Bishop Moran died in Dunedin, May 1895, and was succeeded by Michael Verdon, of the archdiocese of Dublin. Canon Verdon was a nephew of Cardinal Cullen, of Dublin, and a cousin of Cardinal Moran, of Sydney. Before coming to New Zealand he had been on the staff of Clonliffe College (Dublin Diocesan Seminary), Vice-Rector of the Irish College, Rome, and first Rector of Manly College, Sydney. He undertook the founding of the National Seminary at Mosgiel in 1900, and was its first president. Until 1934 the seminary professors were chosen from diocesan priests of New Zealand, Australia, and Ireland. Priests of the Congregation of the Missions (Vincentians) from Australia took charge of the National Major Seminary in 1934.

On the death of Bishop Verdon, in 1918, James Whyte, of the archdiocese of Sydney, was appointed to Dunedin. In 1942 he asked for a coadjutor, and Hugh J. O'Neill, of the diocese of Dunedin, was nominated and consecrated in 1943. A sudden decline in health caused Bishop O'Neill to resign (died 1955), and John P. Kavanagh, of the archdiocese of Wellington, was consecrated as coadjutor. On the death of Bishop Whyte, in 1957, Bishop Kavanagh succeeded to the see.

Akaroa Station, without a resident priest after 1851, was with other parts of Canterbury visited at intervals from Wellington. In 1860 Viard sent Fathers Seon and Chataigner, both Marists, to found the “Port Cooper Mission”. From the headquarters, established in Christchurch, further stations were gradually set up. Father Chataigner founded schools, introducing into the South Island the first teaching order of nuns, Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions, who opened their first school in Christchurch in 1868. As a result of the request of the Bishops of the Plenary Synod, held in Sydney in 1885, Rome created the diocese of Christchurch by papal brief of 10 May 1887. An English Marist, John J. Grimes, was appointed first bishop and consecrated in London on 26 July 1887. A zealous worker, he developed further the works of the Church, and, with the aid of donations from all parts of the world, he built the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament at a cost of £80,000 and dedicated it in 1905.

On his death, in 1915, Bishop Grimes was succeeded by Matthew J. Brodie, a priest of Auckland diocese, who was consecrated in Christchurch by the first Apostolic Delegate to Australia and New Zealand, Archbishop Cerretti, later Nuncio to France and a Cardinal. Bishop Brodie died in 1943 and his successor was Patrick Frances Lyons, a priest of the archdiocese of Melbourne. In 1950 Bishop Lyons was appointed auxiliary to Cardinal Gilroy, of Sydney, and as his successor Rome appointed Edward Michael Joyce, a priest of the diocese of Christchurch.

The increasing work of the Church in New Zealand led the Bishops to decide in 1946 on the division of the studies in seminary training. Accordingly, in 1947, the National Minor Seminary as the centre for philosophical studies was opened in Christchurch and its care committed to the Society of Jesus.

As successor to Bishop Pompallier, Rome nominated Thomas William Croke, who arrived in Auckland in 1870. He at once set about reorganising the work of the Church and accomplished much in four years. He was transferred to the see of Cashel, Ireland, in 1875 and died there in 1902. Auckland was without a bishop until 1879 when Archbishop Steins, S.J., a former Archbishop of Bombay, was appointed. He died in Sydney in 1881 and was succeeded by John Edmund Luck, an English Benedictine. During his 13 years in Auckland Bishop Luck revived the Maori Mission, confiding it to the care of the Missionary Society of St. Joseph of Mill Hill, London. When Bishop Luck died, in 1896, the next bishop was George Michael Lenihan, a priest of the diocese of Auckland, who ruled it until 1910, being then succeeded by Henry William Cleary who died in 1929. Bishop Cleary's successor is the present Bishop, Archbishop James Michael Liston, who from being Rector of the National Seminary at Mosgiel was appointed coadjutor to Bishop Cleary in 1920. Bishop Liston succeeded to the see in 1929, and in 1954, on the occasion of his golden jubilee in the priesthood, was appointed to the personal title and dignity of Archbishop, and three years later was given an auxiliary in the person of Reginald Delargey, a priest of the diocese of Auckland.

