitage. In fact, of the 20 Marists to take their vows in September 1836, nine came from Lyons, and five of these had been formed by Champagnat. In his spiritual Testament, Champagnat had written:

As your wills must be united with those of the Fathers of the Society of Mary in the will of a single Superior General, so I also desire that you be united with them in heart and mind in Jesus and Mary. May their interests be yours; may you find your happiness in going to their assistance as often as is required. May the same spirit, the same love, unite you together as branches of the same family to the one mother, the Blessed Virgin. Since the Superior General of the Fathers is likewise the Superior of the Brothers, he must be the centre of unity for them both. Happy as I was to receive the obedience and submission of the Brothers of Mary, it is my desire that the Superior General always find in them the same obedience and submission. His spirit is mine, his will is mine. I regard that perfect union and that entire submission as the basic foundation of the Society of Mary.  Spiritual Testament. May 18th, 1840

The Brothers’ petition was in line with the thinking of Jeanne-Marie Chavoin. At a vote on the matter by the General Chapter, the minutes record that:  “The votes were collected, and the union of the branches was adopted unanimously”.

The mandate which the Chapter presented to Colin as he set out for Rome was clear. But it was equally clear that the Roman authorities could not approve such a proposal.

D. A Question about Liturgy
Another matter Colin wished to be discussed and decided was the question of the Roman Liturgy. (FS 58 gives an account of this).

The Mood of the Journey
It would not be hard to guess the general mood of this second voyage to Rome. The heady buoyancy of the first visit has given place to a much more sober view of reality. Colin insisted that the purpose of his vow to come to Rome in 1833 was to place the whole plan before the authorities, and to see what the will of God was regarding the enterprise. The plan was no longer a dream. It had now been in operation for some time, and already the difficulties were becoming apparent. Colin’s mood was well caught by Poupinel in his report on the voyage:

“Ah!” he often said as he acquainted me with his anxieties and difficulties in relation to the Mission, “How arduous it is to be Superior. You people cannot see it, perhaps, but all these anxieties are wearing me out. If I were far away from these worries and cares, I would be in better health. But then, when I think of my confrères in difficulty and sorrow, when I see their virtue put at risk, I spare no effort to be of service to them.”  (QS 219:3)

By now Colin was on personal terms with members of the Roman Curia with whom he was dealing. While there was a sense of admiration and mutual respect, Colin did not find full sympathy either for his plan for the multi-branched congregation or for his practical difficulties in Oceania.

4.    Results of the Journey

A.    The Rule
Colin’s discussion on the Rule ended with the withdrawal of his request for approval of the Constitutions. For him the idea of the three branches was integral to the very nature of the Society. Unless this element was approved, he felt unable to present the Rule. Thus, for the time being, it seemed that the Fourvière dream was impossible.

B.    The Missions
Colin had more success with his proposal for the Mission in Oceania. At the beginning of 1838, the Oceania Mission had been divided into two groups: Wallis/Futuna, and New Zealand. With the passage of time the limitations of this division had become obvious. Colin proposed a reorganization of the Mission into five Vicariates. Eventually, on 23 August 1842, Propaganda divided the Oceania Mission into two parts:

New Zealand and its outlying parts. The Vicar Apostolic was to be Pompallier with a coadjutor of his choice.

Central Oceania: Wallis, Futuna, Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, and New Caledonia. Bataillon (age 32) was to be Vicar Apostolic, with Guillaume Douarre (age 28) as his coadjutor. Douarre was still a novice when he was appointed bishop! He was consecrated Bishop and then he himself consecrated Bataillon in 1843 at Wallis.

Then, in 1844, two further Vicariates were created:

Melanesia: comprising    New Guinea, New Britain, New Ireland and the Solomon Islands.

Micronesia: an area where Marists never reached.

So, following the 1842 discussion, four vicariates had been set up: New Zealand, Central Oceania, Micronesia and Melanesia.

But for Colin, the other key issue was the situation of his men. He put forward a plan for the missions which would ensure that he had certain rights in any mission vicariate, rights which would help him to protect his men better than he had been able to do in New Zealand. He proposed to Cardinal Fransoni four principles to govern the relationship between the Marists and their bishop in a mission territory:

  1. To establish a Provincial to represent the Superior General, and who could watch over each missionary.
  2. Where there is a need, to be able to withdraw a missionary and replace him by another; a right to be used only in grave cases.
  3. To require that ordinarily missionaries be not placed by themselves as they had been in the past for whole years.
  4. To recall, every four or five years, one of the missionaries to report on the mission.
    (Colin to Fransoni. June 21, 1842)

A week before his return to France, Colin succumbed to a bout of malaria. He thought he might die, and suggested that Maitrepierre be his replacement. He recovered, and left Rome on August 28th, arriving in Lyons on September 3rd. His stay in Rome had been three months long.

The Retreat of September 20-27 1842 gave Colin a chance to reflect on his visit with a group that included almost all the Marists then in Europe. Mayet records that the Founder did this at some length:

“I am doing nothing but talk, talk, talk. You know, I have become a real chatterbox on this second trip to Rome. (QS 229:4)

Reading
A Founder Speaks,  Docs 38-56; 57; 58; 59 (8-13, 25-31); 60:(4, 7-10, 25-28, 39-42).
A Founder Acts,  Doc. 218-222.
Coste, J.  Lectures on Society of Mary History,  pp 111-123, 23-34.
Hosie, S  Anonymous Apostle, pp 135-173.
Roach, K  Colin and the New Zealand Mission