Our Lady of Fiji in Depth

The islands of sugar: a world of worlds

Fiji is not a country. It's a world within a world. Its more than 300 islands - of which about 100 are inhabited - have a human diversity that few Pacific nations can match. The iBukei, indigenous Fijians, with their Polynesian culture - melanesia, their language, their links to the ocean and the earth. The Indo-Fijians, descendants of the hired workers that the British Empire brought from India between 1879 and 1916 to work on sugar cane plantations. Filipans of Chinese, European, Samoan origin. A mixture that has not always been harmonious - the coups of State, ethnic tensions, exoduses have marked Fiji's modern history - but that lives in that geography of coral and palm that the ocean surrounds everywhere.

In this plural and complex Fiji, the Catholic Church has built for more than 180 years a space that, paradoxically, is of the few where these communities find themselves without the barriers of ethnic origin. The Marian faith - the Rosary prayed in Fijian, Hindi Fijian, in English, according to who is in the bank - is one of the few languages that everyone understands.

The way from Wallis: Bishop Bataillon and the First Mass

The evangelization of Fiji did not begin in Fiji. It began in the islands of Wallis and Futuna, that small Polynesian archipelago where Father Pierre Chanel had shed his blood in 1841 becoming the first martyr of Oceania. It was from there, from that land fertilized by the blood of the martyr, from where Bishop Pierre Bataillon took a journey to Fiji carrying with him the faith that Chanel had planted with his life.

On 2 August 1844, Bishop Bataillon landed on the island of Lakeba, in the Lau group of the Fiji archipelago. With him came the parents Rulleaux and Breheret, brother Annet, and two catechists from Wallis: Pako and Apolonia. The two Walisian catechists were crucial: they knew the Polynesian languages near the Fijian, they knew the strategies of evangelization that had worked in Wallis, and above all they knew - from their own experience, not by theory - that faith can take root in cultures that seem very different from that of Europe.

The first few years were hard. The diseases decimated the missionaries. In 1855, the mission had been reduced to a minimum and had to be almost abandoned, except in Levuka, the first capital of Fiji. But the seeds were planted. And the seeds of faith, even if they are long, germinate.

Saint Peter Chanel: the martyr who inspired all Melanesia

To understand Marian devotion in Fiji, we must return to the origin: Pierre Louis Marie Chanel, born on July 12, 1803 in Montrevel-en-Bresse, France, died on April 28, 1841 in Poi, Futuna Island, a few kilometres from Wallis. He was a Marist priest, a man who had chosen the Pacific when the Society of Mary was looking for volunteers for those missions that no one wanted because they all knew were dangerous.

Pierre Chanel stayed in Futuna while the accompanying bishop was on a journey to other islands. He was there four years, learning his tongue, healing sick, becoming friends with the people. The local king, Niuliki, tolerated it. But when the king's son began to ask for baptism, Niuliki saw a threat to his authority. On April 28, 1841, a group sent by the king attacked Pierre Chanel and killed him.

He died forgiving. He died praying. And he died as those who have the faith of those who know who they love die.

It was beatified in 1889 and canonized in 1954. He's the patron of Oceania. And for the Marist missionaries of Fiji, it is the spiritual lighthouse that illuminates everything. When the mission in Fiji becomes difficult, when perseverance fails, when the result of the work is not seen, the marists look at Pierre Chanel and remember: he also spent four years without seeing visible fruits. And then he gave his life. And then all Futuna became. Blood watered what patience had sown.

The "Meri ni Vale ni Lotu": the women who preserved the faith

En fiyiano, Meri ni Vale ni Lotu literally means "women of the house of prayer." It is the name given in many communities to women who assume the role of leaders of family and community spiritual life. It is those who organize the prayers of the Rosary in the homes, who ensure that children learn the prayers, those who keep the images of the Virgin in the domestic altars, those who remember when there is ninth and when the candle must be lit before Mary.

Las Meri ni Vale ni Lotu are the invisible backbone of the Catholic faith in Fiji. When priests were scarce - and for many decades they were - it was these women who supported the Christian life of the communities. When cyclones were forced to evacuate and normal was broken, it was they who gathered the neighbors around the Rosary. When there was conflict in the community, it was they who proposed to pray together as the first step towards reconciliation.

Academic research on the Winston cyclone (2016) collected testimonies from women from Tokou, a coastal village on the island of Ovalau, who described how they had held their families during the storm. One of them explained: "I gathered everyone in my house and we prayed the Rosary. We didn't know if the house was gonna hold. But we knew that if we prayed together, the Virgin was with us. And that was enough."

The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Suva: 100 years of construction

Suva, the capital of Fiji, has in the center of the city one of the most striking buildings in the South Pacific: the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, built in European Gothic style with sandstone blocks brought from Sydney, Australia. His history of construction is in itself a metaphor for the patience that faith requires on these lands: the works began in 1894 and were not completed until 1994. One hundred years.

One hundred years that are also the history of the Church in Fiji: the slowness, the crises, the moments when everything seemed to stop, and the obstination of continuing to build stone by stone. The cathedral is the mother of all the churches of the archipelago. It is the place where the itaukei and the Indo-Fijians, the Europeans and the Polynesians, the descendants of the first missionaries and the newcomers kneel before the same altar.

It has capacity for thousands of people. At the great Marian parties - the Assumption in August, the month of the Rosary in October, the ninth Christmas - it is filled up to the corridors of people coming from all corners of the island of Viti Levu, the largest of the archipelago. And at that moment, Fiji's diversity is concentrated under the same vault, before the same Mother.

The Indo-Fijians before the cathedral: an unexpected visit

One of the most surprising realities of religious life in Fiji is the presence of Indo-Fijians - mostly Hindus or Muslims - who visit the Marian Cathedral of Suva and other Catholic chapels of the archipelago, especially at times of personal or family difficulty.