An outstanding event in the history of Auckland and for the Church in New Zealand was the centennial celebrations in Auckland and Hokianga to commemorate the arrival of Bishop Pompallier and the celebration of his first mass at Totara Point in 1838.

Bishop Viard died on 2 June 1872. To succeed him a Marist priest, Francis Redwood, was consecrated in London in March 1874, and arrived in New Zealand in November of that year. By papal brief of 13 May 1887 the see of Wellington was erected into an archdiocese, and Bishop Redwood was elevated to the office of Archbishop and Metropolitan of New Zealand.

In 1889 the first Marist House of Studies was founded in Wellington under Father J. B. Pestre, S.M. This seminary was in 1890 shifted to Meeanee where the first ordinations to the priesthood took place in 1893. The seminary was changed to Green-meadows in 1911, where besides providing priests for the Society of Mary in New Zealand, it also sends missionaries each year to work in the Marist Vicariates of Oceania.

With the separation of the ecclesiastical province of New Zealand from Australia, it became necessary for a provincial council to be held, and Archbishop Redwood convened the First Provincial Council at Wellington in 1899. Among other decisions taken was the setting up of a National Seminary for Diocesan Clergy. The founding of the Seminary of Holy Cross at Mosgiel in the diocese of Dunedin was undertaken by Bishop Verdon, of Dunedin. In 1913 Archbishop Redwood asked for and received Thomas O'Shea, S.M., as his coadjutor. Consecrated in 1913, Archbishop O'Shea succeeded to the see of Wellington on 3 January 1935, following on the death of Archbishop Redwood on that date.

In 1940, on the occasion of the Dominion Centenary, Archbishop O'Shea organised the First National Eucharistic Congress which but for the war would have been presided over by Cardinal Hinsley, of Westminister, as Cardinal Legate.

St. Columban's Seminary, Lower Hutt, was opened in May 1943 to train young men from New Zealand for the foreign missions. St. Columban's Mission Society has three mission districts in China (closed at present), four districts in the Philippines, two in Korea, four in Japan, one in Burma, and has charge of parishes in Fiji, Chile, and Peru.

In 1947 Peter McKeefry was appointed coadjutor of Wellington, being consecrated at Auckland by Cardinal Gilroy, of Sydney, and on the death of Archbishop O'Shea, on 9 May 1954, he succeeded to the see of Wellington.

On 23 May 1962 Owen Noel Snedden was appointed titular Bishop of Acheloo and Auxiliary Bishop of Wellington, and was consecrated 22 August 1962.

From 1850 Bishop Viard sent priests occasionally to visit Otago and Southland. The first resident missionary, Father Delphine Moreau, S.M., sent by Viard in 1861 to found the Otago mission, laid in 1862 the foundation stone of St. Joseph's Church, a brick building still standing and serving as a school, near the site of the present St. Joseph's Cathedral. Bishop Viard blessed the church in October 1864.

In 1869 Otago and Southland were separated from the see of Wellington and erected into the diocese of Dunedin. The first Bishop, Patrick Moran, was at the time of his appointment Vicar Apostolic of the Eastern Province of Cape Colony, South Africa, and came to New Zealand in February 1871. Accompanying him were Father W. Coleman and 10 Dominican nuns who were to open the first of a series of schools in the new diocese. The Catholics in the diocese numbered about 6,000 at the time and under Moran's vigorous leadership built St. Joseph's Cathedral, 25 new churches, and 17 schools, besides several presbyteries and convents.

A Capuchin priest, Father J. J. P. O'Reily, who came to New Zealand in 1843, cared for the Roman Catholics of Wellington and built their first chapel. In 1844 Father Comte, S.M., was sent by Bishop Pompallier to take charge of the missionary work among the Maoris of the district.

Bishop Viard laid the foundation stone of St. Mary's Cathedral, Hill Street, in September 1850, just four months after his arrival in Wellington. Within two years he founded schools and a providence for Maori girls, this work being cared for first by Viard's own Congregation of Sisters, and from 1861 by Sisters of Mercy sent from Auckland. During the sixties people throughout the diocese, especially those on the goldfields of Otago and Westland, contributed generously for the enlargement and completion of the cathedral – first opened in 1851 and in its enlarged state dedicated in 1867. It was destroyed by fire in 1898 and the present Sacred Heart Basilica was erected on the former cathedral site in 1901.

