Tiripone Mama Taira Putairi
Tiripone Mama Taira Putairi (1846–1881) was educated by French missionaries from birth and became the first ordained Roman Catholic priest in Eastern Polynesia. He was part of the native royal family of Mangareva and his father Bernardo Putairi was the last ruling regent of Mangareva.
Life
Tiripone was born to the royal togoiti class of chiefs of the island of Mangareva in the Gambier Islands. His family was considered to be from a junior or fallen branch of the the main royal line. His parents Gertrude Toategaru were Bernardo Putairi (also called Maohomotu in some sources), who became the last ruling regent of Mangareva.[1][2] Prior to his birth, Christianity was introduced to the Gambier Islands by French Picpus priests, Honoré Laval and François Caret with the support of King Maputeoa and his uncle Mapua, the high priest.[3] Brother Urbain de Florit de La Tour de Clamouze, one of these early missionaries, founded and headed the Re'e Seminary College on Aukena, one of the earliest institution of higher learning in the South Pacific, where native Mangarevan boys were taught Latin and French as future clergymen. Tiripone was among these native boys educated at the Aukena College along with the young king Joseph Gregorio II. This institution was transferred to Papeete, Tahiti in 1870 and then Pamatai in 1872.[4][5][6] Sources also indicate he was educate at the college of Ana-o-tiki on the island of Akamaru as well.[7]
On December 24, 1873, he was ordained as a priest by Bishop Tepano Jaussen, the Vicar Apostolic of Tahiti. Around this time, he adopted the Christian name Tiripone (after the early Christian saint Tryphon of Campsada). Father Tiripone became the person in Eastern Polynesia to be ordained into the Roman Catholic priesthood.[8][7][4][9] There are indications that his religious superiors did not fully trust him because they did not stationed him back in his native Gambiers. He was assigned to proselytize in the small department Faaone on the island of Tahiti. Father Tiripone worked the supervision on the retired Father Laval with whom he wrote a traditional history of Mangareva. They wrote E atoga no te ao eteni no Magareva (An Account of the Heathen Times of Mangareva) which was deposited in the archives at the Congregation of the Sacred Heart at Braine-le-Comte, Belgium.[7] The exact details of his work in Faaone are not known, but historian Raeburn Lange claimed he excluded the hearing of confessions and there were fears by his superior of Tiripone regressing to his Polynesian heritage in his personal life. Given these circumstances, he was sent to the Picpus house in Valparaíso in 1879 and died of pneumonia, on 27 December 1881.[4] After Tiripone's death, the Catholic churches of French Polynesia continued to rely on mainly non-native priest. The seminary in Papeete was discontinued by Bishop Jaussen on 30 May 1874 due his discouragement of the incapability of the native students. It wouldn't be until 1954 that the next French Polynesian priest Michel-Gaspard Coppenrath was ordained.[8][10]
References
- ^ "R.P. MAMA TAIRA PUTAIRI Tryphon, d." Paroisse de la Cathédrale de Papeete. Retrieved 27 July 2015.
- ^ Laval, Newbury & O'Reilly 1968, pp. 545–546.
- ^ Garrett 1982, pp. 88–96.
- ^ a b c "Tahiti 1834-1984 - Chap. VIII. DEUXIÈME PARTIE L'APPEL DES ÎLES LOINTAINES". Paroisse de la Cathédrale de Papeete. Retrieved 27 July 2015.
- ^ "Bio-bibliographie L". Paroisse de la Cathédrale de Papeete. Retrieved 27 July 2015.
- ^ Laval, Newbury & O'Reilly 1968, pp. 106–107.
- ^ a b c Buck 1938, p. 13.
- ^ a b Lange 2006, pp. 53–54.
- ^ Certain sources claimed Tiripone was the first Polynesian ordained, but the Samoan Soakimi Gatafahefa had been ordained by an Italian cardinal in the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran on 10 June 1865. Lange 2006, pp. 110–111
- ^ "Tahiti 1834-1984 - Chap. XII. DEUXIÈME PARTIE L'APPEL DES ÎLES LOINTAINES". Paroisse de la Cathédrale de Papeete. Retrieved 27 July 2015.
Bibliography
- Buck, Peter Henry (1938). Ethnology of Mangareva. Vol. 157. Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum Press.
{{cite book}}:|work=ignored (help); Invalid|ref=harv(help) - Garrett, John (1982). To Live Among the Stars: Christian Origins in Oceania. Suva, Fiji: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific. ISBN 978-2-8254-0692-2.
{{cite book}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help) - Lange, Raeburn (2006). Island Ministers: Indigenous Leadership in Nineteenth Century Pacific Islands Christianity (PDF). Christchurch, New Zealand: Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury. ISBN 978-1-74076-176-5.
{{cite book}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help) - Laval, Honoré; Newbury, C. W.; O'Reilly, Patrick (1968). Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de Mangareva: ère chrétienne, 1834-1871. Paris: Musée de l'Homme.
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