Archbishop of Sydney

Mass at La Perouse to celebrate the 220th Anniversary of the death of Father Louis Receveur

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
17/2/2008

We gather for this anniversary Mass in the season of Lent preparing for Easter.  Today in fact is the exact anniversary of the death of Father Louis Receveur, a Conventual Franciscan on the 17th February, 1788, who was one of the two priest chaplains on Jean-Francois de La Perouse’s expedition of discovery, map-making and scientific investigation, which sailed from Brest, France in 1785.

We pray today for all those brave explorers into unknown and uncharted territories and especially for the French sailors on La Bussole and L’Astrolabe who perished later on the Santa Cruz Islands.

The French entered Botany Bay soon after Captain Phillip’s fleet had arrived and was transferring to Port Jackson on January 26th, 1788.  I wonder how much different life might have been if they had arrived earlier.  Perhaps our history would have been like Canada’s!

Today we remember in particular Fr. Receveur who is buried nearby.  We shall pray at his grave after Mass, because he is the first Catholic priest buried on our continent and the first Catholic Mass was celebrated here or on the ships at anchor.

Receveur was a scientist, an experienced geologist with a special interest in volcanoes, but more importantly, the ships’ journals carried to Europe by the British showed that he performed his priestly duties well, had an amiable manner and “great good sense”.  You don’t need much imagination to envisage the terrible pressures that could build up on tiny ships as they journeyed across unknown seas, regularly in extreme temperatures, often short of food and water, beset by storms.  We know from Spanish and English accounts, not only of the petty squabbles, but of the burning animosities that developed in these small closed communities.  A kind and sensible chaplain would have been invaluable.

We now live in happier times, because King Louis XVI, who followed closely the fortunes of the expedition, was imprisoned and then executed by the French Revolution of 1789.  Napoleon rose to power and the Napoleonic Wars followed as Britain and France struggled for the mastery of the world.  None of this occurred on the Australian mainland.

Just as it is right that we acknowledge the original inhabitants of this continent, so it is also right and just to pay tribute to the bravery and skills of the French and British explorers who discovered the Eastern coast of Australia.

On the walls of the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican, and on other early maps on Europe, the Eastern coast of Australia is left a blank, the unknown Great South Land.  We salute the brave men who filled these gaps in human knowledge and then planted a wonderful civilisation on these shores.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.