Shipping Intelligence, Inquirer, Perth, 14 January 1846, p 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article65770166:
Arrived.— On the 7th instant, the barque Elizabeth, Morrice, master, from London ; sailed 17th September. Passengers — Rev. Dr. Brady, the Rev. Messrs. P. Powell, Serra, Salvador, Confallonery, Thaveaux, Bouchet, and Thierse; six Sisters of Mercy from the "Parent Home," St. Catherine's, Dublin; Mr. T. Hazlewood. Intermediate, Mrs. Wintle and child, Catherine O'Reilly, Messrs. G. Davies, O'Reilly, Tootell, Capporelli, Le Fontaine, Euseby, and Oden, Mr. and Mrs. Forbes and two sons; and nine in the steerage.

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Western Australia, South Australian Register, Adelaide, 25 March 1846, p 2, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article27452419:
The bargue Elisabeth arrived from London on the 7th January, with the Rev. Dr. Brady (Roman Catholic Bishop of Western Australia) and the Rev. Messrs. P. Powell, Serra, Salvador, Confallonery, Thaveaux, Bouchet, and Thierse; six Sisters of Mercy from the "Parent Home," St. Catherine's, Dublin ; with twenty-four other cabin, intermediate, or steerage passengers; "an arrival the more welcome," (says the editor of the Inquirer) "as it was wholly unexpected."

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Patrick Francis Cardinal Moran, History of the Catholic Church in Australasia, 1895, pp 560:
To the disciples of the Venerable Father Liebermann, the founder of the Society of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, was allotted the mission among the aboriginals of Albany and the southern coast. One of them, however, Father Bouchet, was summoned to his reward a few days after their arrival in Perth.

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Fr T.J. Linane, From Abel to Zundolovich, Vol. 1, 1979, p 28:

Bouchet, Maurice, CSSp, French
First Priest to Die in W.A.
b. in Ville-le-Bousenet 1821, Annecy Dioc.; ed. St. Sulpice, Paris; ord. 1844; entered Holy Ghost Order as a priest. In '45 he was working with Abbe Tisserant on one of the Order's missions. Arr. Perth Jan '46 in Bp. Brady's missionary party. Suffered sunstroke on the voyage to Perth and resultant fever. d. on 24.1.'46 and buried in St. John's Churchyard; age 24. Thus begins the sad story of the Holy Ghost Fathers in W.A.
(Footprints, Vol. 1, No. 6.)
Ref.: MDHC File, Torquay based on letters from the late Fr. Senan Moynahan, Perth Archivist; Dom Eugene Perez OSB, New Norcia, and Fr. John Ryan CSSp., Dublin.

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Fr Maurice Bouchet - A Forgotten Hero Remembered

One of the tragic failures of Fr. Libermann's Congregation of the Holy Heart of Mary was the Australian venture of 1846 to 1848. A brave young group of three priests, Frs Thiersé, Thevaux and Maurice Bouchet with two Brothers, Vincent and Theodore, set out from London, in September 1847. They were part of Bishop Brady's apostolic band of 27 missionaries — priests, brothers, seminarians and sisters — destined for Perth, Western Australia. The newly consecrated Bishop John Brady, a native of Cavan in Ireland, educated at the Holy Ghost seminary in Paris, promised them a fertile mission field of over half a million Aboriginals, thousands of Catholics and hundreds of children waiting for Catholic schools. (The reality was a population of approximately three hundred Catholics and small groups of nomadic aboriginals, no more than a couple of thousand across the whole state. One child turned up for school on the opening day!)

Fr. Maurice Bouchet was the first casualty of this Way of the Cross, as Bishop Brady's ambitious mission proved to be. The Bishop was eventually dismissed by Rome and left Perth in disgrace in 1852. Meanwhile, all his priests had deserted him, only the Spanish Benedictines eventually returned to carry on the work. An Irish catechist was accidentally shot dead at New Norcia; two others were shipwrecked and drowned in a catastrophic mission to Darwin, the surviving Fr. Confalonieri dying there of malaria a year later. The other seminarians, brothers and secular priests eventually all scattered and left the mission. Only the Benedictine monks and the Dublin Mercy Sisters persevered and they are still there to this day. Frs Thiersé and Thevaux ended up in Mauritius with Jacques Laval.

The troubles of Fr. Libermann's missionaries began as soon as the party set sail from Gravesend. Their clothing, promised by Bishop Brady, was locked away in the hold of the ship. After weeks of "extreme suffering" caused by being unable to change their underwear, their plight was relieved by the skill of the Sisters who adapted some surplices and the bishop's shirts to their needs. The warning signs appeared early on with the bishop censoring all letters. His authoritarian rule manifested itself from the beginning. After the relief of a stopover in Capetown, and being able to smuggle a few letters past the bishop, Fr. Bouchet fell a victim to sunstroke shortly after setting sail on the final leg the journey to Perth. The account of his sufferings is very moving. In his delirium his confreres bled him and had to restrain him by force.

