Catholics in Papua New Guinea honored the evangelization, 80 years ago, of the remote interior of the nation's main island by making a pilgrimage in the steps of its first missionaries.

“After 80 years, the Catholic faithful in the Archdiocese of Mount Hagen felt it is time to say thank you and to acknowledge all the blessings from God through the missionaries,” said Paul Petrus, a social researcher and a layman of Papua New Guinea, in an April 21 interview with CNA.

Some 500 Catholics, including three priests and nine seminarians, trekked through the mountainous highlands of New Guinea from March 28 until April 13, Palm Sunday.
 
They began in the vicinity of Madang, on the coast, and arrived at the Mount Hagen chancery, where they were greeted by Archbishop Douglas Young, who told them, “the pilgrimage was sign of a family walking together and sharing the Gospel, as a Church alive in Christ.”

The Wahgi Valley, in which Mount Hagen is located, was unknown to Westerners until aerial reconnaissance discovered it in 1933.

The following year, Divine Word Missionaries traveled to the Highlands to evangelize its native inhabitants. They were commissioned by the vicar apostolic of Eastern New Guinea, who was himself a member of the Society of the Divine Word.

Divine Word Missionaries from America and Germany – Fr. Wilhelm Ross, Fr. Wilhelm Tropper, Br. Eugene Frank, Fr. Alphonse Schafer, and Fr. Henry Auefnanger – set out from Wilya together with 72 indigenous helpers to evangelize New Guinea's Highlands, eventually branching out and founding different missions.

“The first missionaries’ sole purpose was to evangelize the people, but services such as education and health seemed necessary in order to evangelize meaningfully,” Petrus reflected.

“Thus, schools and health services were established, and since then it has contributed much to the development of the region; and today about 40 percent of the health and education services in the Highlands is provided by the Catholic Church.”

Petrus recounting the walking pilgrimage, saying the first week was a “test of faith, and of physical strength.”

He described the pilgrims' suffering in walking through the tropical rainforest and steep terrain of the New Guinea Highlands, crossing valleys to highways, some of them without proper footwear.

Despite aching bodies and blistered feet, the pilgrims found “spiritual strength which motivated them to continue,” Petrus said.

“Some of the pilgrims are descendents of the helpers who assisted the first missionaries.”

They followed a stretch of the Chimbu river for a time, crossing the ridges of the Bismarck range – the highest peak of which, Mount Wilhelm, rises to more than 14,700 feet.

The pilgrims visited the memorials of Br. Eugene Frank at Anganere and Fr. Carl Morschheuser at Womatne. Both were martyred by indigenous Papuans, in 1934 and 1935.
 
The second week of the pilgrimage, from Mingende to Mount Hagen, a distance of more than 50 miles, continued on the old highway, a route that Fr. Ross and Br. Eugene had used.

Petrus described the arrival at Mount Hagen as filled with “tears of joy” for many of the pilgrims.

“It was a perfect spiritual exercise to strengthen their Catholic faith during the Lenten season,” he said of his fellow pilgrims, “and it was a good experience to feel a pain and suffering similar to that of the first missionaries who 80 years ago entered the Highlands region.”

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/papuans-make-two-week-pilgrimage-in-missionaries-steps/

An earthquake which struck the Papua New Guinean island of Bougainville on Holy Saturday brought chaos and destruction to persons and property, according to the local bishop.

 “I had been having a mumu meal offered by a family for Easter, but also to remember the first anniversary of my mum's death … we almost had it as a last meal,” Bishop Bernard Unabali of Bougainville said.

Mumu is a traditional Papua New Guinean means of cooking, using a rock-lined earthen pit which is then covered with banana leaves.

The April 19 quake was centered 47 miles southwest of Panguna, and had a magnitude of 7.5.

It had been preceded by a number of smaller tremors, beginning April 4, according to Bishop Unabali.

“Since then they have been felt stronger and more frequent in the southwest, especially the islands of Buin, Siwai, Bana, and Torokina … the area where the epicenter is reported to be close to.”

Two quakes on April 11 killed at least two persons.

Bishop Unabali said that the Holy Saturday earthquake caught some unawares as they returned from earlier Easter Vigils, and that at some parishes with Masses starting later due to a shortage of priests, people became trapped in the churches.

“So imagine what happened,” he said.

At some parishes, “homilies were cut short,” and “one place was at the blessing of the baptismal water and the shaking of the water had the priest baptized rather than the babies.”

Bishop Unabali was pleased to say that all of his priests remained with their people during the earthquake.

At one parish, a young girl struck her head on a brick as people were rushing out of the church, and there was a death at another parish also. Several parishes on the southern end of Bougainville island suffered extensive damage to their buildings and foundations, as well as damaged statues, tabernacles, and crucifixes.

The homes and gardens of many were destroyed by landslides.
 
At Torokina, a village on Bougainville’s central west coast, inhabitants had to move inland from the rising sea. Some rivers on the island have become filled with earth and debris from landslides.

Bishop Unabali lamented, “we do not have a diocese-level Caritas and proper set up … we are organizing to collect data through individuals from remote areas and site visits wherever possible.”

“We need to prepare ourselves first, though we may need help from outside.”

The Bougainville diocese was elevated from a vicariate apostolic in 1966. In 2012, it had 17 diocesan priests and 13 religious, and 31 parishes. 66 percent of the population of 219,000 are Catholic.

Papua New Guinea is a Melanesian nation consisting of the eastern half of the island of New Guinea, as well as numerous other, smaller, islands. It is located north of Australia and east of Indonesia.

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/easter-earthquake-does-not-shake-faith-in-papua-new-guinea/