Judith A.Bennett<scp>and</scp>UrsulaNixon, Eds.: Letters from Kiribati: Correspondence by the Daughters of our Lady of the Sacred Heart Congregation of Catholic Mission Sisters to the Mother House in Issoudun, France and Thuin, Belgium, 1895–1944. Me

The Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart (FDNSC) is a congregation of Catholic women religious, founded in France in 1874. Under superior-general Marie Louise Hartzer, and as filial order of the men's congregation, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, the FDNSC committed its sisters to “the foreign missions” as its central apostolate. In 1894, Father Edward Bontemps requested sisters for the fledgling MSC mission at Kiribati (formerly the Gilbert Islands) for the evangelisation and education of women and girls. The following year seven young sisters from France and two Australian sisters from the FDNSC's new Sydney novitiate arrived on the island of Nonouti. The experiences of these women and their successors over the next fifty years are documented in Letters from Kiribati, an edited compilation of their correspondence to their European motherhouse. Scholar Ursula Nixon translated 144 letters from French to English. This must have been an immense job, and it is unusual and gratifying for researchers and others to have missionary correspondence publicly available. Historian Judith A. Bennett wrote an excellent comprehensive introduction, providing valuable historical context. Topics include church-state relations in nineteenth-century France, the rise in Catholic female vocations during the second half of the century, the founding and spirit of the FDNSC, and some Kiribati history and culture. The letters speak for themselves (apart from some terms explained in footnotes), beginning with Kiribati superior, Sr Marie Isabelle Maelfeyt, describing her arrival in August 1895. Letters from Kiribati functions, first, as a documentary resource for the cultural study of Catholic women missionaries in the Pacific, and thereby contributes to post-European contact Kiribati history. Second, it works as a narrative told by multiple authors. Accessible and absorbing to any reader, this saga tracking the sisters' devout execution of their vocations seesaws from pathos and drama to the everyday but meaningful activities of school classes, needlework and cooking. Either way, the book fulfils the editors' intention of illuminating their lives and work. Bennett rightly argues that female missionary work remains elusive in the historical record. We know more about priests and bishops than sisters through published and archival sources due to the seniority and status assigned to men by the Church. In contrast, up to the Vatican II changes of the mid-twentieth century, women religious eschewed public approbation and embraced anonymity. The publication of their experiences, fears, ambitions and pleasures in their own (translated) words in letters which bear their own names goes a long way to demystifying the personalities, beliefs, spirituality, and culture of those merely referred to as “the nuns” in mission journals and histories. It was a mark of deep Catholic devotion that saw these sisters and their successors exchange their homes for a distant, alien and perilous life to fulfil their pledge to their congregation's motto, “May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be everywhere loved.” Kiribati consists of many small coral islands in the Central Pacific, separated from one another by large distances. The mission's object was to extend evangelisation throughout the islands, and while stations were built on some, in other cases, sisters could only visit, necessitating long, rough voyages. Missionaries became lost and some died at sea. The sisters suffered from the isolation, heat, lack of food, tropical diseases, poor housing, and grief at the deaths of their associates. But there were also times of pleasure and joy in their work with the Gilbertese and in the beauty of the islands. As Sr Yves wrote, “this is the most beautiful place in the world” (p. 497). The sisters felt their mission was constantly under siege. Kiribati was a British Protectorate, and the Commissioner, Telfer Campbell (1895–1909), was thought to actively undermine their efforts. Tensions ran high with Protestant converts and missionaries, who had preceded them to the islands. Yet, on Beru in 1911, where London Missionary Society and Catholic ministers served adjacent villages, known as “London” and “Paris,” sectarian tolerance was possible. And then there was the “devil” whom the sisters held responsible for dissuading the locals from their evangelical overtures. Although the sisters often reported positively on their relations with the women and children, they bemoaned the slow progress of their mission: “we feel broken-hearted on finding ourselves faced with such people. There we were, full of desire to let them know and love the Good Lord and they didn't even give us the courtesy of listening.” “False gods” abounded. When locals disapproved of Fr Bontemps sitting on their sacred rock, he told them, “how silly it was to venerate such stones” (p. 55). And yet, medallions of Our Lady that the sisters flung into the ocean when their boat was caught in a storm were thought to have instantly calmed the weather. The letters are replete with references to the powers of sacred objects and supplication to direct temporal events and witness the close intermeshing of earthly and spiritual worlds in the sisters' daily lives. The suffering and deaths of fellow missionaries were reported at length. Suffering was for God's glory and the pathway to the missionary's “reward for all her labours [and] sacrifices” (p. 400), a journey epitomised by Sr Baptiste, whose eventual death from leprosy brought her a martyr's status. Bennett warns of the “limitations” in the letters' preoccupations with pain, death, and the “trials and triumphs of mission,” suggesting that historians would want also to know more of the sisters' inner thoughts and about Gilbertese culture (p. 22). But the letters are appropriate for their particular genre: correspondence to the superior from her missionaries abroad. Her priority was their souls and those of the people that the mission hoped to “save.” The sisters' physical welfare also deeply concerned her, as a maternal figure in their lives, and because their bodily health and strength were crucial for this mission. Through their emphases and silences, the letters signify mutual understanding of what should and should not be mentioned, and bring us insights into the relationships, roles and ideals undergirding the mission. This voluminous collection, with its various authors and broad time scope, forms a rich archive, capable of deepening understandings of the French female missionary imperative in the Pacific.