It's not conversion. It's not syncretism in the negative sense. It is something that the scholars of religion in the Pacific have observed and documented: the figure of the Mother - of the You must have, the mother goddess, in the Hindu tradition - has resonances that transcend the borders of confessions. An Indo-Fijian mother who is sick, or who has a child in danger, or who has lost someone, can enter into a chapel where there is an image of Mary and pray to her - from her own faith, from her own way of understanding the sacred - because she recognizes in that face something universal: the mother who cares, the mother who intercede, the mother who does not leave.

The Catholic priests of Fiji are very clear that these visits are not proselytism or conversion. It's meetings. And meetings, when received with respect and love, can be the beginning of something that neither side can foresee.

Hurricane Winston (2016): the most powerful in the southern hemisphere

On 20 and 21 February 2016, the severe tropical cyclone Winston crossed Fiji. It was the most powerful cyclone that had ever touched land in the southern hemisphere: winds up to 295 kilometres per hour in bursts, a central pressure of 884 hPa. Almost 350,000 people - more than one third of the population of the archipelago - were on their way.

The most hit islands were Koro and those of the Lau group. But the city of Ba, in northern Viti Levu, was also hit by brutal violence. Ba is one of the cities with the largest proportion of the Catholic population of Fiji, with an active Marian community and several chapels dedicated to the Virgin.

In the hours before the cyclone passed, while the authorities asked the population to seek refuge, many families in Ba chose to take refuge in the church. It was the strongest building in the neighborhood, yes. But it was also the place where she was. And to pray the Rosary together as the wind started roofs and the trees fell was the only answer they had for a force that no human being can control.

"That night, with the cyclone outside, we were all praying the Rosary. There was nothing else to do. And we felt we weren't alone. She was with us in that shelter. When it dawned and the wind stopped, we went out and saw the destruction. But we were alive. And we gave thanks."
- Testimony of a parishioners from the community of Ba, collected by the Catholic mission of Fiji.

Cyclone Winston left 44 dead, thousands of houses destroyed and damage to the economy of the archipelago for years. The Catholic Church's response was immediate: Fiji's Catholic mission organized food collection, construction materials and medical equipment, and the parish volunteers of Suva, Ba and other cities were deployed in the most affected areas.

The International Caritas and the Australian diocese of Townsville sent support. But what the local community remembers is not so much the help that came from outside, but the network of solidarity that was woven inside: the groups of Rosario that became brigades of reconstruction, the Meri ni Vale ni Lotu who organized the distribution of food in parishes, the young people of the pastoral that carried cement blocks for weeks to rebuild their neighbors' houses.

The Fijian "iDivinity": the local name of the female sacred

In Fijian, the word iDivinity does not have an exact equivalent in Spanish. It is used, in some contexts, to refer to the presence of the female divine - a category that in traditional Fijian tradition has its own expressions. When the Marist missionaries introduced the figure of Mary, some elders of the iTaukei communities recognized in her the resonances of that feminine dimension of what their tradition already knew.

It's not that Mary is a Fijian goddess. It is that the human being, in its depths, recognizes the motherhood of God in the faces that are most familiar to him. And in Fiji, as in Papua or in Solomon, Mary has been taking on the traits of every people while still being who she is. The universal Mother who manifests herself in the concrete details of each culture.

Four Coups of State, one Mother

Fiji's modern political history is marked by four military coup d'état (1987, 1987, 2000, 2006) and the tensions between the iTaukei and the Indo-Fijian community that underlie much of that instability. Constitutions have been rewritten, governments have changed, leaders have come and go. But in the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Sunday Mass continues to be held, and in the banks people of all the origins of the archipelago continue to sit together.

It is not that the Church has resolved the ethnic tensions of Fiji. He hasn't solved them. But it has kept open a meeting space that in times of polarization is valuable simply because it exists. And the figure of Mary - of the Mother who makes no distinction of origin, race or passport - has been the symbol of that space more than any other.

• 1841Martirio de San Pedro Chanel en Futuna. The first martyr of Oceania inspires the entire evangelization of the South Pacific.
• 1844Bishop Bataillon lands in Lakeba, Fiji (2 August). First Mass on Fijian land.
• 1855The mission is reduced to its minimal expression for the diseases. Only Levuka has a presence.
• 1894Beginning of the construction of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Suva.
• 1954San Pedro Chanel is canonized. He is proclaimed patron of Oceania.
• 1994Conclusion of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart (100 years of construction), exactly 150 years after the arrival of the first missionaries.
• 2016Winston cyclone (20-21 February). The most powerful in the southern hemisphere. The communities of Ba and other cities pray the Rosary as the storm passes.

The faith that survives the wind

When the Winston cyclone moved away, leaving behind a landscape of twisted and weathered trunks, Ba's families returned to their homes. Many of those houses were gone. We had to rebuild. We had to start from scratch.

But in the domestic altars, Mary's images were intact. They had been protected before entering the shelter, wrapped in fabrics or put in bags. Because in Fiji, as in all Melanesia, it is known that there are things to save before others. And the Mother is the first.

These images returned to their places on the walls and altars. The candles turned on again. The Rosary prayed again. And life began again, as it has always begun on these islands: slowly, patiently, in the certainty that what the sea and the wind can destroy, love cannot destroy.

Fiji is like that. And Mary is with Fiji. Since that 2 August 1844 when Bishop Bataillon celebrated the first Mass in Lakeba, she has not moved from here. It has endured cyclones, coups, ethnic tensions, exoduses. He's still up. Keep looking at the ocean. Keep waiting for your children.