Alexis Bachelot - Hawaiian Mission

Hawaiian Mission

In the early 1820s, Jean Baptiste Rives, a French adviser to the Hawaiian king Kamehameha II, traveled to Europe to attempt to convince European Catholics to organize a mission to Hawaii. Members of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary were receptive to his idea, and in 1825, Pope Leo XII assigned them the task of evangelizing Hawaii. Bachelot was appointed the Prefect Apostolic of the Sandwich Islands, and in this role led the first permanent mission to Hawaii.

The expedition was organized by the influential Monneron family and funded by the government of France. Bachelot was assisted in his new position by fellow priests Patrick Short and Abraham Armand, as well as several lay brothers. The mission sailed from Bordeaux on the La Comète in November 1826. The missionaries were initially accompanied by a group that planned to explore commercial trading opportunities but returned to France after reaching Mexico.

Unbeknownst to Bachelot, political changes occurred in Hawaii prior to the mission's arrival. King Kamehameha II died in 1824 and his younger brother Kamehameha III became king. Because Kamehameha III was young at the time of his ascension, Queen Kaʻahumanu (their stepmother) ruled as Kuhina Nui. On the advice of Hiram Bingham I—a Protestant missionary who had converted the Hawaiian royalty four years previously—Queen Kaʻahumanu took a hard stance against Catholicism. Rives' influence on the Hawaiian government had faded, and he never returned to Hawaii.

The La Comète arrived in Honolulu on July 7, 1827. The priests were faced with a situation of dire poverty owing to the absence of Rives' patronage. Furthermore, they had promised the La Comète's captain that Rives would pay for their passage after they arrived in Hawaii, but by the time of their arrival, Rives had already left Hawaii. Queen Kaʻahumanu refused to allow the missionaries to stay in Hawaii, suspecting them to be covert agents of the government of France. She instructed the La Comète's captain to take the mission with him when he departed. The captain, however, refused to do so because he did not receive payment for their passage, so the party was able to remain. The priests began their missionary work, but encountered suspicion from most chiefs. The members of the party had great difficulty defending themselves, as none of them were fluent in English or Hawaiian. The group received a favorable response, however, when they met high chief Boki, the royal governor of Oahu, and his wife Kuini Liliha. (The couple were Catholic converts and rivals of Queen Kaʻahumanu.) Boki welcomed the party and gave its members permission to stay.

For several months, Bachelot and his fellow missionaries lived in three small rented structures, saying their first mass on the island in a grass hut. They later built a chapel on a small plot of land they purchased, where the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace was dedicated in 1843. After settling on the island, the group avoided drawing attention to themselves and studied the Hawaiian language. During their mission's first two years, the group converted 65 Hawaiians and ministered to Hawaiians who had already been converted. They often held surreptitious night-time meetings with converts who feared persecution. The priests' vestments and rituals made their evangelism efforts more effective because they reminded Hawaiians of native religious customs.

Bachelot introduced two plant species to Hawaii: Prosopis humilis and the Bougainvillea. Prosopis humilis trees later covered thousands of acres there. He had obtained the seeds, which were originally gathered by Catholic missionaries in California, from the Royal Conservatory in Paris. Bachelot translated a prayer book into Hawaiian (O Ke A'o Ana Kristiano, "Christian Doctrine", c. 1831), authored a catechism in Hawaiian (He Ōlelo Ho'ona'auao, "A Word of Instruction", 1831), and wrote an introduction to Hawaiian grammar in French (Notes Grammaticales, "Grammatical Notes", 1834).