In 1846 Bishop Pompallier left for Europe, and following on his report to Pope Pius IX and the Congregation of Propaganda, New Zealand was in 1848 divided into two dioceses, that of Auckland being the province of Auckland, and that of Wellington comprising the rest of New Zealand. Bishop Viard was to remain coadjutor to Pompallier, with his residence in Wellington and be Administrator Apostolic of that diocese.

Hone Heke's rising at Kororareka in 1845 led Pompallier to decide to make Auckland his headquarters, and Bishop Viard dedicated St. Patrick's Cathedral there in March 1848, just two years after he had laid the first stone. When Pompallier returned to New Zealand, in April 1850, he brought to Auckland several French and Irish missionaries, and the first Sisters of Mercy. These were from St. Leo's Convent, Carlow, Ireland, and they began immediately to take over the existing parish schools and founded an orphanage.

Progress in Auckland diocese was hampered through the departure of the Marist missionaries, many of whom accompanied Bishop Viard to Wellington in May 1850 when he left to assume his duties as Administrator Apostolic of the southern diocese. Pompallier's new missionaries faced great difficulties in taking over from the Marist pioneers as they had to learn a new language for the Maori work and meet increasing demands from the growing number of immigrants. Had it not been for the heroic work of Dr James McDonald, all the work of the early missionaries among the Maoris might have been lost.

To recruit more assistants and gain financial help, Bishop Pompallier again visited Europe in 1859, returning in 1860 with fresh helpers, including members of the Franciscan Order who for 10 years did valued work in Auckland diocese, and Suzanne Aubert, later foundress of New Zealand's own Order of Our Lady of Compassion.

By a papal brief of July 1860 Pompallier was made Bishop of Auckland. At the same time Viard was made Bishop of Wellington and ceased to be Pompallier's coadjutor.

Land disputes, followed in 1860 by warfare in Taranaki and later in the Waikato, along with the Hauhau outbreak, caused distrust between Maori and European for many years. The transfer of the capital from Auckland to Wellington, and financial depressions, brought unending problems for Pompallier, who left for Europe in 1868 and resigned his see in 1869. He was made a titular Archbishop in recognition of his valiant work. He retired to Paris where he lived through the Franco-Prussian War, doing much pastoral work until he died on 21 December 1871.

The Bishop began his mission at Hokianga but in 1839 transferred his headquarters to Kororareka. With the arrival of more missionaries from France he began to extend his work, visiting in 1840 even distant Otago. By 1844 he had founded stations at Whangaroa, Tauranga, Rotorua, Matamata, Whakatane, Opotiki, Kaipara, Auckland, Wellington, and Akaroa. At Auckland and Kororareka he established schools for both Maoris and Europeans, the one at Auckland, opened in 1841, being the first in the town. In 1841–42 he visited Wallis, Futuna, Fiji, and Tonga.

After Waitangi, and the establishment of British sovereignty in 1840, the increasing number of settlers and their demands for ministrations created great difficulties. The area which Western Oceania embraced was too vast for fruitful administration and in 1842 Rome made New Zealand an independent vicariate. The rest of the area was named Central Oceania and placed under Bishop Bataillon as Vicar Apostolic. He was given as coadjutor Bishop William Douarre, of the Society of Mary, who made New Caledonia the centre for his work. Douarre received as one of his temporary staff Father Philip Viard, S.M., who had come to New Zealand in 1839 where he was stationed at Russell, Tauranga, and, later, at Wallis Island. Bishop Pompallier recalled Viard from New Caledonia as he wished to have him as his coadjutor. Arriving in Sydney in October 1845 Viard received from his bishop the news of his appointment, and the following January was consecrated by Archbishop Polding, returning to New Zealand with Pompallier a few days later.

