Francis Vernon Douglas
Francis Vernon Douglas (22 May 1910 - 1943?) was born in
Johnsonville, near Wellington. He was the fifth of eight children
(five sons and three daughters) of Kathleen Gaffney and her husband,
George Charles Douglas, an Australian-born railway worker. His
mother was a devout Catholic from County Sligo, Ireland, and his
father became a Catholic in 1926. Vernon, as he was generally known,
was brought up in a close, lively, working-class family. Both
parents enjoyed music. George had a vegetable garden and kept hens
and a goat to help feed the family; Kathleen campaigned actively for
the rights of mothers and poor families. Tall, robust, dark-haired,
sport-loving, strong-minded, a good singer and possessing a fine
sense of social and religious duty, Douglas exhibited various
attractive family traits.
Except for two years at the Marist
Brothers’ School, Thorndon, in 1921 and 1922, he received all his
schooling at Johnsonville School. One of his teachers recalled him
as ‘a good kid but tough and untidy’. He finished school at 14 in
1924, and in 1925 began work with the Post and Telegraph Department
as a messenger boy. There he remained until February 1927, when he
entered Holy Cross College at Mosgiel to study for the priesthood.
The seminary regime was strict and austere, but he appears to have
thrived; the rector, C. J. Morkane, later described him as an
exemplary student. Douglas was ordained priest at St Joseph’s
Church, Buckle Street, Wellington, on 29 October 1934 by Archbishop
Thomas O’Shea. His eldest brother had already entered religious life
by joining the Marist Brothers, and an elder sister was a nun at the
Convent of the Sacred Heart in Rose Bay, Sydney.
Following
ordination, Douglas worked as a curate in the parishes of
Johnsonville, Opunake and New Plymouth, but his aspirations lay
elsewhere. Since 1933, when two of its priests had visited New
Zealand and an open letter appealing for recruits had been
distributed, Douglas had felt drawn to St Columban’s Foreign Mission
Society. This congregation, which also publicised its work through a
popular magazine, The Far East, had been founded in Ireland in 1916
to evangelise China. In 1936 Douglas went to Australia to join the
Columbans, and to train for a year at their seminary in Melbourne.
Three other New Zealanders had joined the congregation in Ireland in
1935.
As a result of the Japanese invasion of China in 1937
the Columbans began posting missionaries elsewhere in Asia. Late in
1938, Douglas was appointed to Pililla, a fishing town near Manila
in the Philippines. Conditions were harsh, and he struggled to
combat religious indifference among his parishioners, for the most
part nominal Catholics. His difficulties increased after the
Japanese occupied Manila in January 1942. The Japanese were at first
half-heartedly tolerant of the expatriate Christian missionaries who
stayed at their posts, but they became less forbearing after the
Allied counter-attack on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in
August 1942.
Douglas reluctantly obeyed the restrictive rules
imposed by the Japanese until July 1943, when he felt obliged to
visit some American guerrillas in the nearby mountains who claimed
to need his priestly services. To his fury he discovered that they
in fact merely wanted fresh company; he had been a victim of what
proved to be a tragic hoax. The trip aroused suspicions that he was
spying for the resistance forces, and on 24 July 1943 Japanese
soldiers took Douglas from Pililla to Paete to interrogate him.
Unwilling to divulge confidences or to break the seal of the
confessional, he refused to answer questions. For three days he was
tortured and beaten, then on 27 July he was taken away. He was never
seen again. A Captain Shikioka subsequently charged with mistreating
Douglas was never apprehended.
The story of Vernon Douglas
has entered into the traditions of New Zealand Catholicism. He is
honoured for his steadfast devotion to his religious duties, and
stands with Mother Mary Joseph Aubert and Emmet McHardy as one of
the local church’s three great inspirational models. In 1959 his
name was commemorated in a new boys’ secondary school at New
Plymouth, Francis Douglas Memorial College.
Any contributions will be
gratefully accepted
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