The
Prefecture Apostolic of
Kaiserwilhelmsland ( la, Praefectura Apostolica ???) was a missionary jurisdiction of the
Roman Catholic Church in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century Church,
based in
Alexishafen and
Madang in what is now
Papua New Guinea.
The first Catholic missionaries arrived in August 1896. The Apostolic prefecture was established and transferred to the
Society of the Divine Word
The Society of the Divine Word ( la, Societas Verbi Divini), abbreviated SVD and popularly called the Verbites or the Divine Word Missionaries, and sometimes the Steyler Missionaries, is a Catholic Church, Catholic clerical religious congregation ...
. At least twelve mission stations were established along the northern coast by 1910. The priests noted the difficulty of working with the wide range of local languages: at St. Michael's school in Alexishafen, among about 120 pupils in 1910, twenty-five different languages were spoken.
References
Kaiserwilhelmsland
Catholic Church in Papua New Guinea
Divine Word Missionaries Order
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