Friar Rosendo Salvado, the apostle of Australia

Born in Tui, Galicia, this Benedictine friar undertook a monumental work of evangelization in Australia that remains and is progressing. The controversial decree of Juan Alvarez Mendizabal (a progressive liberal) in 1835, dissolving unproductive religious communities, generally known as the disentailment of Mendizabal, had unthinkable consequences for a Benedictine monk from Tui who would go on to a distinguished career in Australia.

Two hundred years ago Lucas Josef Rosendo Salvado y Rotea was born in the district of Riomolinos in Tui. The bicentenary of his birth brings to the present an extraordinary and richly nuanced personality, a renaissance man, ahead of his time. Studying his writings, especially his letters, we find a man of great mettle, the founder, the colonizer, the abbot, the bishop, the diplomat, the discoverer, the artist, the writer. But, above all, he was marked by his priestly and missionary vocation. Among many other works, he was the initiator of courses for missionaries in Spain.

The early years of Rosendo Salvado

Rosendo Salvado, after his first studies in the convent of the Franciscans of Tui, at the age of fifteen entered the Benedictine monastery of San Martín Pinario in Santiago de Compostela, where his brother Santos had already been a novice since 1825. After a year of novitiate, he took the habit and made his first vows.

The abbot of San Martín noticed his extraordinary musical gifts and arranged for him to study philosophy at San Juan de Corias (Asturias) and to cultivate his artistic talent with Father Juan Copas, one of the best organists in Spain. Two years later, before he was even twenty years old, he returned to the monastery of Compostela, where he excelled as head of music in the community.

With the decree of exclaustration and expulsion of September 1, 1835, Santos, already a priest, and his brother Rosendo took refuge in the family home in Tui. Rosendo, faithful to his vocation, chose to go into exile. He wrote to the abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Cava dei Tirreni, near Naples, and in 1838 embarked for Italy. In the abbey of Cava, he was welcomed with open arms and a few days later he was appointed professor of music. There he has ordained a priest on February 23, 1839, after having completed his theological studies at the College of San Anselmo in Rome.

In Cava, Rosendo discovered his missionary vocation and, together with another Spanish Benedictine monk -José Benito Serra- volunteered for the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, now the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. Their destination: Australia. After traveling first to England, on September 17, 1845, the missionary expedition embarked for the Antipodes. Salvado and Serra traveled with the recently appointed Bishop of Perth, John Brady.

After 113 days of arduous travel, on January 7, 1846, they arrived at Fremantle, before the port of Perth. Eager to enter into relations with the savages we saw in the streets of Fremantle," Salvado himself recounted, "we spoke to the first two who introduced us to them. But which of us was able to understand them? The first word we heard was tangle(food)".

Bishop Brady formed several groups of missionaries and assigned each one to a field of action; Rosendo Salvado and José Serra were assigned in February to the central zone. They chose a place on the banks of the Moore River, which they named New Norcia, in honor of the holy founder of their order, Benedict of Nursia.

But a month later the supplies ran low and the bishop advised them to return to Perth. Father Salvado, unwilling to abandon the mission, set about soliciting alms even among Protestants. "The collection was a complete failure - recounts Avelino Bouzóncanon archivist of the diocese of Tui-Vigo - and then he came up with the famous piano concert for the night of May 21.

Bishop Brady approved the idea and immediately asked the governor for a venue, the courtroom; he prepared some programs that a Protestant printer made for free, while an Anglican minister was in charge of the lighting, carrying the candelabras of the temple, and even a Jew was in charge of dispatching the tickets and influencing the attendance of wealthy families. The piano was provided by the Benedictine nuns of Mercy. The whole of Perth knew of the great event.

When the time came to perform, the artist from Tudan appeared before the audience in his monk's habit, but tattered and trimmed, "the black breeches - he recounts - was patched with pieces of the thread of different colors; the stockings, thanks to my care, were still somewhat decent; but, on the other hand, the shoes, good and new when I left Italy, had left the soles in the forests of Australia, so that my feet were kissing the ground. Add to this a beard of three months old and more than moderately disheveled, and color of face and hands as coppery almost like that of the savages... My figure was so strange, that it moved to laughter and compassion at the same time".

He played for four hours, and the proceeds were so great that he was not only able to buy abundant provisions, but also a pair of oxen for a cart given to him by a Protestant. The problem of footwear was solved by an Irish lady, who, situated very close to the piano, had observed the strange pedaling of the artist; moved at the sight of his injured feet, she took off her boots there and then, which immediately passed to the feet of Father Salvado.

Father Salvado managed to establish good relations with the indigenous population and with the authorities, who gave him an extensive endowment of land. On March 1, 1847, they opened in New Nursia which would later become a monastery. After that came several trips to Europe to seek resources and new hands for his mission. On one of them, he brought eucalyptus seeds to Spain for the first time, a species that soon spread throughout Galicia.

