Sydney
3 February 2002
Home
Archive
Subscribe
Links
Contact
'Violence never again' - Pope
Catholics honoured in Australia Day awards
'Field day' for sisters: six on list
Back-to-school gift aids needy
Archbishop Carroll to preach at city service
Retirement, but work remains on the menu
Wollongong Mass for women's league
Welfare groups call for release of detainees
Caritas sets appeal sights at $6m plus
Pledge to aid volcano victimsa
Salesian superior general dies
opinion: Let's be consistent in our own backyard
editorial: Message from Assisi
letters: A question of tradition
Conversation: In tune with life and the music of youth
Reflections: Religion - a force for peace, justice
Si! What happens if no Juan takes any notice!
A place to call home - it's Project Compassion 2002
Diocese honours King in blood
Sydney schools across the generations
inspirations: Camp for kids deserves a prize, too
Si! What happens if no Juan takes any notice!
The map of Australia sent by Dominican Fr Vittorio Riccio to the Vatican
in 1676
Our cathedral would be Santa Maria's and our underground railway service, if we had one, would have stations named Museo, San Diego and Casa Consistorial.
The suburb of St Peter's would be San Pedro's and Castilian - not English - would be the lingua franca (or espaņa?)
The SCG would be a bull-fighting arena (we would pay our admission with pesetas), we would be accusing governments of robbing Pedro to pay Pablo and we would be eating lots of paella and tortillas and quaffing sangria.
All this, of course, is how things might have been if the powers that were in 1676 had taken notice of a missionary in the Philippines who produced one of the earliest maps of Australia.
The 1676 map, which is accompanied by a letter from the priest urging the evangelisation of the little known continent, is one of millions of rare documents held in the archives of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples.
Fr Luis Manuel Cuna Ramos, the congregation's archivist, says he has done some digging for more information about the map, the mapmaker and the congregation's response, "but there is so much work to do that an archivist cannot study what he wants".
The map of Terra Australis olim Incognita - the southern land formerly unknown - was drawn 71 years after Dutch ships first landed on, and abandoned, Australia's western coast.
Captain James Cook did not land at Botany Bay until 1770.
The archives - eyewitness accounts of the truly historic, heroic or all-too-human actions of Catholic missionaries since the early 1600s - have a new home in a Vatican parking garage.
They have been transferred to well-lit, well-protected and well-equipped offices on the fifth floor of the garage on the Janiculum Hill.
The new space will give students and scholars easier access
The treasures also include a letter from an African missionary documenting the story of Kimpa Vita in the early 1700s.
The woman, claiming to be possessed by and speaking for St Anthony of Padua, caused a schism in the local Catholic community and set off a civil war in what was then the Kingdom of Kongo, an area covering parts of present-day Congo.
In 1710, four years after Kimpa Vita was burned at the stake on the king's orders, the missionary wrote to the Vatican that calm had returned and her Antonian sect had largely disappeared. He even drew a colour sketch of the woman.
Like the story of Kimpa Vita, many of the documents paint vivid pictures of missionary life and of the trials, triumphs, failures and successes that have marked the Catholic Church's missionary activity.
Letters pleading for more missionaries are quite common.
But one letter - from 14 Greek bishops and abbots writing from Crete in 1672 - pleaded with the Pope to ask European kings and princes to launch an attack against the Ottoman Empire.
The bishops said the Ottoman army was weak and could be beaten and a defeat would mean renewed freedom for Christians in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The archives were begun 50 years earlier when Pope Gregory XV established the congregation, then known as the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.
Documents pertaining to missionary activity in the US and Canada date back to 1673.
A 1718 document testifies to missionary success in Asia: Catholics in Peking writing on rice paper to Catholics in Vietnam illustrated an acceptable Christian way to honour one's ancestors. They begin a traditional family tree with a cross and the names of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Several of the holdings considered to be particularly special are related to Catholics in China and other countries of Far East Asia.
Dr Cuna points to another letter written by Chinese Catholics - to Pope Pius IX in 1847.
"The fact that it is written on red silk is more important than the letter itself, which asks the Pope to send them more priests," he said. "At the time, red silk was reserved for letters to the emperor, so this is a recognition of the Pope's status on the part of the Catholic community."
The archival material is not only used by students writing dissertations or scholars writing history books.
Preparing for the 1996 canonisation of Vincentian Fr Jean Gabriel Perboyre, Vatican officials went to the archives to read an eyewitness report of his 1840 martyrdom in Wuchang, China.
Fr Cuna said that when he became archivist five years ago almost a third of the archives' holdings were not catalogued.
He said he did not know how much the archive's new offices cost the congregation, "but most of the cost was for things you cannot see" - for example, the heating and air conditioning system which keeps the office at a constant 64.4 degrees Fahrenheit with 50 per cent humidity.
The sophisticated anti-fire and anti-theft system includes 10 cameras monitoring the reading room.
Most of those expected to do research in the archives are students studying next door at the Urbanian University, run by the congregation.
But the fact that the students are mainly priests and nuns does not negate the need for security, Fr Cuna said.
"Every document is unique, so if one is stolen or damaged, a piece of history is lost forever," he said.