By Marcus Nyssen

“Benny, that’s Dad!” I exclaimed, pointing at a photograph of first communicants in an old photo album of our little group of Traditional Catholics in New Zealand. Turning the pages, I found an image of a slightly older version of my father, with quite a bit more hair, sitting next to Fr. Juan Carlos Iscara. We had a good chuckle.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but many words were missing from this story. Two pictures separated by twenty years. Only the words of someone who lived through the times in these photos could make this connection. That weekend, it was my chance to ask dad to pass on to me what he remembered. I wanted the tradition these pictures could only suggest. It was time to pester dad with lots of questions. Whether my questions were frustrating or not, I did learn that, in hindsight, he was not thrilled about his 1980s hairstyle.

I and my five siblings are the fourth generation of Traditional Catholics in Whanganui. In 1976, when Fr. Augustine Cummins, C.Ss.R, made his way from Australia to New Zealand to offer the Traditional Mass, Oma and Opa attended, along with Oma’s parents. (“Grandma” and “Grandpa” for us of Dutch descent). Little did Fr. Cummins know, but this first Mass in Whanganui would lead to one of the largest “parishes” in the diocese. The seed for the parish of St. Anthony’s was planted.

Ninety-three years before that visit and about 44 miles up the Whanganui River, Mother Mary Joseph Aubert of the Sisters of St. Joseph established an orphanage among the tribe of the Ngati Hau Maori iwi.

They had asked for a priest and missionaries. The Protestants who had tried to make converts there were not pleased, and moved downstream. The small village was named Hiruharama (a transliteration of Jerusalem). Before coming to New Zealand, Suzanne Aubert, as she was known, declined an arranged marriage, on the advice of St. John Marie Vianney, for a religious life. A story circulates that the Curé of Ars told the soon-to-be Sr. Mary Joseph that she would establish a thriving congregation, but it would sadly not last very long after her. Despite this prophecy of doom, goes the tale, at the end of a river the Faith would be kept. Our River City sits at the end of that same Whanganui River.

Whether the tale is a true story or not, we can only guess, but as one of the priests who has taught my class says, “If it’s not true, it’s still a very good story.” Mother Aubert’s cause for canonization is presently open.

Fr. Cummins did not visit Whanganui weekly. Today, we are privileged to have three daily Masses, but back then, my family was blessed to have Mass every three months! Mass was in a converted garage near the Huber family’s house. The “Mass-shed,” Dad called it. There the handful of families in Whanganui prayed before the Blessed Sacrament when there was no priest.

News of the “Hot Summer” in France, only reached “down under” towards the end of 1976, when translations of Archbishop Lefebvre’s sermon in Lille, France circulated among the faithful in New Zealand. Seeing the missionary Catholic spirit was still alive, several families sought out the Traditional Mass and moved to Whanganui. Several life-sized statues, salvaged from the South Island’s West Coast, came with them and get regular visitors in St. Anthony’s Church to this day. The news of a bishop who kept the Traditional Faith, prompted a young man from Whanganui to pursue a vocation with this “rebel” Archbishop. The future Fr. James Peek headed for Ecône, first as a religious brother, but then to become a seminarian.

Dad did not have to attend Mass in a shed for very long. In 1981, a house was donated. With some work from several men, including Opa, it became our first proper chapel. Armed with a more fitting place for the Mass, the faithful petitioned Archbishop Lefebvre for a priest for New Zealand. They had sent a man to the seminary; perhaps they could now reap the fruits. The Archbishop assured a priest as soon as one was available, but one was not then available.

It was in 1983 that, for a short time, the growing parish of Whanganui was blessed with the arrival of Fr. Lawrence Smith, S.M., who said Mass regularly for 60 or so people, despite, or perhaps because of, the conflict between the Archbishop and Rome. When news came that Msgr. Lefebvre had accepted the invitation to visit for Confirmations in November 1983, it was the miraculous answer to many prayers. So in 1985, Whanganui saw the first fruits of its efforts: the ordination of Fr. Peek. Five years later, a second Kiwi would be ordained for the Society, Fr. Anthony Wingerden.

