Fr Lampila, a priest of the Society of Mary, first established the Catholic Māori Mission at Jerusalem / Hiruhārama in 1854, however it went into decline after the 1864 battle of Motua.

In 1883 Meri Hōhepa Suzanne Aubert visited Hiruhārama with two Sisters of St Joseph of Nazareth at the invitation of Māori, where she hoped to rejuvenate the mission.

The land on which St Joseph’s Church and the old convent sit belongs to Māori families, the original church having been destroyed by fire in 1888.

Suzanne Aubert travelled around Aotearoa with another Sister collecting money to rebuild it, believing that as a Pākehā had burned it down, a Pākehā should rebuild it.

It was in this small settlement of houses, clustered around the Patiarero Marae, that the Sisters of Compassion came into being, formally recognised by the Catholic Church in 1892.

The Sisters have been part of the local community ever since and are privileged to have the status of “tangata whenua”.

Hiruhārama March 2026