Pope Francis said on his Apostolic Journey to Canada in July 2022, “I have been waiting to come here and be with you! Here, from this place associated with painful memories, I would like to begin what I consider a pilgrimage, a penitential pilgrimage. I have come to your native lands to tell you in person of my sorrow, to implore God’s forgiveness, healing and reconciliation, to express my closeness and to pray with you and for you.”
Pope Francis was addressing the years of abuse perpetrated by some Catholics upon the indigenous First Nations of North America. As the Pope said on his visit, “when the European colonists first arrived here, there was a great opportunity to bring about a fruitful encounter between cultures, traditions and forms of spirituality. Yet for the most part that did not happen.”
There is much anger among the First Nations, such that his listeners might not have picked up on another comment he made: “Christian charity was not absent, and there were many outstanding instances of devotion and care for children.”
Indeed, there are thousands of examples of people who came to America to fulfill the Great Commission. These people had love, not hate, in their hearts. Many of these missionaries are well known; some are just a footnote in history. One of these footnotes is the French Canadian missionary, Franciscan Juniper Berthiaume.
Of the thousands of missionaries who traveled America, starting from the beginning of the Spanish voyages, many were lay missionaries, not ordained priests or deacons. Many of these missionaries were committed to God and the Great Commission through their religious orders or through their volunteer or parish service work. One such person was Juniper Berthiaume, whose life is obscured by time and the lack of records—save letters and journals by which his significant work as a missionary to the Penobscot tribe of Maine and the Micmac of eastern Canada in the 1780s can be recreated.
The Penobscot region, like most of the eastern frontier of Maine, was under the influence of New France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Hence, the territory had been dominated by Roman Catholic interests as delivered to the native inhabitants, the Abenakis, by Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries. The Penobscot tribe in particular had the presence of French missionary priests among them for generations until the end of the French-Indian War in 1763. After that point, the English governed the region and impressed upon it the age-old antipathy toward Papism.
In the period after the French-Indian War, the Penobscot and other Abenaki tribes of Maine felt increasingly abandoned. Their new masters, the English, preferred to send Anglican rather than Catholic missionaries among them. This changed during the war. The Penobscot people, wishing to ally themselves with the Americans, appealed to the government of Massachusetts to assign a Catholic priest to serve their interests. One priest, a chaplain with the French navy, ministered to the Penobscot for about a year. He was soon replaced by another missionary, who stayed much longer with the Penobscot tribe. This was Juniper Berthiaume.
Frère Juniper was a native of Quebec, educated both there and in France. Surviving records shed little light on his early years. One anecdote has it that he was frustrated with the Franciscan authorities in Quebec and decided to cross the St. Lawrence to the American camp, where he brought General Washington important correspondence from agents in Quebec . . . perhaps. What is certain is that Frère Juniper had joined the Recollect Franciscans in Quebec around 1768; in 1776 he lived at the Franciscan convent in Montreal; in 1778 he was living at St. Peters, Newfoundland; and in 1780 he was in Rhode Island, perhaps because he served as a chaplain in the French fleet, which frequently anchored at Newport.
At the same time, Penobscot Indians, led by their chief Orono, arrived in Rhode Island to appeal for a Catholic priest to minister to them. Their appeal was answered in 1780 by the Massachusetts General Court, which appointed Juniper Berthiaume an “instructor” to the Penobscot tribe. He traveled with the Penobscot to Maine, stopping at Fort Halifax. Here he stayed, ministering to the Penobscot tribe and representing their interests before Massachusetts authorities. Neither he nor the Indians received full financial support from the Massachusetts government. He was released, then reinstated, then released by the government—though through this Berthiaume was usually unaware of his official status with the Penobscot. What he knew for certain was that they depended on him, and he in turn felt called to minister to them as a missionary regardless of the formalities.
Upon the conclusion of the Revolutionary War in 1783, New England Congregational missionaries set their sights on causing religious change among the Maine Indians after several centuries of Roman Catholic influence. A leader in this endeavor was the Rev. Daniel Little (1724-1801), who was pastor of the Second Parish of Wells (Kennebunk) for fifty years. Little made half-a-dozen journeys before and after the War for Independence along Maine’s eastern shore, ascending the Penobscot River to reach out to, make peace with, minister to, and convert to Protestantism the Penobscot tribe.
During his journey in 1786, Little was sanguine that he would accomplish his mission by establishing a school to teach the Indian children English as a pathway to their learning the English Bible and the Congregational Way. What he did not anticipate was the presence among the Penobscot of forty-two-year-old French Franciscan lay Frère Juniper Berthiaume, who by this time had years of experience living with, teaching, and ministering to the Maine Indians. Frère Berthiaume worked against Little’s project to convert the Penobscot tribe, forcing the Congregationalist to retreat from the Penobscot region in frustration.
Frère Juniper was the spiritual leader of the Penobscot people, Rev. Little learned, but he was something of a maverick; neither the Bishop of Quebec nor the Superior of the Missions of the Thirteen United States authorized his work among the Native Americans. Nevertheless, he performed many of the sacraments the best he could, including communion—though he was not able to consecrate the elements, and confession—though he could not absolve the penitents of their sins. As a result, the Quebec Vicar General Henri-François Gravé de la Rive encouraged Catholics in Maine to drive the Berthiaume out of Maine, but still Frère Juniper stayed. Compared to what the Penobscot people had experienced in recent decades, including the frequent lack of a priest among them, Frère Juniper’s limited role must have been perfectly acceptable to their needs.
At some point between 1786 and 1788, Frère Juniper at last departed Maine for New Brunswick to minister to the Micmac tribe. In October 1788, the newly installed Bishop of Quebec, Jean-François Hubert, wrote letters to two Catholic leaders in New Brunswick, requesting that they determine the whereabouts of Juniper Berthiaume and force him to leave the Micmac tribe alone and depart the territory. At some point Juniper Berthiaume did depart New England and Canada for warmer climes. There exist scattered records from the Diocese of New Orleans, under Spanish influence in 1796, including reports of a parish priest of New Madrid on the Mississippi River being drunk during the sacrament of Eucharist. The person who reported the priest was a Franciscan assigned to the parish: Frère Juniper Berthiaume!
Frère Juniper was one of those who Pope Francis said had “Christian charity.” Nothing required him to stay, teach, and minister to the tribes of the upper North American coast—against a host of odds—other than the pure love of Jesus in his heart. May we learn to persist in our Faith and evangelization efforts as devotedly as he did.
Author’s Note: For more information on Juniper Berthiaume, see Russell M. Lawson’s Apostle of the East: The Life and Journeys of Rev. Daniel Little (Wipf and Stock, 2019).
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series on Catholic missionaries to North America.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
