Lucian Tapiedi

Life and Ministry

Lucian Tapiedi was born about AD 1921 at Taupota on the south coast of Papua to the Binandere people, the son of a sorcerer who died when Lucian was young, raised by his uncle, and catechized at the Anglican mission of the Diocese of New Guinea at Sangara on the Mambare River. Confirmed in AD 1939, he completed teacher training at the diocesan teachers' college at Dogura and was posted in AD 1941 to the Sangara mission as evangelist and schoolteacher to the Orokaiva villages of the Northern District. With the staff of Anglican missionaries at Sangara — Vivian Redlich, May Hayman, Mavis Parkinson, John Duffill, Lilla Lashmar — he received in July AD 1942 a directive from Bishop Philip Strong of New Guinea instructing the mission staff to remain at their posts in the face of the advancing Japanese invasion of Papua. Strong's letter — We must endeavour to carry on our work… We could never hold up our faces again if we did otherwise — became the founding text of the New Guinea Martyrs.

Circumstances of Death

After the Japanese landing at Buna in late July AD 1942 the Sangara mission party scattered into the jungle to escape the advancing troops. Tapiedi led Vivian Redlich, May Hayman, Mavis Parkinson, and the other missionaries through the upper Mambare valley toward the supposed safety of the Australian lines. At the river crossing at Wairopi (Pidgin for wire rope) in early September AD 1942, the party was betrayed to a Japanese patrol by a man named Embogi, a sorcerer of Garapata village. Tapiedi was killed first, struck with an axe at the river crossing — apparently to prevent him from leading the missionaries to safety; the missionaries themselves were taken to Buna and beheaded on the beach a few days later. His body was later recovered and reburied at Sangara church, which was rebuilt over the grave.

Legacy

Tapiedi is commemorated with the other martyrs of the New Guinea mission of AD 1942 on 2 September in the Anglican calendar. He is one of the ten twentieth-century Christian martyrs whose statues stand over the west door of Westminster Abbey, unveiled in AD 1998 — the only Pacific Islander among the ten. His witness is that the convert dies before the missionary: the Papuan schoolteacher catechized by the white mission was killed first at the river, leading his teachers toward safety. The Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea now numbers him with the New Guinea Martyrs whose blood is the seed of the indigenous Anglican province of the islands.