On August 15, 1849, he was consecrated bishop of Port Victoria. In 1852 he returned temporarily to his hometown, where he was already a famous personage. On September 4 he was offered a grandiose reception, with the band playing "Maquieló", a dance piece of the Australian nomads. Álvaro Cunqueiro relates in an article that Rosendo Salvado "never lacked humor and that he spent all the years of his life without losing his Galician accent. When he was already bishop of Port Victoria, he visited his hometown. His pectoral was a simple crucifix of wood and silver and in his hand, he carried all his temporal goods: a briefcase with the breviary and some clothes. "Make way for my bishopric," he is said to have said, mockingly taunting the people who crowded in his wake.

At the end of 1865, after the death of his mother, his brother Santos went to see him in Rome where he stayed for ten months. As chaplain of the Royal Chapel, he had a salary of 30,000 reales, which according to him, was enough to live like a duke, but he offered to work in Friar Rosendo's mission. Rosendo accepted, but he warned him to start studying photography from that moment on. To him, we owe in part the precious photo album and the extraordinary graphic archive of the incredible civilizing epic of New Nursia.

On August 15, 1849, he was consecrated bishop of Port Victoria. In 1852 he returned temporarily to his hometown, where he was already a famous personage. On September 4 he was offered a grandiose reception, with the band playing "Maquieló", a dance piece of the Australian nomads. Álvaro Cunqueiro relates in an article that Rosendo Salvado "never lacked humor and that he spent all the years of his life without losing his Galician accent.

When he was already bishop of Port Victoria, he visited his hometown. His pectoral was a simple crucifix of wood and silver and in his hand, he carried all his temporal goods: a briefcase with the breviary and some clothes. "Make way for my bishopric," he is said to have said, mockingly taunting the people who crowded in his wake.

At the end of 1865, after the death of his mother, his brother Santos went to see him in Rome where he stayed for ten months. As chaplain of the Royal Chapel, he had a salary of 30,000 reales, which according to him, was enough to live like a duke, but he offered to work in Friar Rosendo's mission. Rosendo accepted, but he warned him to start studying photography from that moment on. To him, we owe in part the precious photo album and the extraordinary graphic archive of the incredible civilizing epic of New Nursia.

On March 12, 1867, he obtained the declaration of New Nursia as an apostolic prefecture and "abadianullius", with which the mission became directly dependent on Rome, at the same time that Friar Rosendo was named its abbot.

Shortly after arriving again in Australia, he was summoned to the sessions of the First Vatican Council, so he had to return to the Old Continent. At the end of the Council, Salvado returned to Australia and in 1882 he undertook another trip to Europe, visiting Galicia again. He took up again the old idea of creating a missionary college in Spain to prepare future propagators of the Catholic faith overseas. The political situation was now favorable, after the Bourbon restoration: King Alfonso XII approved, on May 18, 1884, the creation of three colleges located in the monasteries of Montserrat, Silos, and Samos. In July 1886, Friar Rosendo returned to Australia.

In November 1899 he made his last trip to Europe. He had the idea of achieving better coordination of the Benedictine monasteries for missionary work. In Rome, he succeeded in adding New Nursia to the Benedictine province of Spain and named Father Fulgencio Torres y Mayáns as his successor in the abbey dignity. In the same month, he visited the abbey of Montserrat. In December, in Rome, he began to feel ill but was unable to recover. He died in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, and his remains were transferred to New Nursia, being buried in a tomb of Carrara marble located under the main altar of the abbey church.his biographers say that, two days after receiving Viaticum and Holy Unction, he died on December 29, 1900, singing with his sonorous voice the Salve and the Magnificat. He was 86 years old, and a street and a statue commemorate him in his hometown of Tui.

In Western Australia's vast wheat belt, which seems to cover all the fertile land in the southwestern corner of the state, the towns are disappointingly the same. A freight terminal, a railroad line, a "pub", a plot of land with farm machinery, and a few houses. So it's a delight to arrive in New Norcia and suddenly find a town so different and so unique. Here is a little piece of the Mediterranean in the middle of the Australian bush. The Benedictine order has managed to preserve and enhance the legacy of Rosendo Salvado. New Norcia is today the only monastery town in Australia, is home to one of the best Catholic schools in the country, and is a place of pilgrimage and tourism for its exceptional architectural ensemble. Some years ago the Benedictine community turned the need into a business and began to market its excellent bakery and pastry products both in the monastery and in a shop in Perth.

Author: Carlos Piera
Photos: Abbey of New Norcia
Council of Galician Culture.
Western Australia Government

Source: Inclusion