Two Irishmen, Peter Dillon at Paris and Thomas Poynton at Hokianga, share the honour for drawing the attention of the missionary authorities in Rome to the needs of Roman Catholics in New Zealand and the Pacific islands. Dillon, an East Indiaman captain, began trading in the Pacific in 1809 and came to know it thoroughly. He was acquainted with the activities of Protestant missionaries and fully aware of the disabilities being suffered by Catholics, especially in Australia. (The Catholic Emancipation Act was not passed in Britain till 1829.) On visiting Paris, to claim the reward for discovering the fate of the La Pérouse expedition, Dillon met a Monseigneur de Solages who was interested in the reports of navigators in the Pacific and keen to find an opportunity to visit it. Dillon, now a Chevalier of France and a man of influence, put forward a plan to the French authorities whereby missionaries would be carried on trading and naval ships to various territories in South America, and to the Pacific and Indian Oceans. At the same time Dillon presented his plan to the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome through Cardinal de Croy, President of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in France. The Roman authorities approved of the plan on 22 December 1829 and authorised de Solages to begin the work with headquarters at Réunion.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the world, Thomas Poynton left Sydney in 1828 for Hokianga to begin trading in timber. Hearing in 1835 of the arrival of Bishop Polding in Sydney, Poynton went to see if the services of a priest could be obtained for the Catholics, about 20 in number, in the Hokianga district. The bishop sent Poynton's request to Rome, not knowing at the time that Rome had already decided in 1833 to set up in the Pacific the Vicariate of Western Oceania, which would include all islands south of the Equator lying between the meridians of the Cook Islands and the east coast of Australia.

The Vicar Apostolic was John Baptist Pompallier, who on 30 June 1836 had been consecrated titular Bishop of Maronea. With four priests of the Society of Mary and three brothers as companions, he sailed from Le Havre on 24 December 1836. Father Bret died in mid-Atlantic; Father Bataillon and Brother Luzy were left at Wallis Island to begin missionary work. Father Chanel (martyred on 28 April 1841 and canonised in 1954) and Brother Delorme were similarly left at Futuna. Bishop Pompallier with Father Servant, S.M., and Brother Colomban Michael arrived at Hokianga on 10 January 1838, to be welcomed by Poynton and his family.

(1831–1903).

Canterbury Superintendent and colonial statesman.

A new biography of Rolleston, William appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site.

William Rolleston was born at Maltby, Yorkshire, on 19 September 1831, the youngest but one among the 10 children of the Rev. George Rolleston, rector and squire of Maltby. William was educated at Rossall School and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where, in 1855, he graduated with second-class honours in the classical tripos. Writing in 1898, Rolleston explained his decision to emigrate 50 years before as a revolt against “Conservatives and Ecclesiastics” and as a desire for “the freer life of a colony”. A contemporary letter suggests the frustration of a younger and less gifted son: “Home and the University are the only society I care for. In England I am precluded from both. That is, unless I choose to do nothing, which I don't”.

Rolleston arrived at Lyttelton in the Regina on 15 November 1858. He briefly considered “pen work” in the Customs Office, but decided to “turn shepherd at once” on the Lake Coleridge run of G. A. E. Ross. In 1861 he took up on his own account a Rakaia run, later called Mount Algidus. G. S. Sale and Samuel Butler have left vivid pictures of the tough but not unrelieved high-country life that Rolleston lived – the “spartan fare”, the morning wash in the chilly waters of the lake, the classically named peaks and rivers, the copy of Tennyson under the pillow, the examining at Christ's College which kept his Latin and Greek from getting rusty.

Rolleston was soon at home among an educated group of the province's leading politicians. His first essay in public affairs was as a member of a committee on education, out of whose report arose a proper system of schooling under a provincial board, to which Rolleston was appointed. In the same year (1863) a somewhat farcical episode brought him into politics. Seeking to elbow his way back into power Moorhouse treated his stopgap Superintendent, Samuel Bealey, with little regard for his feelings or for public opinion. He sought to force Bealey out of office, but the mild Superintendent's resolution stiffened to the point where he rode up the Rakaia to seek Rolleston's assistance in forming a new executive. The latter thus entered politics not as “representative” but as “minister”. Soon afterwards he contested his first election in Heathcote, winning by 119 votes to 94. For nearly two years Rolleston was virtually head of the Executive, demonstrating that he belonged to the “prudent” anti-borrowing party, and that he was a sound reliable administrator. When his colleagues proposed to extend the main south railway by means of loans, Rolleston resigned (June 1865). There is doubt that he stood down solely on principle, as he had shortly before been offered by Weld the newly created post of Under-Secretary of Native Affairs.

