Qualla: Diocese of Mendi

Diocese of Mendi: Introduction

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marek Sobola, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 9 September 1954, a Swiss-born priest named Alexis Michellod stepped onto an airstrip in the Mendi Valley with his Breton companion Jean Delabarre and celebrated the first Catholic Mass ever offered in the Southern Highlands the next morning. They were only meant to spend two months. A cable arrived from Fr. Michellod's superior at Yule Island with a single-word instruction: Stay. The order committed the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart to a mountain region whose people had not seen outsiders in any numbers until the decade before. Out of that telegram grew the Diocese of Mendi, erected as a Prefecture Apostolic in 1958, elevated to Vicariate Apostolic in 1965, and raised to diocese on 15 November 1966.

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Diocese of Mendi: The Land That Time Forgot

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marek Sobola, CC BY-SA 4.0. Mick Leahy, the Australian gold prospector whose 1933 overflight of the Wahgi Valley revealed the highlands to the outside world, called this region the Land That Time Forgot. Jack Hides, an Australian patrol officer whose 1935 expedition was the first government patrol through S...

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Diocese of Mendi: The Kiap and the Priest

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Iain Taylor1, CC BY 2.0. In 1949, after the war ended, Australian kiaps - government patrol officers - reopened the post at Lake Kutubu. Sid Smith and Desmond Clancy walked into the Mendi Valley the same year. Clancy opened the Mendi station in September 1950. An airstrip followed immediately; the first ...

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Diocese of Mendi: The Capuchins from Pennsylvania

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marek Sobola, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two weeks after receiving the formal request from Rome, the Capuchin friars of the St. Augustine Province in Pennsylvania accepted the Mendi Mission. The first to arrive was Fr. Otmar Gallagher, OFMCap, on 23 November 1955 - a stern-voiced priest with Puerto Rico mission experien...

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Diocese of Mendi: Foot Patrol and Foundation

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marek Sobola, CC BY-SA 4.0. For months the MSC and Capuchin priests walked together through territory still officially prohibited to missionaries until derestricted area by area. They opened schools, built churches, said Mass in village clearings. They traveled two-by-two for days and weeks, the experienced...

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Image: Marek Sobola | CC BY-SA 4.0

Diocese of Mendi: Three Bishops, Seventy Years

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marek Sobola, CC BY-SA 4.0. Since Bishop Firmin Schmidt retired in 1995, two successors have carried the diocese. Bishop Stephen Joseph Reichert, OFMCap, served from 1995 to 2010 before his appointment as Archbishop of Madang. Bishop Donald Francis Lippert, OFMCap, has led the diocese since 2012. The Dioces...

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Diocese of Mendi: The Apostle in Marseille

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kamaini.wane, CC BY-SA 4.0. Fr. Alexis Michellod, the Swiss priest whose refusal to leave founded the mission, lived to see the Golden Jubilee in 2004. He was ninety, retired to an MSC community in France. He died at Marseille on 24 April 2010. He had been born at Leytron in the Valais Suisse on 30 June 191...

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Image: Kamaini.wane | CC BY-SA 4.0