Prayers were yet again answered when, in 1986 the priest Msgr. Lefebvre had promised arrived. The St. Edmund Campion Chapel became a priory, with the Australian Fr. Stephen Abdoo installed as prior, hands still wet with the Holy Oil. Fr. Abdoo shared the priory with Fr. Smith, who left in 1987, and was replaced by Fr. Ruben Gentili as coadjutor.

Fr. Abdoo was a zealous priest. Soon after his arrival he penned an open letter to the New Zealand bishops, calling them out for the loss of Faith and calling them back to Tradition. This cri de coeur tragically became Fr. Abdoo’s Last Testament. Returning North from a pastoral trip, scheduled to say Mass in a small converted garage in Tawa near Wellington, a driver lost control heading Southbound and went through the barricade and dropped onto the lower lanes upon the car of Fr. Abdoo. Two miles from the place he was to offer the Mass, the Society saw the first death of one of its priests ordained by the Archbishop. He had died like every priest would want: doing his duty for souls. Even so, the grief was immense. To this day a cross stands on the roadside near where he gave his soul back to God, and every year we boys at the school have the opportunity to serve a Requiem Mass offered for his soul on the anniversary of his death.

Thrown into the role unexpectedly, Fr. Gentili became the new prior and was joined by the recently ordained Fr. Juan Carlos Iscara. Both were together in the Argentinian Seminary. Dad remembered it was not just a common fatherland they shared, but also a common love of Coca-Cola, which became a priory staple. Fr. Iscara’s stay was short, but included a boys’ camp at Ruakawa Falls, from whence comes the second photo of dad. When Fr. Iscara left for Australia, a young Fr. Shane Johnson took his place.

St. Edmund Campion chapel became crowded, but the old 1924-built Gonville parish church, on the top of a large black-sand dune, had come up for sale. Used on Sundays as a church, the building was actually a large hall for St. Anthony’s School, which had been merged with another school and shuttered. A plan was made: three months to raise a deposit. The diocese was not keen to sell to the SSPX, so Fr. Gentili made a promise to St. Anthony: an annual procession in honour of St. Anthony on the Sunday closest to his feast day, if the SSPX would obtain the church. Not knowing this promise, a Traditional Catholic approached the diocese, purchased the building without trouble, and it was then offered to the Society. The old parish church of Gonville, where many of the faithful lived, was once again their church. The procession goes on every year, and even the COVID restrictions failed to stop it in 2020. It only had to be shifted a week later, so restrictions could lapse.

The next challenge was a school. Families agreed on this necessity, and so a plan was created for a primary school. A handful of men, working for free on weekends and after work produced three classrooms. In June 1994, after the annual St. Anthony’s procession, Fr. François Laisney (then District Superior, now prior) opened and blessed the school. Fourteen students and three teachers (two of whom still are teaching) started the 1995 school year.

In 1997, a Dominican from a teaching order in Dunedin, hearing of Tradition, visited the priory and school. After spending some time in Post Falls, Sr. Mary Micaela returned to Whanganui, intent on beginning a secondary school. St. Dominic’s College was inaugurated in 2000, and two years later, novices came to Sr. Micaela to begin a Traditional branch of the Dunedin teaching sisters. The sisters now number nearly two dozen, with a convent and girls’ boarding school built in 2006, when my memories begin in very foggy form.

We boys have classrooms across the campus as part of St. Augustine’s College, and are taught by several dedicated lay teachers and three priests. A generous donor, Dr. June Barclay, left nearly $1 million in her will to help the boys’ college, so in 2016, the classrooms and offices opened, under Fr. Andrew Cranshaw, another Kiwi vocation, where I and my brother Benedict are two of nearly 150 students in the various schools who attend daily classes. The Cambridge International curriculum is difficult but rewarding, and some of our students have won national awards, including a Top of the World award for Classics just this past year.

The years have seen many priests pass through, each contributing their own part to the tradition and story. Several have been my teachers, confessors, and added their own little bit to my formation, as they have to many other young men. So have men like my father—who seemed happier than I imagined to be peppered with questions—contributed to the story, and now passed it along. Thinking back over the story of Whanganui and of Tradition, the hand of Providence is clearly seen in the Faith holding on at the end of a river. That that Faith has been handed to me, and now I can be a part of passing it along, along with this story, in whatever way Providence has planned for me.

Perhaps one day, forty or so years in the future, another young man will point me out in a photo book, propose questions, and I will be able to pass on to him my thousand words.