Roman Catholic priests from the Order of the Sacred Hearts and led by Father Alexis Bachelot, first arrived from Europe in July of 1827. Three priests and three lay brothers celebrated the first mass of record on Hawaiian soil on July 14, 1827.
Under pressure by American Protestant missionaries, who considered Catholic doctrine a damning religious error, Kamehameha III twice expelled the Catholics. When priests reappeared in 1837 and again faced expulsion, the Sandwich Island Gazette newspaper came to the defense of religious freedom. The French in 1839 also brought pressure upon the king, and in that year Kamehameha III proclaimed a Declaration of Rights and Edict of Toleration that granted religious toleration throughout the Islands.
This was a period of fierce verbal attacks between Catholics and Protestants. The Catholic Mission wanted to have its own press. In 1841, it bought the Gazette’s old equipment and set up a print shop on the site of the present Our Lady of Peace Cathedral, but Father L. D. Maigret complained to his European superiors: “The Protestants have excellent presses of the new kind, while we have only a bad one, the characters of which do not work.” Maigret received a new press from Europe, and in 1852, the first Catholic newspaper appeared, He Mau Hana I Hanaia, Works Done, to begin a tradition of Catholic publication that continues to the present.
By Helen G. Chapin