Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 9.djvu/553

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which ia for him bo far from lieing a (lelcstable vice tiiAt parents are the first to iDtroduce their children to debsurliery. This immorality and the lack of sta- bility and fidelity in marnoge are the fcrcat obstacles to the development of t\if f&mily and of the diristiaii reliKion in Madngiutcar.

The first priests to hrinK the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Madagascar aft«r tho discovery of the island, came with the PortuKucac. Old doeumorti mention reli- ^OUH who, about the year 1540, at'componted a, colony of emigrants to the south-east«rn part of the islona, where they were all massacred together during the oelebratioD of a feast. Then again, alxiut 1685, Frey J(4o de S. Thomri, a Dominican, appean to have been

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seven pcnmns had received baptism. It was not until four years later that MM. Hounier and Bourdaise come to continue the missionary work which bad been initiated at such cost; but they, too, succumbed to the severity of their task. A reinforcement of three mis- sionaries sent to their assistaTicc never reached them; one diml at wa. the other two on the inland of St. Mary, where they had landed. KevertheJeaa, St. Vincent dc Paul was not discouraged.

In 160.1, M. Alm^ras, the successor of St. Vincent de Paul in the government of the CongreKation of St. Laiare. obtained the appointment of M. Etienne as

Vow or Tanahabito, MiiDAOAacu

poisoned on the coast of the' island. In the Beran- teenth century two Jenuits came from Ooa with Ra- maka, the young son of the King of Anosy. This youth had been taken away, in 1615, by a Portuguese ship, to Goa, where the viceroy hod mtrueted him to the care of the Jesuits; he had been instructed and baptized. Ramaka's father permitted these two Jesuits to preach Christianity in his dominions. But soon, when they were beginning to wield some power for good, tho king, instigated by his ombiastj (sorcer- ers) forlnide his subjects to either give or sell anything whfltMoevor to the fathers. One of the two died, but the other succeeded in returning to India. Some yearn after this, tlie I.azariHis, sent by St. Vincent dc Paul, essayed to conquer Mailagascar for the Faith. The Socift* de i'Oriont had then recently taken pos- Bession, hi the name of France, of a tract of territory on the south-eastern litoral, and had named its prin-

7il establishment Fort-Dauphin. Tlie first superior this Lazarist mission was M. Nacquart: he left France with the Sieur de Flucourt. who represented the Soci^tfi de I'Orient, and one of his associates, M, Gondn^e. Arrii-ing at Fort'Duuphin in Decemljer, 1648, M. Nacquart dcvotnl himself most zealously, amid difTieulties of ei-erj- kind, to the evangeliHition of the natives, until he was carried off by a fever, 29 May, l(l.")0. M, riondn'-<- hod dii-d the year Ijefore. During these fourteen months of a|>ostolatc seventy-

mas Day M. Etienne baptized fifteen little children and four adults. But it was not long before he, too, fell a victim to his zeal. On T March, 1665, foiu new missionaries set out, and on 7 January, 1667, they were followed by five priests and four lay brothers, with two Recoll^t fathers. But in 1671, the Com- pa^ie dcs Indes, which had succeeded to the Soci£t£ de I'Oriect, having resolved tp nuit Mad^ascar, M. Jolly, M. Alnrfras' successor, recalled his missionaries. Only two out of thirty-seven who had been sent to the ialaiid, were able to return to France, in June, 1876- all the rest had died in harness. From the forcea abandonment of the Madagascar mission in 1674 until the middle of the nineteenth century, there were cmly a few isolated attempts, at long intervals, to resume the evangel iaation of the great African Island: we may mention tho^ of M. Iioinviile de Gl^fier, of the Missions Etrang£rcs of Paris, and of the Lazarists Monet and Durocher. The last^-namcd even sent some natives to the Propaganda Scniinar>' at Borne with the view of training tliem for the apostolate in their own countrv.

In 1S32 MM. de Solaces and Dalmond laid the first foundations of the new Madagascar Mission. But by this time some English Methodists, supported by the Government of their country, had already succeeded in establishing themselves in the centre of the inland. The Rev. Mr. Jones hud obtained authorization from the Court of Imerina to open a school at Tananarive, the capital. Other English Protestant missionaries followed him, and by 1830 they had thirtV'two schools in Imerina, with four thousand pupils. When, more- over, it was learned at Tananarive that the new prefect Apostolic, M. de Solagca, a Catholic priest, was on his way to the capital, everj'thiug was done to arrest his progress, and he died of misery' and grief at Ando- voranto. M. Dalmond took up the work begun by M. dc Sotage?. After preaching the Gospel in the small islands o(T the coast until about 1S43, he returned to France in order to recruit a large missionary force. The aid which he so much needed be obtained from Father Roothan, the general of the Jesuits, who au- thorized him to take six fathers or brothers from the Lyons province. Two priesta from the Holy Ghost Seminary went with them. After a fruitless attempt at Suint-Aucustin, the Jesuit fathcn set themselves to evangelize the adjacent islands of St. Mary. Noesi-Bi^, and Mnyotte. Assisted by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluiiy, they also made earnest efforts towards the in- struction and education of the Malagasy boys and girls in the island of Ri^union (or Bourbon^. Tney did not, however, by any means lose sight of the great island, and again endeavoured to establish themselves on its littoral, but wore once more compelled to aban- don their brave enterprise.

It was only in 1855 that P&re Finaz, disguised, and under an assumed name, wa.s able to penetrate as far as the capital. "At last", he exclaimed in the joy of his heart, "I am at Tananarivo. of which I take pos- session in the name of Catholicism. " Waiting for the time when he should be able to freely announce the Gospel to the Hova, he used all his eoorta to prolong his stay at the capital without arousing suspicion.