The Catholic Church recognizes some deceased Catholics as saints, blesseds, venerables, and Servants of God. Some of these people were born, died, or lived their religious life in any of the states or territories of Oceania. The region of Oceania was the last continent where the Catholic Church arrived. Consequently, it is the continent with the fewest Catholic saints.
The following is the list of saints, including the year in which they were canonized and the country or countries with which they are associated.
Others have been proposed for beatification, and may have active groups supporting their causes. These include:
The Catholic Church in New Zealand is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope in Rome, assisted by the Roman Curia, and with the New Zealand bishops.
Peter Louis Marie Chanel, SM, was a Catholic priest, missionary, and martyr. Chanel was a member of the Society of Mary and was sent as a missionary to Oceania. He arrived on the island of Futuna in November 1837. Chanel was clubbed to death in April 1841 at the instigation of a chief upset because his son converted.
The Society of Mary, better known under the name Marist, is a religious congregation under pontifical right.
The Catholic Church in Papua New Guinea is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome. Papua New Guinea has approximately two million Catholic adherents, approximately 27% of the country's total population.
Jean-Baptiste François Pompallier was the first Roman Catholic bishop in New Zealand and, with priests and brothers of the Marist order, he organised the Roman Catholic Church throughout the country. He was born in Lyon, France. He arrived in New Zealand in 1838 as Vicar Apostolic of Western Oceania, but made New Zealand the centre of his operations.
The Vicariate Apostolic of Eastern Oceania was a Roman Catholic missionary jurisdiction for some of the South Sea (Pacific) islands from 1833 till 1848.
Philippe Joseph Viard SM was a French priest and the first bishop of the Catholic diocese of Wellington, New Zealand.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Wellington is the metropolitan archdiocese of New Zealand. Catholics number about 83,214. Parishes number 22 and the archdiocese extends over central New Zealand between Levin and Masterton in the north to Kaikoura to Westport in the south.
Akikaze was a Minekaze-class destroyer, built for the Imperial Japanese Navy immediately following the end of World War I. The Minekaze class of destroyers were considered advanced for their time; these ships served as first-line destroyers through the 1930s. The class was considered obsolete by the start of the Pacific War and served in a number of roles including minesweeper, aircraft rescue ships and Kaiten-carriers. On March 18, 1943, the crew of Akikaze massacred around 60 civilians on board.
Chanel College, Masterton is a Catholic secondary school situated in Masterton, New Zealand. The school is named after St Peter Chanel, who was a French Marist priest killed on the Pacific island of Futuna in 1841. The school was established in 1978. It resulted from the amalgamation of two schools, St Joseph's College for Boys operated by the Marist Brothers and St Bride's College for Girls which had been established in 1898 by the Brigidine Sisters. The College, which is located on the old St Joseph's College site, became an Integrated School in November 1981. It is owned by the Wellington Archdiocese with the Archbishop of Wellington being named as its proprietor in the college's integration agreement with the New Zealand Government.
The Catholic Church in Wallis and Futuna is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, which, inspired by the life, death and teachings of Jesus Christ, and under the spiritual leadership of the Pope and Roman curia in the Vatican City is the largest Christian church in the world. The French who were the first Europeans to settle in the territory, with the arrival of missionaries in 1837, who converted the population to Catholicism. Today, the population of the Pacific island French territory is overwhelmingly Catholic. Bishop Ghislain Marie Raoul Suzanne de Rasilly, S.M., was ordained Bishop of Wallis et Futuna in 2005.
The Martyrs of Natal were a group of 30 Roman Catholic people of Colonial Brazil – two of them priests – killed in the northern part of the colony in massacres that a large group of Dutch Calvinists led. One priest was a Colonial Brazilian Jesuit missionary, while the other priest was an evangelizer himself. The others were all lay Catholics, most of them anonymous members of the Church, some of them children.
Soakimi Gatafahefa, also known as simply Soakimi Gata, a Polynesian transliteration of Joachim Gata, was the first Roman Catholic priest from Polynesia. He worked in several Oceanic countries including Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Wallis and Futuna, and later Australia and New Zealand.
Alain Marie Guynot de Boismenu was a French Roman Catholic prelate who served as the Vicar Apostolic of Papua from 1908 until his retirement in 1945; he was a professed member of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart and the founder of the Handmaids of the Lord. He studied under the De La Salle Brothers before beginning his religious formation in Belgium where he did his studies for the priesthood. He served for a brief period as a teacher before being sent in 1897 to Papua New Guinea to aid in the missions there; he also served the ailing apostolic vicar and was soon after made his coadjutor with the right of succession. His stewardship of the apostolic vicariate saw the number of missions and catechists increase and his tenure also saw the establishment of new schools and a training center for catechists.
Josef Lörks was a German clergyman and bishop for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wewak.
The Akikazemassacre, was a war crime committed by the Imperial Japanese Navy on March 18, 1943, during the Pacific War.