His greatest work in this position was his report on 13 native schools (June 1867), which led to the establishment of a new system of Maori education, based on his recommendations on teaching in English, on Maori initiative and cooperation, and on proper inspection. By 1868 Moorhouse's bold policies were frustrated by depression and he himself was again in financial troubles. On his resignation the Council reduced the superintendent's salary from £1,500 to 600. The Lyttelton Times hoped it would “be found possible to induce a rich man who has the brains and education to fit him for” the office. C. C. Bowen, Rolleston's friend, was approached, but declined on financial grounds. Rolleston, who had shortly before resigned his Wellington post, thus obtained the office with which he is primarily associated almost by default. He was regarded as “very decidedly a safe man” fitted to administer in depression. The new Superintendent without contest soon became member of the House of Representatives for Avon unopposed, asserting that “he nailed his colours to the mast, and avowed himself a Provincialist”. In 1870 Rolleston was opposed at the last moment by Moorhouse, who came forward in continuing bad times proclaiming himself “the friend of progress” and Rolleston “the friend of stagnation”. Rolleston pronounced the contest as one between “the speculative” and “the prudent”. Election day, 2 May 1870, saw his greatest (though not most hard fought) political triumph. He obtained over twice as many votes as Moorhouse, whom he beat even in Christchurch and Lyttelton. During the early 1870s Canterbury prospered greatly – partly “the result of a policy (Vogel's) which Mr Rolleston opposed when it was first put forward”, the Lyttelton Times commented. Rolleston was content, in the main, to administer soundly and fairly the policies of his predecessors. Provincial public works and immigration – the latter a special interest of his – made great strides. Canterbury stood out as the model province and Rolleston as the model Superintendent. He administered provincial land regulations so as to balance between runholder and small settler, seeking to restrain speculators and land grabbers. Prosperous Canterbury returned him unopposed in 1874.

In the House he spoke strongly against the abolition of the provinces and even declared himself a separationist in 1875. Canterbury electors, however, were less interested in provincial institutions than in retaining the buoyant provincial land fund, and Rolleston gained the major point by the continued localisation of it. He did not conduct any last-ditch battle for institutions to which he had, in fact, given more than Sir George Grey, but the most popular moment in his career came on 17 December 1876 when a crowd of 12,000 assembled in Christchurch to see him presented with plate valued at £400 and a cheque for the same amount.

It would be hard to point to a more successful provincial record. In 1876–77 Rolleston, at the age of 45, stood poised between provincial success and the promise of a new colonial career. Yet this promise was to be only partially fulfilled. Rolleston had made his name as an administrator, and party politics had died away in Canterbury after the eclipse of Moorhouse. Although he was ostensibly the very man to lead a middle party between Atkinson's “political rest” and Grey's irresponsible radicalism, he showed himself lacking in the gifts and training to seize his golden opportunity. He was heard with respect, but without enjoyment (his style was involved and even tedious) as critic of administration and in his own special fields of policy, but not as a potential party leader. He helped to defeat Atkinson, but refused to join Grey, whose stump tours and muddled administration he detested. When Grey was turned out by Fox's mordant eloquence in 1879, the fruits of victory fell to the nervous but more resilient and fluent Hall. The latter took Rolleston into his Ministry (October 1879) as Minister of Lands, Immigration, and Education – his three fields of greatest experience. Rolleston soon proclaimed his belief that “the settlement of the people in the land had not been sufficiently attended to”, and his 1879 Land Bill introduced deferred payment for small-holders. He was able to point to the example of successful special settlements established in South Canterbury in 1874–75. In 1882 he undertook his most important work as legislator – the introduction of a Land Bill incorporating “perpetual lease” of crown lands as a means of promoting small-farm settlement. The intention of the Bill was defeated in the Council by the insertion of the right of purchase. Rolleston's counter-attack in 1883 failed and his measure remains one of the great “might have beens” in New Zealand history, a victim of a precarious political situation and, to some extent, of its author's lack of resolution.

