Join our friends at the La Perouse Museum for their annual Receveur Mass on Sunday 17th February to commemorate the mass performed by French priests upon their arrival to Botany Bay during an expedition in 1788.

Since 1988, La Perouse has celebrated this traditional Latin Mass remembering the French priests of the Laperouse Expedition who it is thought introduced the mass to Australia. 

The Mass was introduced to Australia by two Frenchmen, Père Laurent Receveur (1757-1788) a Conventual friar, whose death occasioned a Requiem Mass by his brother priest, who was a canon of Ste. Genevieve in Paris, and the Latin Office of the Dead which was mandatory at the funerals of naval personnel

The first two Masses were celebrated either on the day of the expedition’s arrival, Saturday 26th January, 1788, the feast of St. Polycarp or  the next day which was Sexagesima (the second Sunday before Ash Wednesday). Under the 1765 royal Ordonnance de la Marine, which specified the duties of all types of French naval personnel, chaplains in the royal navy were obliged to say Mass on Sundays and feast days without exception unless bad weather prevented it, and on other days as often as possible. Here was the mandate for the introduction of the Mass to Australia in early 1788 which continued what had occurred throughout the Laperouse voyage aboard the two French frigates.

Join the La Persouse Museum as they celebrate the mass on the actual anniversary of Receveur’s death and remember this important moment in religious history in Australia. 

To find out more see here.

When: Sunday, 17th February 2019, 8am
Where: Laperouse Museum, 1611R Anzac Parade, La Perouse (meet on the verandah)
Contact: Frank Carleton, Convenor, Pere Receveur Commemoration Committee: provenance7@ gmail.com

Image: La Perouse Museum, Friends of the Laperouse Museum Inc.