On arrival in Perth, Fr. Bouchet was transferred to hospital where the doctor at first offered hope with the assurance of recovery. By January 23rd, the eve of his death, the inner struggles had ceased. His spiritual purification accomplished, he became very peaceful. He recited the words of the psalm "Laetatus sum in his quae dicta sunt mihi; in domum domini ibimus." ("I rejoiced when I heard them say, let us go into the house of the Lord"). His saintly death astonished all present but gave great consolation to his confreres in their loss. Dying on the 24th January in the small hours of the morning, on the third day he was buried. "In spite of the excessively hot weather during that time, not only did no unpleasant odour come from his body, but his countenance appeared brighter than when alive" (from a letter of Père Thevaux). After an Office presided by the Bishop and Requiem Mass said by Fr. Thevaux, Fr. Bouchet was buried in the ground behind the Chapel by special permission from the Governor, as there was no Catholic burial ground. Nor were there the resources for the luxury of a burial stone or marker. The infant Church of Perth had other concerns and struggles. Despite protests in the Catholic press fifty years later at the lack of respect for his grave by the absence of any marker or gravestone, it would take a hundred and fifty four years before a burial plaque was finally erected — in December 2000 AD.

In the meantime the grave was "lost". Six Mercy Sisters who died in the early days of the church and were buried alongside Fr. Bouchet were later disinterred and their remains moved to the adjacent convent grounds. Where precisely Fr. Bouchet's mortal remains were buried, or whether they were translated with those of the sisters, had intrigued recent historians and archivists. Various opinions were expressed but no evidence was available to throw light on the whereabouts of the grave of this first priest to die in Western Australia.

The local Church in Western Australia finally began to research its early history and its indebtedness to the forgotten pioneers. In the nineteen sixties, the site of the mission hut at Lake Mollyalup was found and the foundations of the building excavated. The treasured rosary beads of Fathers Thevaux and Thiersé came to light, appropriately inscribed "Mère de Dieu Priez pour nous" on the reverse side of the crucifix. The full details of the suffering of these heroic forebears of the modern Spiritans came to light as Fr. Noel Fitzsimons meticulously researched the correspondence and reports from Perth in the 1840s at the archives in Paris and Perth. The subsequent ministry and labours of Frs Thevaux and Thiersé in Mauritius were acknowledged and their graves were photographed and visited. But where was Fr. Maurice Bouchet?

This was the question I put to Mons. Keating, the Vicar General, when I heard the story on my first visit to Albany and Lake Mollyalup in 1990. Visits to the archives of the Archdiocese and the Mercy Sisters in Victoria Square revealed a keen awakening of interest in this chapter of early local Church history. Sister Frances Stibi PBVM, Archdiocesan archivist, espoused the cause of the lost grave and appealed for scientific assistance. An article about the search in the local Catholic weekly ("The Record") was noticed by an official of a mining research company. A.L. Technologies Pty. Ltd. offered to scan the ground with Surface Penetrating Radar. On the south side of St John's Pro-Cathedral, in the grounds of Mercedes College, the clear outlines of two graves were found. Traces of metal were detected in one of the graves which turned out to be the profession cross of Fr. Maurice Bouchet. The other grave was identified from historical records as that of John O'Reilly, a sub-deacon from Ireland who died shortly after Fr. Bouchet.

The burial plaques for Fr. Bouchet and John O'Reilly were finally erected and blessed by Bishop Healy, Auxiliary Bishop of Perth, on the 6th Dec. 2000. On the 29th of the same month, the annual Spiritan assembly closed with concelebrated Mass in memory of Fr. Maurice Bouchet at the Pro-cathedral led by Archbishop Barry James Hickey of Perth. Bishop Quinn of Bunbury, Bishop Bianchini of Geraldton and Bishop Healy, (Auxiliary of Perth) also celebrated. Abbot Placid Spearitt of New Norcia represented the Benedictine Monks. Frs John Fogarty, Assistant Superior General of the Spiritans, and Mike Onwuemelie, Second Assistant, also concelebrated Mass, along with other Spiritans from all over Australia and Papua New Guinea as well as other clergy and religious. The Mercy Sisters were represented and laity from Albany and Perth also attended. Fr. John Fogarty spoke at the graveside memorial service of the new crew of present-day Spiritans in Oceania, whose sails are filled with the same Spirit that inspired Fr. Bouchet. The testimony of his heroic exterior and interior sufferings and his saintly death are an invaluable source of inspiration to his Spiritan family and the church of Western Australia. May he rest in peace.

Walter McNamara walmac@norcom.net.au

From Spiritan News, No. 137, Rome, 2001, pp 2-4, https://core.ac.uk/download/524562839.pdf.