John Joseph Grimes (11 February 1842 – 15 March 1915) was the first Roman Catholic bishop of

Christchurch Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon River / ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. Born in Bromley-by-Bow,

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, he entered the

Society of Mary (Marists) The Society of Mary ( la, Societas Mariae) abbreviated SM, commonly known as the Marist Fathers, is a men's Roman Catholic clerical religious congregation of pontifical right. It was founded by Jean-Claude Colin and a group of seminarians in L ...

, was professed on 29 April 1867, and was later ordained a priest. He became superior of the house of studies founded by the Marists at

Paignton Paignton ( ) is a seaside town on the coast of Tor Bay in Devon, England. Together with Torquay and Brixham it forms the borough of Torbay which was created in 1998. The Torbay area is a holiday destination known as the English Riviera. Paignt ...

Devon Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. The English-born Marist

Francis Redwood Francis William Mary Redwood SM (6 April 1839 – 3 January 1935), was the first Roman Catholic Archbishop of Wellington, Metropolitan of New Zealand. Life Redwood was born on 8 April 1839 on the Tixall estate, Staffordshire, England, a kno ...

(1839–1935), was appointed to be the second Catholic Bishop of Wellington,

in January 1874. He was consecrated bishop by

Henry Edward Cardinal Manning Henry Edward Manning (15 July 1808 – 14 January 1892) was an English prelate of the Catholic church, and the second Archbishop of Westminster from 1865 until his death in 1892. He was ordained in the Church of England as a young man, but con ...

at the Marist parish, St Anne's,

Spitalfields Spitalfields is a district in the East End of London and within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The area is formed around Commercial Street (on the A1202 London Inner Ring Road) and includes the locale around Brick Lane, Christ Church, ...

, London, on 17 March 1874, and after touring France and Ireland to find funds and personnel, returned in November that year to

, where he had been raised for part of his childhood, to take up his new appointment. It was a crucial period in the development of the Catholic Church in

and in 1885 the first

plenary council In the Roman Catholic Church, a plenary council is any of various kinds of ecclesiastical synods, used when those summoned represent the whole number of bishops of some given territory. The word itself, derived from the Latin ''plenarium'' (complete ...

of Australasian bishops recommended the creation of a coordinated ecclesiastical province in New Zealand by the establishing of an archdiocese, of which the remaining New Zealand dioceses would become suffragan sees. The recommendation was that

Dunedin Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...

become the new archdiocese, and that the appointment as archbishop go to a diocesan priest. Rome decided differently and while establishing an ecclesiastical province, centred it upon the city of

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...

, with the existing diocese of Wellington being raised to the rank of an archdiocese and a metropolitan see. The first archbishop was the incumbent Bishop of Wellington,

, appointed by a papal brief dated 13 May 1887.O'Meeghan, p. 101 Simultaneously, from the territory of the diocese of Wellington as hitherto defined there was created a new diocese of Christchurch. Redwood favoured the appointment as its first bishop the English Marist Father John Grimes, and his proposal was accepted by Rome and executed by a papal brief similarly dated 13 May 1887. Like Redwood over a decade earlier, Grimes was consecrated bishop at the Marist parish, St Anne's,

, on 26 July 1887 by

Herbert Vaughan Herbert Alfred Henry Vaughan, MHM (15 April 1832 – 19 June 1903) was an English prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Westminster from 1892 until his death in 1903, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1893. He was th ...

, then Bishop of Salford, assisted by co-consecrators Bishop John Butt, Bishop of Southwark and James Laird Patterson Bishop of Emmaus ''in partibus'' and auxiliary bishop of

Westminster Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster. The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, Bu ...

. Bishop Grimes died in office on 15 March 1915. He was buried in a chapel adjacent to the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament.

References

Catholic Hierarchy website, ''Bishop John Joseph Grimes S.M.''
(retrieved 21 January 2011). 19th-century English Roman Catholic priests 19th-century Roman Catholic bishops in New Zealand 20th-century Roman Catholic bishops in New Zealand New Zealand people of Irish descent Roman Catholic clergy from London Roman Catholic bishops of Christchurch 1842 births 1915 deaths {{NewZealand-RC-bishop-stub