FATHER REIGNIER'S DEATH.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 215, 30 October 1888, Page 3

FATHER REIGNIER'S DEATH.

[from our own correspondent ] Napier, last night. The death is announced of the Rev Father Reignier, the oldest Catholic Missionary in Hawke’s Bay, and one of the oldest in New Zealand, who passed away to the “ longer life ” at the Mission Station, Meanee, last night. He was born on 17th April 1811, at Chateaubriand, France. He pursued the earlier religious studies at Verton, continuing them at the “ Lower Seminary ” at Nantes. After five years novitiate he entered the Society of Mary and was ordained a priest on the 15th December 1841. He shortly afterwards left France for foreign missions and arrived at Wellington on 6th April, 1842. He proceeded thence to Auckland and the Bay of Islands. After a year or so of work there he went to Opotiki, residing there for over twelve months and finally in the Ohinemutu district in 1844. Here was great scope for missionary work and here he labored earnestly and arduously for some time, converting over 1200 natives, and building churches in the more thickly populated districts. Father Reignier worked on. and on until he had the satisfaction of seeing that his good work was bearing fruit, and when assistance had been obtained and various mission stations were firmly established he left the scenes of his early labors and came to Hawke’s Bay. This was in the year 1851, and ever since that time he has devoted his life mainly to this province, and to the districts immediately bordering on it. He has been so intimately connected with the work of his Church in the province that it is needless to detail at any length the good services that he has rendered. The churches and schools all over the province bear testimony to-day of his unflagging zeal, and his name is a household word in the province which professes his religious faith. He was also wellknown among the earlier settlers in Poverty Bay, that district bnng one of the scenes of his labors. All round the colony are monuments to his memory in the shape of churches and schools, and his name will never be permitted to ba forgotten so Inng as there is a Catholic in Hawke’s Bay. He was an admirable scholar and a cultured and refined gentleman, and by his ever courteous, ever charitable, ever kind and sympathetic manner not only made himself beloved by hia co-religionists, but reepected and revered by hundreds who belonged to other denominations.