Walk over my grave

November 1914. During their trip to the Pacific Islands, co-founders of Our Lady’s Nurses for the Poor, Eileen O’Connor and Rev. Edward (Ted) McGrath msc, were presented with part of a war club reputedly used to martyr St Peter Chanel. Whilst staying with the community of Marist Sisters at Levuka, Fiji, Eileen was asked to pray for a sick daughter of the local chief. The daughter recovered from her illness and the chief, who was descended from one of St Peter Chanel’s assassins, gave the relic to Eileen in appreciation. St Peter Chanel was a Marist Father who was martyred on the island of Fatuna in 1841. Eventually, most of the island’s population – including Musumusu, the warrior who led the murderous party – converted to Catholicism. As he lay dying, Musumusu asked to be buried at the entrance to the church at Poi, so that everyone who came to revere St Peter Chanel would have to walk over his grave. Canonised by Pope Pius XII in 1954, St Peter Chanel is the Patron Saint of Oceania, the largest province in the Society of Mary.