Honoré Laval

Honoré Laval, SS.CC., (born Louis-Jacques Laval; 5/6 February 1808 – 1 November 1880) was a French Catholic priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (also known as the Picpus Fathers), a religious institute of the Roman Catholic Church, who evangelized the Gambier Islands.

Louis-Jacques Laval was born 6 January 6, 1807, in the small hamlet of Joimpy, Saint-Léger-des-Aubées in Eure-et-Loir. He was professed in the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (Picpus) December 30, 1825, under the name of Brother Honore and was ordained priest in Rouen in 1831.

Accompanied by Fathers François Caret, Chrysostome Liausu, and Brother Columba Murphy, he travelled by coach from Paris via Tours and Poitiers to Bordeaux, where they boarded the Sylphide, which sailed on 1 February 1834 for Valparaíso, arriving on 13 May. Taking passage on Captain Sweetwood's ship, the Peruvian, out of Boston, Caret and Laval arrived 8 August on Akamaru in the Gambier Islands.

From the 10th to the 15th centuries, the Gambiers hosted a population of several thousand people and traded with other island groups including the Marquesas, the Society Islands and Pitcairn Islands. However, excessive logging by the islanders resulted in almost complete deforestation on Mangareva, with disastrous results for the islands' environment and economy. The folklore of the islands records a slide into civil war and even cannibalism as trade links with the outside world broke down, and archaeological studies have confirmed this tragic story. When Laval and Caret arrived the population of the Gambiers was estimated at 800 to 1,000. Karl Rensch says they counted 2,124 souls.

The Gambiers were fairly isolated. Captain Arnaud Mauruc advised the Apostolic Prefect of Southern Oceania, Chrysostome Liausu, that ships only sailed there every five or seven years for pearl fishing as the area had no other commercial value. Liausu remained in Valparaiso to maintain communications between the scattered missions and the Congregation in France. He died there in September 1839, having contracted typhus.

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