Mission of San Patricio de Malmal (Pomio)
In the Bay of Jacquinot, within the district of Pomio, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart founded in 1931 the mission of Saint Patrick of Malmal, the first stable Catholic presence in this jungle corner of East Britain. The locals of the Mengen people themselves had set up a church of forest materials on their own initiative before the first missionary arrived. The mission today belongs to the Archdiocese of Rabaul, whose archbishop remains a Missionary of the Sacred Heart.
🌹 Wonders and anecdotes
- On May 12, 1931, the mission boat Teresa left Vunapope for Malmal with Father William Culhane MSC on board: on arrival she found that the Mengen community had on its own initiative built a forest wood church 18 meters long, a sign of a faith that preceded the missionary.
- Father Ted Harris MSC, a priest of Malmal since the mid-1930s, hosted in the mission some two hundred Australian soldiers and civilians fleeing the Japanese advance in 1942, distributing them to forest camps and giving up their own boat to facilitate evacuation.
- In April 1942 the MV Laurabada steam evacuated from Palmalmal to one hundred and fifty-six soldiers and civilians to Port Moresby thanks to the coordination organized from the mission of Malmal, saving lives that would otherwise have fallen prisoners.
- Father Ted Harris refused to leave his mission and his parishioners Mengen despite the repeated pleas of the Australian soldiers, and was killed by Japanese forces; in his memory, the survivors of the evacuation donated a chalice to the monastery of the Sacred Heart of Croydon.
- A photograph of the Malmal church taken in 1960 still shows bullet holes on the main entrance, a silent footprint of the violence of war that the community preferred to keep as a memory rather than erase with a layer of paint.
- The Catholic deanate of Pomio, one of the three pastoral demarcations of the Archdiocese of Rabaul, today brings together dozens of parishes and missions in one of the most remote and linguistic regions of all Papua New Guinea.
Saint Patrick · Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC)
The mission of San Patricio de Malmal, founded by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in 1931 by the Bay of Jacquinot in the district of Pomio, is the stone of touch of Catholicism in the interior of the jungle of New East Britain. His story is forever marked by the figure of Father Ted Harris MSC, who during World War II turned the mission into a shelter and evacuation point for hundreds of Australians, and who died at Japanese hands without wanting to leave his parishioners. The Archdiocese of Rabaul, a heir to the pioneering MSC mission that arrived in New Britain at the end of the 19th century, remains entrusted to the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.
"Mary, Mother of the Lord, intercedes for the communities of New Britain that in far-off land and deep jungle keep the faith that missionaries and martyrs sowed with their lives.
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