Rolleston had already taken a controversial part in the Parihaka affair. He favoured a policy of clemency and sought to implement it as Native Minister when he briefly took office in place of the bellicose Bryce (February-October 1881). As Te Whiti's attitude remained equivocal and colonial opinion hardened, Rolleston gave way to Bryce, but remained in the Cabinet and actually shared full responsibility for Bryce's “thorough” policy of 1881–82. Rolleston's stocks sank rapidly in Canterbury in 1883–84, when he defended increases made by Atkinson in railway grain rates and opposed the construction of the Midland Railway. He evaded defeat in Avon in the 1884 election by standing for Geraldine, where he won a fairly close contest, being one of the few opponents of Vogel returned in Canterbury. Rolleston's caution had seemed appropriate in the late 1870s, but in the middle and late 1880s the province responded to the bolder policies of Vogel and the radicalism of Stout, skilfully presented by W. P. Reeves. In 1887 Rolleston suffered his first defeat in Rangitata, but, paradoxically, thus avoided the odium which attached to Atkinson's last Ministry. In 1890 he contested Halswell, winning comfortably.

After Bryce's resignation, in August 1891, Rolleston was elected Leader of the Opposition. Party leadership had come to him too late and under unfavourable circumstances. He was now somewhat heavy and slow from a thyroid complaint; he was surrounded mainly by the surviving right wing of his party; Opposition strategy was unimaginative and its discipline too loose by comparison with the Liberals. Rolleston's position in opposing land legislation of a type he had earlier advocated seemed inconsistent to many, but he maintained it. Defeated in 1893, Rolleston was returned in 1896. Though some considered Captain W. R. Russell merely a locum tenens for Rolleston as Leader of the Opposition, the former continued to lead in the 1897–99 Parliament. At 68, Rolleston was still talked of as a possible leader, but his electoral career ended in 1899 when he went down by one vote to G. W. Russell, in Riccarton. It was a bitter and frustrating end to his political service: Russell made a sin out of Rolleston's refusal to cultivate local demands and decried him as too much of a “colonial politician”.

Rolleston's career appears in retrospect in some measure as a series of paradoxes and frustrations, explicable only in terms of his own complex character and the complex politics of his times. Preferring liberal policies, he disliked the politicians who called themselves Liberals and abhorred what he regarded as their unscrupulous demagogic appeals and spurious party labels of “Liberal” and “Conservative”. He was both too conscientious and too fastidious to succeed as popular politician; indeed, his antipathy to Grey's stump oratory moved him nearer to fighting fury than anything else. It is not unfair to point out that he himself was hardly a successful speaker, being somewhat ponderous and didactic. Though there was some attempt to dub him “the people's William”, this title did not catch on. Rolleston was a Whig born out of due time and place, interested in restraining “class selfishness” rather than in abolishing classes, or what passed for them in the colony. His long success as provincial administrator concealed his political shortcomings and gave rise to hopes which he could not fulfil. Further, his electoral triumphs until 1884 were either too easy or were won by default. Earlier defeat might have given him greater determination and resilience. Gisborne's judgment of him substantially still stands: “He is a very good administrator … clear, methodical, and industrious. He is intelligent, well educated, earnest, and animated by the highest motives. What he lacks is decision of character and definiteness of purpose”. Clearly Rolleston placed the administrator's judgment above the politician's advocacy. As he wrote in 1896 to another sensitive politician, Reeves, on the latter's retirement from the House: “I fancy that like myself you have a greater love for the practical and the administrative side of Public Life than for the political”. Rolleston died at Kapunatiki, his Rangitata homestead, on 8 February 1903.

In 1865, at Avonside, Christchurch, Rolleston married Elizabeth Mary Brittain and, by her, he had five sons and four daughters.

by William James Gardner, M.A., Senior Lecturer, History Department, University of Canterbury.

• Rolleston Papers (MSS), General Assembly Library
• Hall Papers (MSS), General Assembly Library
• William Rolleston – a New Zealand Statesman, Downie Stewart, W. (1940).