{"id":3643,"date":"2015-07-03T11:21:04","date_gmt":"2015-07-03T11:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/2015\/07\/03\/from-the-pages-of-history-mt-60-years-ago-3\/"},"modified":"2017-10-10T11:44:40","modified_gmt":"2017-10-10T07:44:40","slug":"from-the-pages-of-history-mt-60-years-ago-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/from-the-pages-of-history-mt-60-years-ago-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Missionary work and persecution of Pere Laval"},"content":{"rendered":"

MT 60 Years Ago –\u00a02nd YEAR NO. 41 \u2013 20th May 1955<\/strong><\/p>\n

Glimpses of Mauritian History<\/strong><\/h4>\n

When P\u00e8re Laval came to Mauritius the moral and religious instruction of the inhabitants were in a deplorable state. To the insufficiency of the number of priests and the indifference of the whites were added silly prejudices which had alienated the coloured population from the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n

One such prejudice, the sting of which was felt most keenly, related to the burial of the dead. On the death of a white, the clergy went to the place of the deceased and had the corpse brought into the church but when a coloured man or a black died the corpse had to be brought and placed on a flat stone outside the church where it was left for one or two hours before the funeral service was performed. In the cemetery there were two sections – one for whites another for the coloured and the blacks. In the church the whites and the blacks were completely separated by a balustrade. This state of things had the inevitable result of flinging the coloured people into the arms of the Rev Lebrun, the Methodist.<\/p>\n

The progress of Lebrun filled the catholic priests with fears\u00a0for the future of their church. They wanted a man fitted by temperament to do for the Catholic church what Rev Lebrun was doing for the Protestants. Such a man was found in P\u00e8re Laval.<\/p>\n

P\u00e8re Laval was above all the missionary of the blacks. As soon as he came into the island, he grasped the situation to the full. Since the beginning of the year 1842 he began his work. Finding that to make himself understood by the blacks, he had to learn their language \u2013 Creole. To make them feel at home in his company he adopted a poor way of living. It is said by an eye witness that \u201cil couchait sur trois planches sans matelas, et seulement recouvertes d\u2019une natte de Madagascar. Il n\u2019y avait dans sa chambre outre une petite malle pour mettre ses quelques effets, un Christ, une petite table et une chaise.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was told from the outset that his task meant as if \u00ab jeter dans une mer sans fond de m\u00e9pris d\u2019ignominie, de contradictions, de difficult\u00e9s que l\u2019enfer suscitera \u00bb. As all great missionaries, to win over the blacks to his creed he had to make himself one with them. The master in whose life religion had occupied a poor place, seldom or never cared for the soul of his slave who was grossly illiterate and had no idea of moral values.<\/p>\n

In a letter to P\u00e8re Libermamn, P\u00e8re Laval describes thus the moral situation of the island:- \u201cIl y a une corruption et un d\u00e9bordement de m\u0153urs incroyables; le d\u00e9mon de l\u2019impuret\u00e9 fait des ra-vages \u00e9pouvantables parmi ces pauvres abandonn\u00e9s ; les Blancs en sont la cause, c\u2019est affreux ! Les pr\u00eatres jusqu\u2019ici, ne sont plus occup\u00e9s de ces pauvres gens que si ce fussent des animaux et cependant il y a un grand bien \u00e0 faire parmi eux. Si on avait fait pour les noirs ce que l\u2019on a fait pour les Blancs, on aurait travaill\u00e9 plus efficacement, mais ce ne sont pas les \u00e2mes que l\u2019on vient chercher ici, c\u2019est l\u2019argent et quelque chose de pis encore… Toutes les jeunes Noires sont debauch\u00e9es par leur ma\u00eetres et les jeunes\u2026\u00bb<\/p>\n

It was among this class abandoned by man and God that P\u00e8re Laval had to work. One of the qualities necessary to make any headway in his work was the courage to oppose the tide of colour prejudice. Disregarding what the whites would think of him and his work, he freely met and talked to the blacks in the streets, visited them in their poor huts or where they worked. He was often seen walking arm in arm with some intimate blacks. All this was looked upon by the upper classes as a pure scandal; they protested that, \u201cle P\u00e8re s\u2019avilissait, qu\u2019il se rendait m\u00e9prisable, que c\u2019\u00e9tait de l\u2019exc\u00e8s\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Another class among whom P\u00e8re Laval carried on his work of evangelization were the people who were found in the hospitals and the prison, where one is always sure to find the despaired and the unhappy.<\/p>\n

The whites, especially the young men, who found in the missionary one who stood between them and the satisfaction of their passions, did not allow him to do his work peacefully. Whenever he passed in the streets clad in his simple dress, walking with bent head, the children, very often, urged on by their elders, insulted him and even went so far as to throw stones at him.<\/p>\n

P\u00e8re Laval was not in any way daunted by the persecution to which he was the victim. He was as ready to accept every humiliation as his enemies were bent on his vilifications. On Palm-Sunday, in the year 1842, as usual an impious crowd had invaded the Cathedral of Port Louis. Laval\u2019s sense of religious dignity outraged at this, wanted to put an end to this scandal, but he had to match his lonely strength against the hooligans. He protested against the mischief-makers with the only result of rousing them to fury. At once cries of P\u00e8re Laval enrage<\/em><\/strong>, P\u00e8re Laval enrag\u00e9<\/em><\/strong> were heard from all sides.<\/p>\n

On one occasion P\u00e8re Laval was even assaulted by someone who had been thwarted in his debauchery by him. F. Delaplace, thus describes the incident: \u201cUn jour trouvant le P\u00e8re Laval \u00e0 la sacristie, et le croyant seul il se jette sur lui, lui crache au visage, lui meurtrit les joues de soufflets, le renverse par terre et l\u2019accable de coups \u00bb. Others less bold to attack him revenged themselves in their own ways. They composed a \u2018sega\u2019 in his honour, the refrain of which ran thus \u201cJe m\u2019accuse, P\u00e8re Laval! <\/em><\/strong>P. Laval je m\u2019accuse! ho! ho! ho! des sept p\u00e9ch\u00e9s!\u201d<\/em><\/strong> But there was nothing on earth to stop him from his work to which he had dedicated himself. He was a man born with a mission and to make the mission a success he was prepared to face every humiliation.<\/p>\n

(M.Times \u2013 20th May 1955)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*\u00a0 Published in print edition on 3 July 2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MT 60 Years Ago –\u00a02nd YEAR NO. 41 \u2013 20th May 1955<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":6560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[23],"tags":[6157,2957,6154,6155,1269,6156],"class_list":["post-3643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","tag-catholic-church","tag-creole","tag-f-delaplace","tag-pere-libermamn","tag-pere-laval","tag-rev-lebrun"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/MT-Logokk.jpg?fit=1200%2C880&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-WL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}