Longest serving bishop
THE Right Reverend Leonard Stanley Kempthorne, formerly Bishop in Polynesia, died at the CWM Hospital on Thursday, July 25, 1963.
Bishop Kempthorne had become Bishop in Polynesia in 1923 and retired in 1962. His was one of the longest serving Bishops in the Anglican Communion.
He was also one of the very few who had attended four Lambeth conferences, and the last one he attended was in 1958.
Bishop Kempthorne came of ecclesiastical stock.
His father was Archdeacon in the Diocese of Nelson (NZ) and his cousin was Bishop of Lichfield.
According to The Fiji Times report on July 26, 1963, Bishop Kempthorne was educated at Nelson College, Auckland University College and Queen’s College, Oxford.
He was ordained by the Bishop of Willesden in 1914 as deacon of St Paul’s, London. He spent most of his ministerial life in the tropics.
He went to West Equatorial Africa in 1914 and to the Diocese of Singapore in 1920. While in England in 1923, he was selected as Bishop in Polynesia and was consecrated in Lambeth Palace Chapel.
Born at Nelson in 1886, Bishop Kempthorne chose a medical career, but during his studies in London he became closely associated with the students’ Christian union and subsequently decided to devote himself to missionary work.
At the time of his retirement, the bishop said that looking back on his 39 years of service as Bishop in Polynesia; he looked back on 39 years of discovery and of intense human enjoyment.
It had also been 39 years of steady progress in which the Church of England in Fiji had kept pace with the progress of the colony in its difficult years of transition and had shared its problems.
But his concern was not with Fiji alone. As Bishop in Polynesia, he had to administer a diocese of many islands large and small, scattered over a huge ocean.
It included the Gilberts, up near the equator; Tahiti and the Cook Islands in the East and in the middle Samoa, Tonga and Fiji.
When he arrived in Fiji, he found that there were only two priests to help him, few churches and very little money.
In 1963 the Anglican Church was soundly and effectively established.
There were more churches and schools, more teachers to staff the schools and more priests to minister to the people.
The report highlighted that on his retirement, the bishop expressed his appreciation of the loyal support of priests, teachers and hardworking laymen who had helped him in the labour which he had to relinquish through advancing years.
When he came to Fiji, the bishop found that getting about his diocese was the most difficult part of his work. He was left largely to his own recourses in maintaining contact with missionary posts and parishes separated by great expanses of ocean.
He used any and every means of transport from trading schooners and cutters to visiting warships. Even in Fiji, the most settled part of his territory, travelling often had to be done the hard way.
There were not many roads in Fiji in those days. At times he walked from Navua to Sigatoka and from Vunidawa to Nadarivatu. He had also walked across Vanua Levu several times through the bush and over mountain tracks.
On one occasion, the bishop related that he once had to cross a flooded creek in the Tailevu district and had to hold his head as high as he could to keep his nose out of the water.
He also related with amusement how once he walked from Yanawai to Wainunu in Vanua Levu.
Captain David Robbie was then at the Wainunu Tea Estate and when the Bishop arrived, very weary, and asked for a hot bath, the captain took him out to a hot spring.
The Adi Rewa, Adi Keva, Sir John Forrest, Malake, Makatea and the Government vessel Pioneer were some of the old ships in which the Bishop travelled in the days when the sea was Fiji’s natural highway.
But from 1925 onwards conditions for travelling to distant places were made more pleasant by the opportunities afforded by the Navy in travelling in cruisers and sloops.
Until 1931 when the services of a priest were obtained, the bishop visited Samoa once a year, but for a start he had to hold his services in a cinema.
The bishop was proud of the new multiracial school at Denison Rd, Suva. The property was bought from the Bank of New South Wales for 20,000 pounds.
The school had previously been held in the Parish Hall but when it was transferred in 1961 the 50 pupils increased to 74 — with a large waiting list.
A source of great pride to the bishop was that during the time he was able to see the beginning of Holy Trinity Cathedral, in place of the old Pro-Cathedral which had served the Cathedral parishioners well for many years.
Another progressive move made by the bishop was the establishment of St John’s House in 1958 when a two-storey house was built between the Bishop’s House and the Rectory where students are trained for the ministry. This was a practical method of solving the old problem of obtaining a sufficient number of priests for work in the diocese.
Another work in which the bishop was greatly interested was in the settlements of Solomon Islanders at Wailoku, Suva, Matata (Lami), Wailailai (Levuka) and the Campbell Settlement at Savusavu. The Levuka Settlement is the oldest and Wailoku the largest.
Many of the people are descendants of the Solomon Islanders and others brought to Fiji in the labour recruiting days before the Cession when the labour trade or blackbirding — as it was called — gave rise to practices which caused intense concern in England.
Bishop Kempthorne followed the late Bishop Twitchell, the first Bishop in Polynesia who had become almost a legendary figure in the South Pacific.
Mrs Kempthorne accompanied the bishop in many of his travels and was of very great assistance to him. She had been a keen church worker.
On Sunday March 4, 1962 Bishop Kempthorne and Mrs Kempthorne were met by members of the clergy and parishioners of Holy Trinity Cathedral after evensong to celebrate the 39th anniversary of his consecration as a Bishop, and also to mark his forthcoming retirement.
The then Rector, Reverend H W Figgess presided over a large attendance.
Speakers referred to the many years of splendid service given to the diocese by the Bishop, and the great kindness shown to the people by both the Bishop and Mrs Kempthorne.
Mr K A Stuart, of Lautoka, senior member of the Standing Committee, made the presentation of a cheque to the Bishop.
He said that when the records of the diocese were written, it would be seen that what the Bishop had done, and what he had caused to be done, would be remembered by his people for many years.
Bishop Kempthorne once spoke of his work as a challenge to faith.
A very kindly and courteous man, who was at home among all people of all races, he will be remembered as Christian who inspired faith and commanded both respect and affection.