Kōrero: Catholic Church

These Catholic priests were sketched by the English immigrant John Pearse within a few years of his arrival in New Zealand in 1851. They are wearing the typical clerical clothing of the period – a black gown tied at the waist, called a cassock, and a broad-brimmed hat. Their long staffs are probably to help them negotiate rough bush tracks on foot. Priests like these covered hundreds of miles of roadless country to reach their mainly Māori congregations and try to convert non-Catholics.