Journey with the Archivist

The Diocese has registers of Baptisms, Confirmations, Marriages and Deaths that go back to the 1840s. While Parishes usually are responsible for their own registers, older registers have been sent to the Diocesan Archive and Parishes are required to send copies to the archive. The information is  registered in our Sacramental Database. The database makes searching easy although not all registers have been entered so we periodically need to consult the paper volumes. A major project for the archives this year is updating the database programme which is over 10 years old and no longer compatible with current operating systems. …
Read More about Sacramental Registers – Our most Frequently Accessed Records

Recently we had an enquiry from the Pugin Society requesting plans for Bishops House. The house was designed by Pugin and Pugin, a London-based family firm of church architects working in the Gothic revivalist style and yes we do have the plans from the 1890s. I thought it would be interesting to compare a couple of the drawings with the actual features.

Bishop Steve with his crozier A crosier or crozier (also known as a paterissa, pastoral staff, or bishop’s staff) is a stylized staff that is a symbol of the governing office of a bishop or abbot and is carried by high-ranking prelates of Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and some Anglican, Lutheran, United Methodist and Pentecostal churches. In Western Christianity the usual form has been a shepherd’s crook, curved at the top to enable animals to be hooked. The style of Croziers varies across time and cultures (Check out Wikipedia for more information) Here at Auckland Diocesan …
Read More about Crozier Quiz

Many Catholic households have a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church sitting on their shelves. The Archives have some rather special catechisms in our vault. A visit from Fr Merv Duffy SM meant that some of these rare items of local Catholic history were retrieved for viewing. KO NGA TAHI PONO NUI is an eight page catechism produced by Bishop Pompallier in July 1839. There are only 2 surviving copies, one in the Alexander Turnbill Library and the other in The Auckland Catholic Diocese Archive (POM 16-1). Bishop Pompallier then produced a more extensive catechism in 1843 – …
Read More about Catechism of the Catholic Church

In the downstairs hallway of Bishop’s House is a framed list of donors who assisted in the building of Bishop’s House under Bishop Luck.   This piece came into focus recently when answering a genealogy enquiry. A former colleague asked if I could track a relative who he believed was one of the builders. Beside each name on the donor list is a number that corresponds to a map showing the block of stone on the building plinth that commemorates their donation. We traced the builder’s name and were able to send a photo of the commemorative stone assigned to …
Read More about Rock Hunting

Last week I discovered a couple of items that excited my inner historian. They related to key periods in our Catholic history. The first I discovered when checking that items were stored appropriately. There was a box of books and when I opened the first volume, I saw it had been printed in Kororareka. I had long known that in 1841-42, Jean Baptiste Pompallier had established a Roman Catholic mission in Russell, which contained a printing press for the production of Māori-language religious texts. But this was the first time I had seen one of the texts from that press. …
Read More about Some Rare Finds